So Teach Your Children Math…

According to CareerCast, three of the four best jobs in 2014 are in STEM fields: mathematician, statistician, and actuary. And the other — tenured university professor — might very well be a STEM career, too.

The worst job? Lumberjack, with a median annual salary of $24,000, a bad work environment, high stress, and a dismal hiring outlook.

Even though they’re on opposite ends of the best job spectrum, math folks and loggers have a lot in common. Both appreciate natural logs.

I learned this at http://www.lumberjack.com, which has a few interesting tidbits. But not enough to keep me interested, so I logged out.

And we all know that the grass is always greener, which is why some mathematicians opt for a life in the forest…

A math professor had enough of academic life, so he decided to become a lumberjack. He was hired by a logging firm, and he was told that he’d need to cut down 50 trees a day. On his first day, he was handed a chainsaw, and he went into the forest. When he returned to the office at the end of the first day, the foreman asked him, “So, how many trees did you cut down today?”

“Six,” replied the mathematician.

“That’s not enough,” said the foreman. “You’ll have to do better. Get up earlier tomorrow.” So he did, and again he went into the forest with a chainsaw. He returned at the end of the day, sweaty and exhausted. “How many’d you get today?” the foreman asked.

“Twelve,” replied the mathematician.

So the next day, the foreman went out to the forest with the mathematician. He started the chainsaw, started to cut, and explained to the mathematician what he was doing. When he finished, he said, “And that’s how you cut down a tree. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” said the mathematician. “What the hell was all that noise coming from the chainsaw?”