Slashdot is having a very active discussion (naturally degenerating into nonsense at times, but generally pretty good) about high paying jobs for those will a college degree in math or science. Operations research gets a good plug or two among the discussants. One response (from “MoneyCityManiac”):
Applied math is a good bet. Operations Research (“OR”), as Wikipedia defines it, is “an interdisciplinary science which uses scientific methods like mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to decision making in complex real-world problems which are concerned with coordination and execution of the operations within an organization.” It’s a mixture of math, stats, CS, and engineering.
There’s OR applications in areas such as health-care, environmental management, forestry management, transportation, and much more. Environmental management, in particular, is something that operations research is going to play a huge role as government and industry focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And because there’s such a practical role towards it, there’s plenty of support from government and industry, not just in terms of jobs at the end but also scholarships, fellowships, etc. Ask around a math, CS, or engineering department! I’m sure it won’t be hard to find someone who can point you in the right direction.
And for those data-hungry: http://www.collegegrad.com/salaries/salaries.shtml site where you’ll find salary distributions for OR jobs. However I found it a little bit concerning that when you dig into the simulator you find out that they understand OR just for logistics!.
it was a good discussion, but poorly only one guys mentions OR over 100 replies. and, if we consider F.E. a subset of OR, then it seems everyone in Math/Phys is diving in there.