The answer to this question depends upon how you define success. If you look at the people we see profiled in the media and the people who are called “celebrities,” then it’s true that very few of them majored in mathematics. One reason for their scarcity is merely the fact that only a small fraction of those who attend college or university specialize in mathematics.
Furthermore, the fields that get the most media exposure are sports, theater, music and politics–domains that attract people from other educational backgrounds. The work that mathematicians do is relatively invisible and not understandable to most of the public. That’s why almost everyone knows the name Albert Einstein and few know the name Kurt Gödel, though each made major contributions to their field.
In Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010, Charles Murray states:
Over the last century, brains became much more valuable in the marketplace. … What was someone with exceptional mathematical ability worth on the job market a hundred years ago if he did not have inter-personal skills or common sense? Not much. … What is a person with the same skill set worth today? If he is a wizard programmer, as people with exceptional mathematical ability tend to be, he is worth six figures to Microsoft or Google. If he is a fine pure mathematician, some quant funds can realistically offer him the prospect of great wealth.
When math majors apply their skills to a field like building computer software or building investment models for financial institutions, they often become wealthy and gain public exposure. Among the 10 wealthiest people in the world, more than half were math or computer science majors, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer (Microsoft), Larry Page and Sergey Brin. (Jeff Bezos majored in mathematics at Princeton and later switched to electrical engineering.) Jim Simons is a mathematician who founded one of the top investment firms in America and is featured in a book titled, “The Man who Solved the Market.”
In his book, A Mathematical Mosaic: Patterns & Problem Solving, Professor Ravi Vakil of Stanford University and current President of the American Mathematical Society, profiles the lives of about a dozen winners of math olympiads 10 years after their graduation. These profiles reveal a host of significant achievements spanning a broad and diverse range of applications.
So the perception that most math majors aren’t successful is mainly a result of the fact that they usually work “behind the scenes” –often in arcane fields that are inaccessible to the public. Yet, as Charles Murray observed, the math major is sought after by software companies, investment firms and corporations involved in statistical analysis. So if you have a special gift for mathematics, and enjoy the subject, you are well-advised to “go for it!”
