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>>> The thing is, I can't think of any career that makes use of an ability
>>> to memorise and apply pointless algorithms...
>>
>> Off the top of my head:
>
>> research
>
> Seriously? That's a career? Talk about "vague"...
>
Every company that manufactures stuff has a R&D dept. Every university
has professors doing a lot of R and a little D to pay for more R.
Nowadays, most of these people will need computer simulation programs,
statistical data analysis, etc...
You already have some chemical knowledge acquired by osmosis, why not
try to focus on bio-tech or pharmaceutical companies?
>> finance
>
> Wouldn't I need extensive finance qualifications to do that?
>
To become a floor trader at the stock exchange, sure. But to crunch the
mountains of numbers that the financial industry needs to crunch, no.
There would be other people with the financial knowledge who would tell
you which pile of numbers needs to be regression-tested against what
other pile of numbers and please apply So-And-So's (here,s the article
that talks about it) formula to determine if it's a good investment or not.
>> crypto/security
>
> Seriously, almost *nobody* actually does that.
>
Right. And encryption/decryption algoritms sprout from trees?
>> logistics
>
> Really? I'm sure it's difficult keeping track of stuff, but I don't see
> much technical detail involved. It's just about keeping track of a lot
> of stuff all at once. It's hard, but it isn't very technical.
>
Planning bus routes, garbabe disposal truck routes, snow removal routes,
etc... are not exactly trivial. Making sure there's actually a plane,
preferably in working order, at gate 23B for the 6 o'clock flight, and a
flight crew and a cabin crew, and a ground crew to take care of the
loading/deloading, can be quite a task. Operational reasearch is a
field of mathematics that is quite active, and those mathematicians need
programmers who also can understand them. You'd fit nicely.
>> data mining
>
> Does anybody actually do that? I thought it was just a fashionable
> middle management buzzword.
>
See airline example above. They don't decide to put an Airbus 319 or
388 on each flight just for the fun of it. There's very extensive data
analysis that goes in to determine the best aircraft size for a
particular flight, and that analysis comes from crunching as much of
the previous passenger stats they can. Most industries also do so at
all levels to see how many widgets to pre-order to keep the aseembly
line running, without having to pay for a larger than necessary
warehouse. When to time your yearly discounts, how to target your
advertizing campaigns. Etc...
>> robotics
>
> Is there any commercial application for that?
>
Apart from all the manufacturing that's done by automation, even today's
dishwashers have programmable controllers that can sense the dirtiness
of the dishes and adjust the cycles accordingly. If I was named Sarah
Connor, I'd be worried at the moment.
>> communications
>
> From what I've seen, installing comms equipment doesn't require a great
> deal of technical skill - you just need to be good at carrying stuff
> around and running cables.
>
Right. That's because the shmuck who has to go onsite to run the cables
isn't the one who has to keep them running. It's like if you'd said
"mechanical engineering doesn't look that hard... I mean the guy at the
gas station barely does anything".
>> disaster response
>
> What kind of disaster response requires technical skill?
>
Planning to avoid them, and planning to deal with them when they can't
be avoided. And dealing with them once you're knee deep in the water
and the roof has flown 5 miles away. all of these steps require as
much, if not more, technical-know how than heavy lifting.
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