What is a mathematician?

What does it take to be a mathematician?

• I was thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up and I'm wondering what would be required to be a mathematician? I've always been the best at math in each of my classes ...show more

• Answer:

  "I am very good at calculating numbers in my head and at games that require calculations like chess" These are not skills that are useful in mathematics, for the most part. It is a beautiful field, and if you do have the mind for it and the determination, it's definitely worth pursuing. Please understand, though, that mathematicians are *the* smartest people in the entire world -- you have to go through college, grad school, postdoctorate work, and so forth while competing with people who are smarter than anyone you've likely ever met before. I can't help noting, though, that the skills you talk about having are basically perfect for another profession, that of a quantitative trader. Derivatives trading is basically a huge game that favors people who are lightning fast at arithmetic, and you make an enormous amount of money. It's also not uninteresting -- all sorts of crazy things go on all the time and it's very interesting to try and figure out what's going on before anyone else does.