What do anaesthetists, mining engineers, financial dealers and dental practitioners have in common? Two things: They are on the list of occupations that have the highest paid workers per hour. AND they require those highly paid workers to be proficient in many different areas of math.
If your child expects to graduate and start making the big bucks, they will probably gravitate towards careers in medicine, finance or energy resource. They will be drawn to careers that involve fixing things, calculating things, drawing, graphing, plotting, planning, estimating, measuring, and problem solving.
It is common for student to have a hard time thinking much farther into their future than the weekend, let alone their future career choices. If money is their motivator, remind them that even when they’re rolling in the big bucks, they’ll have to know how to balance their cheque book and manage their bank accounts.
The highest paying job per hour in Australia is an anathesiest, raking in over $300,000 per year, and that is before bonuses. This job requires precise measurement and calculations of medicine dosages. A simple mathematical error could be the difference between a patient feeling nothing during surgery and feeling everything. It is a very important job, and requires skill, concentration, and a lot of math.
If they’d rather spend their workday outside, your child could consider becoming a mining engineer. With an hourly rate of over $65, this career choice ranks #5 on the list. Mining engineers are responsible for making sure everything runs smoothly and safely in the underground mines. They rely on math to map out tunnels and shafts, creating “to-scale’ models of potential mine sites, and managing the other mining employees, which includes responsibility of the budget and records.
Financial dealers deal with money, and they make a lot of it while they’re at it. These people are responsible for buying and selling, managing investments, and helping other people deal with their finances. This job pays $60 an hour, but is all math all the time. Financial dealers live, breathe and sleep numbers, and are paid nicely for it!
Open Wide! The friendly dentist who inspects your teeth makes close to $70 an hour, and deserves it! You have to be paid well to look into people’s mouths all day! All careers in the medical field, including dentistry, require extensive knowledge of the human body, which is basically all math and science. Since dentists work with such a limited space, their spatial reasoning must be on point, which you can thank geometry for. When fixing cavities, dentists have to calculate how many teeth need to be fixed, how big they are and how much material will be required to complete the project.
In order to make a lot of money after college, students must study math seriously. They must challenge themselves with various kinds of math and at various levels in order to prepare them for the real world. The next time they whine about math class, remind them that in just a few short years they will be thrown into the workforce, and a strong background in math will make that transition a lot easier.
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