I’m finishing up my freshman year of college and looking for thoughts on choosing a major/minor. I really enjoy math and think that I want to declare a math major (with actuarial sciences emphasis in mind??). I took an intro engineering course and had to learn to do some rudimentary programs in C, which I discovered to really like. So now I’m thinking of adding a minor/double major in CS! But I don’t really know much about the field and what kind of options I’d have career-wise. For those studying/working in this field, I’d like to hear about your experiences and your opinions on choosing them as majors/minors? Could I teach myself to code, enough to possibly use it in my future career? Thanks!
Math/CS double major or major/minor is a popular combination. I don’t know much about actuarial sciences,but many math majors end up in IT jobs or jobs that require coding skills. You can teach yourself to code, but it’s very useful to take at least a few classes in CS. Whether you should have it as another major depends on the requirements, your time constraints, grades etc.
Honestly, almost every math major I encountered in undergrad used actuarial science as a fallback to justify getting a math degree. If you take enough upper-division statistics classes, you find that the material is really dry and that making a career out of it (as I thought I was going to do) is going to suck if you don’t absolutely love statistics. I loved abstract algebra more than I ever loved statistics and I’ll take analysis over it any day too.
If you absolutely have to do a math major, I’d strongly suggest doing a double major with CS. Your marketability is not great on math alone and your marketability with CS is quite high. Programming is the future. There aren’t going to be enough grads to fill the positions needed.