Mathematics is surprisingly useful. You've used your credit card online -- where'd that encryption algorithm come from? "Useless" math. You've booked a flight o

Mathematics is surprisingly useful. You've used your credit card online -- where'd that encryption algorithm come from? "Useless" math. You've booked a flight online -- where'd that schedule come from? Uh, math again: all that optimization, those traveling salesman problems. Right now I'm doing all sorts of work studying risk in financial networks, studying public health, all using math that was considered "pure" just 20 years ago. Actually, at the moment I'm looking up papers on the tropical geometry of deep learning. Certainly I realize society has decided math is not the most valuable thing, which is why I'll be seeking to do "machine learning" instead in the next year or so, rather than education & research (useless for anything in the real world!). I'm sure I'll add more to humanity when I'm optimizing for ad clicks :)