B.S. Mathematics, Oklahoma State University, 1993.
Jennifer's job is to price securities in the fixed income market--specifically, to price bonds. When a bond is created, it is bought and sold repeatedly by different organizations. The sales after the first one are called ``secondary trading''. Jennifer's company maintains a database which tracks all terms of each bond. Jennifer's job is to make a statistical analysis of the secondary trading data, to infer what the bond market is doing, and to determine the fair value of all bonds under that market.
Jennifer's work is essentially mathematical modeling and pattern matching. She uses custom software to smooth her data and to fit a curve (a cubic spline curve) to it. Using the curve, she tries to infer patterns in the market's behavior. The work relies heavily on statistics.
As an undergraduate at OSU, Jennifer took mostly the ``pure math'' courses. While these have not directly helped her understand finance, she feels they were invaluable at building her analytical skills and her ability to identify patterns. One experience that did help Jennifer directly in her current job was participation in the SIAM Math Modeling competition (see Section 6.3).
It can be hard for a math student to face a job interview in business or industry. Placement offices and interviewers may sound as though they prefer majors from business, finance, or other fields. In Jennifer's experience, though, you can get beyond these hurdles if you sell yourself. Tell the interviewer about your skills--skills in analytical thinking and identifying patterns. Many companies are looking for math majors; other students may look good on paper, but the companies know that math majors know how to think.
For more about Indepth Data, consult their World Wide Web page.