The Roles of Mathematics
- Mathematics within nonacademic organizations
- Applications of mathematics
- Opportunities for mathematics
Opportunities for mathematics
In telephone interviews and site visits, we heard many views about opportunities for new applications of mathematics. A selection of these, grouped by business area, is listed here.Manufacturing:
- Dimensional tolerancing, digital preassembly, and nominal components
- Modeling of manufacturing systems, reactive ion etching, and thermal processes
- Pattern placement and throughput in electron beam technology
- Process optimization (reducing time to market)
- Shape optimization
- Simulation of functionality
- Predicting damage and degradation of polymers
- Nondestructive testing
- Simulation of material properties
- Modeling to guide decisions about hazardous products or processes
- Bio-informatics (optimization, neural networks, Markov models, dynamical systems).
The managers surveyed had a similar outlook: 59% thought that there are definitely or probably opportunities in their own organizations for increased contributions from mathematics. (Those seeking such opportunities will find suggestions in articles like [Ben94, Davis94, Davis95].) Only 17% of managers thought that there were definitely or probably no additional opportunities for mathematics in their organizations.