>> I would think that Haskell would be quite suited to some of their 
>> problems.
>
> Hmm. Interesting. The careers advisor I was speaking to when Phil posted 
> this actually suggested that I look at "financial abstraction" as a 
> potential target area. He said that large financial companies often employ 
> people for developing complex financial models, and although it's not 
> "programming" as such, it involves those kinds of skills.

Exactly, any industry where dealing with numerical models is their core 
business will be crying out for people like you.  Like insurance companies 
too.  From the degree I did (Engineering), the single sector that most 
people went on to work in was finance!  Banks and insurance companies don't 
make any physical products, they make their money by simply making clever 
decisions, which are based on models designed by clever people.

As an example, imagine you have the records of millions of people (including 
address, age, etc) and a list of every single insurance claim they have ever 
made.  Now write a program to decide how much each person's insurance 
premium should be to make the maximum profit.  That program is absolutely 
critical to the success or failure of an insurance company.  They are not 
going to get some idiot to just think up some numbers that look about right.

Post a reply to this message