This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Matthew J. Mayhew, William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Educational Administration, The Ohio State University and Benjamin S. Selznick, Assistant Professor, James Madison University. 

Two college majors are better than one. That is the conclusion that researchers are beginning to reach.

Prior research has already shown that students who double major can earn more than peers who majored in only one field.

New research we conducted recently shows that double majors fare better in another way as well: They are more innovative.

We are education researchers with an interest in how the college experience develops students. What we found in our newly-published study is that students who double majored scored 17.4 percentile points higher on our overall innovation measure than the average student. The innovation advantage for double majors is almost three times higher than any other major, including business, engineering and math/statistics.

This finding held even after we controlled for a number of variables, including a family history of entrepreneurship, courses taken in college, race, gender and GPA. We even controlled for personality traits, such as being an extrovert and being open to new experiences. We also considered the institution students attended, the quality of teaching to which they were exposed and the nature of their interactions with faculty members.

So what does it mean to be more innovative and why does it matter?

What makes a person innovative

For our study, we sought to measure students’ innovation capacities. We did so using a relatively new survey instrument that enabled us to determine how institutions can help students develop their innovation capacities. These capacities include skills related to networking, persuasive communication, working on diverse teams, and risk taking.

These innovative qualities matter in the job market. That’s because employers want more from college graduates than good grades. What employers really want – according to a recent survey – are graduates who can effectively work in diverse teams, are creative thinkers and have persuasive communication skills. In short, employers want innovators.

Since innovators are in demand, it begs the question: Are graduates who double-majored more innovative because they double-majored? Or did they double-major because they were already more innovative?

Self-selection could be at play. To be sure, one aspect of the connection between innovation and double-majoring is related to the fact that certain students want more than any one discipline or major can provide. They want to choose, or perhaps not choose.

A desire for more

Perhaps double majors are the kind of students who need more than many programs offer. It could be a signal of proactive and creative choice for students who don’t fit the mold in terms of how higher education is currently delivered.

Double-majoring might also provide students with experiences in which students see connections between content in different courses. Additionally, taking classes required for two majors might increase networking with peers across disciplines.

Does this mean that all students should double-major and employers should only hire these graduates? Probably not.

While certainly our data demonstrate that double-majors are the most innovative, we do not conclude that this academic pathway is always the best choice for students or industries. What we do suggest, however, is that colleges and universities help students find ways to integrate material across disciplines, interact with each other across majors, and work on teams to solve real-world problems. This could be done through existing courses or perhaps new centers and spaces dedicated to innovation on college campuses.

That way, even if students don’t double-major, they might still become more innovative – and more attractive to employers.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Andrew D. Hwang, Associate Professor of Mathematics, College of the Holy Cross.

National discussions of crucial importance to ordinary citizens – such as funding for scientific and medical research, bailouts of financial institutions and the current Republican tax proposals – inevitably involve dollar figures in the millions, billions and trillions.

Unfortunately, math anxiety is widespread even among intelligent, highly educated people.

Complicating the issue further, citizens emotionally undeterred by billions and trillions are nonetheless likely to be ill-equipped for meaningful analysis because most people don’t correctly intuit large numbers.

Happily, anyone who can understand tens, hundreds and thousands can develop habits and skills to accurately navigate millions, billions and trillions. Stay with me, especially if you’re math-averse: I’ll show you how to use school arithmetic, common knowledge and a little imagination to train your emotional sense for the large numbers shaping our daily lives.

Estimates and analogies

Unlike Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, scientists and mathematicians are not exacting mental calculators, but habitual estimators and analogy-makers. We use “back of the envelope” calculations to orient our intuition.

The bailout of AIG after the mortgage-backed securities crisis cost more than US$125 billion. The Panama Papers document upward of $20 trillion hidden in a dark labyrinth of shell companies and other tax shelters over the past 40 years. (The recently published Paradise Papers paint an even more extensive picture.) On the bright side, we recovered $165 million in bonuses from AIG executives. That’s something, right?

Let’s find out: On a scale where a million dollars is one penny, the AIG bailout cost taxpayers $1,250. The Panama Papers document at least $200,000 missing from the world economy. On the bright side, we recovered $1.65 in executive bonuses.

In an innumerate world, this is what passes for fiscal justice.

Let’s run through that again: If one penny represents a million, then one thousand pennies, or $10, represents a billion. On the same scale, one million pennies, or $10,000, represents a trillion. When assessing a trillion-dollar expenditure, debating a billion dollars is quibbling over $10 on a $10,000 purchase.

Here, we’ve scaled monetary amounts so that “1,000,000” comprises one unit, then equated that unit to a familiar – and paltry – quantity, one penny. Scaling numbers to the realm of the familiar harnesses our intuition toward understanding relative sizes.

In a sound bite, a savings of $200 million might sound comparable to a $20 trillion cost. Scaling reveals the truth: One is a $2 (200-cent) beverage, the other the $200,000 price of an American home.

If time were money

Suppose you landed a job paying $1 per second, or $3,600 per hour. (I assume your actual pay, like mine, is a tiny fraction of this. Indulge the fantasy!) For simplicity, assume you’re paid 24/7.

At this rate, it would take one million seconds to acquire $1 million. How long is that in familiar terms? In round numbers, a million seconds is 17,000 minutes. That’s 280 hours, or 11.6 days. At $1 per second, chances are you can retire comfortably at the end of a month or few.

At the same job, it takes 11,600 days, or about 31.7 years, to accumulate $1 billion: Doable, but you’d better start young.

To acquire $1 trillion takes 31,700 years. This crummy job doesn’t pay enough!

This analogy gives a taste for the absolute size of a billion, and perhaps of a trillion. It also shows the utter impossibility of an ordinary worker earning $1 billion. No job pays a round-the-clock hourly wage of $3,600.

Nice work if you can get it

Let’s examine the wealth of actual multi-billionaires. Our calculations prove that they acquired more than $1 per second over long intervals. How much more?

Testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 27, William Browder, an American-born businessman with extensive Russian dealings, estimated that Vladmir Putin controls assets of $200 billion. Let’s assume this figure is substantially correct and that Putin’s meteoric rise began 17 years ago, when he first became president of Russia. What is Putin’s average income?

Seventeen years is about 540 million seconds; $200 billion divided by this is … wow, $370 per second. $1,340,000 per hour. Yet even at this colossal rate, acquiring $1 trillion takes 85 years.

The Panama Papers document some $20 trillion – the combined fortunes of one hundred Vladimir Putins – sequestered in shell companies, untaxed and untraceable. Though the rate of leakage has surely increased over time, for simplicity let’s assume this wealth has bled steadily from the global economy, an annual loss around $500 billion.

How much is this in familiar terms? To find out, divide $500 billion by 31.6 million seconds. Conservatively speaking, the Panama Papers document an ongoing loss averaging $16,000 per second, around the clock, for 40 years.

Fighting over scraps

American cities are now vying for a $5 billion Amazon headquarters, a windfall to transform the local economy lucky enough to win the contract. At the same time, the world economy hemorrhages that amount into a fiscal black hole every few days. Merely stemming this Niagara (not recovering the money already lost) would amount to one hundred new Amazon headquarters per year.

The root cause of our economic plight looms in plain sight when we know the proper scale on which to look. By overcoming math phobia, wielding simple arithmetic, refusing to be muddled by “gazillions,” we become better citizens, avoiding squabbling over pennies when tens of thousands of dollars are missing.