Would you rather be good at math or english?

[Bill Edwards(2)]

Great! Now you tell me I had a choice.

[dennis thompson]

Dan
The "Math" skills used in Finance are for the most part just basic addition,subtraction, multiplication & division. In completing merger & acquisition analysis we used some fairly sophisticated financial modeling skills, but the models all get back to the basic math skills. I believe my entry into the field was provided by an MBA from a well regarded school & my advancement was due, in large part, to good communication skills (& luck, a most important part of career advancement).(I still like my MBA, even though the newspapers seem to revel in blasting "money hungry MBA's")
Dennis

[Prashun Patel]

Math for math's sake is too futurama for me.

I'd pick engineering above anything else. This implies a strong understanding of math but more importantly, problem solving. I have an electrical engineering and an MBA. I'd pick the skills I learned as an EE any day of the week over the ones I learned in b-school.

Poverty, saving the earth, energy reduction, peace-in-the-middle-east: all of these can benefit from having bright people who know how to dissect a problem, get to its essence, and build a solution.

Spinning arguments on the news, marketing of yet-another-brand-of-cereal-the-world-just-doesn't-need, fighting in congress: these arenas are filled with people who have great command of language and can be effective communicators, but have nothing to communicate.

Stepping down from soapbox now...

[Phil Thien]

Anyone that has seen any sci fi movies knows that, in the future, we communicate with other galactic species via mathematical formulas. So without math, we may never be able to talk to the big-headed guys.

[Jerome Hanby]

Easy, mathematics. To quote RAH, Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.

Being a writer takes talent, just as does being a mathematician, but you don't have to be a writer to make notes or send correspondence any more than you have to be a mathematician to balance your check book or understand that compound interest is great when it works for you but really compounds your problems when it's working against you.

[Brian Kent]

Sodfnwi fjnw sdfklngrlwr wfo e fi! nfdvno lllldsff aeii fp. Woof.

[Callan Campbell]

English of course. That way I can explain how much I suck at Math....................

[Eric DeSilva]

Y'all would rather be Spock than Kirk?

[Darius Ferlas]

Dennis,

Would it be fair to say, however, that you would not have been presented with those advancement opportunities had it not been for some strong math skills that allowed you into the field in the first place?

As far as careers go, the really juicy ones, math appears to be completely redundant. Just look at the politicians. It's all about words and a pinch of sweet dreams.

[Montgomery Scott]

Most of the people in the company I work for will earn $3 to $4 million over a twenty five year career as engineers with good math skills. How much can a person with good English skills earn in the same amount of time?

[Chuck Wintle]

As far as careers go, the really juicy ones, math appears to be completely redundant. Just look at the politicians. It's all about words and a pinch of sweet dreams.

I have to agree...its all about communication and verbal skills. Without that you are nowhere regardless of any math skills. Plus many complicated ideas have to be expressed in terms that are understood and it's a measure of the quality of english how well it is communicated.

[ray hampton]

if you do not know your english, how can you read the math. problems ?
both math and England are important

[Scott Shepherd]

Let me restate this because it's drifted a little. I did not say pick one or the other. I asked if you could be really good at one and just okay the other, which would it be. I also said in the original post that English is very important.

If you could be great at one and okay at the other, which would it be and why?

And Ray, I agree, England is important!

[Bill Edwards(2)]

Most of the people in the company I work for will earn $3 to $4 million over a twenty five year career as engineers with good math skills. How much can a person with good English skills earn in the same amount of time?

Are you including politics?

[Orion Henderson]

I am not an engineer by any remote stretch-and other than engineering and small number of high tech fields I think English/communication skills are more important. Having a basic understanding of math is important, but the vast majority of people don't need calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. +-*/ and a basic understanding of how to create formulas (algebra) is all most people need and not that many need the algebra part. I do.

How much income can be earned with the ability to communicate over the mathematical ability? I would bet that far greater numbers of people earn their livings due to their communication skills than their math skills. Every single person who sells for a living for one-and we all sell for a living at some level. Every business owner and manager for two. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't create what they created because of their programming abilities per se-though they did need those abilities-they created their revolutionary businesses because of their ability to sell it. The guys who created Google became very successful in large part because they realized they were not great communicators and hired someone who was. It was their algorithm that created the concept and the business, but it was the CEO who lead the company to be what it is.