The financial world mainly revolves around numbers and statistics. A candidate for a PhD in Financial Mathematics is not merely a financial guru. He or she is more likely to be a mathematician as a major part of course work deals with quantitative analysis and research. In understanding the principles of trading and asset management, a postgraduate student then knows how to manage financial risks in complex situations.

Since math plays a large part in the pursuance of this postgraduate degree, the candidate must have a strong grasp and knowledge in this subject. By living and breathing math, the student can then conduct extensive research by formulating complex theories and testing them out with equally challenging mathematical models. Other than strong math, it is ideal for the student to have knowledge in certain programming languages in order to compose and run his models. With the advent of technology, time is significantly saved and channeled from manual calculations to letting the computer crunch the numbers. In addition to programming, other inter-disciplinary areas which work to the advantage of a PhD student are statistics and economics. The former is probably most evident in the quantitative analysis side of things whereas the latter is about understanding what makes the finance world tick.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4697796