An undergraduate majoring in Liberal Arts in a key university wrote to the leaders of the University and asked why the undergraduate majoring in liberal arts should study mathematics? Hearing this question, I was speechless for a moment, but when I think about it, this understanding may be universal, and I want to try to answer it. I want to answer this question. First, what is mathematics? What role and how much role he can play in our career development. To illustrate the problem, let me first talk about an example. I was once invited to a gathering of my old students back to school more than 30 years ago (they had met many times before). At dinner, an old student with few majors in College Mathematics came to accompany him. She was in the same school with my old students and majored in different majors. When she stayed in school to do party affairs, she served as secretary of the general Party branch of our department. She said to me: Miss Liu, I am very impressed and moved to see your geophysics students gathering. She saw from the list of students at the party that the units of these old students were diverse. Some are engaged in this major and some are engaged in industries unrelated to this major. For example, some are engaged in news media abroad, some run magazines, some are leaders, and some are engaged in business administration. And her old classmates never get together, because most of them are still in the original unit (field geological team), some retreat early and grow vegetables at home (her original words), and most of them can't change to work in other industries. Later, she also learned that among our geophysical students, there are also students engaged in law, high-energy physics, network, computer, electronic engineering, communication, measurement and control and electrification. This example tells us that my old students can adapt to diversified work. Although it depends on many factors, does it have nothing to do with learning more mathematics in college? My answer is certainly yes.

I have often talked with students about my experience in learning mathematics, that is, learning mathematics is not just for application. Although for most natural science and technology personnel (perhaps 99%, and the other 1% refers to those engaged in pure basic mathematics research), there is no doubt that mathematics is a tool at this time. But for higher undergraduate education, mathematics is not just a tool. As we all know, mathematics is the representative of logical thinking. Mathematics has the reputation of the king of natural science. Mathematics cultivates people's more rigorous scientific thinking. There are great differences in the contents of mathematics courses offered in the majors of science and Engineering in our school, among which the geophysical majors I teach offer the most mathematics courses. More than 40 years ago, it is said that the mathematics courses arranged by our major were equivalent to many majors in engineering of Tsinghua University. Even now, from the analysis of employment situation, our geophysics students still have obvious diversified characteristics. So what are the practical benefits of liberal arts students learning some mathematics? I think in addition to cultivating a little logical thinking (this goal may be difficult to achieve if they learn a little to cope with credits), it will be of great help to them looking for diversified jobs in the future. In all walks of life in today's society, modern management is more reflected in quantitative or semi quantitative analysis and judgment, careful analysis and logical reasoning, which are closely related to mathematics knowledge. In reality, we can generally see people with science and engineering background engaged in economic, humanities and social sciences research, and vice versa. Today's college graduates are no longer our "organizational distribution" in those days. They work in one position for a lifetime. In our social development, what industry can not deal with mathematics directly or indirectly? Therefore, I want to tell the liberal arts student that if he wants to find a satisfactory job in modern society, learning mathematics must be a correct choice.