I'd say... ***drumroll***... It depends.
It depends a lot on what you call mathemathics. When I studied "Algorithms and datastructures" we did learn a lot about efficiency calculations. It was officially a course in Computer Science, but in reality it was very mathematical. At my first university, Automata Theory was considered mathemathics, at other universities the same course would have been a computer science course.
Generally, I'd say at least a basic understanding of Algebra and Logics is a must for any database professional. Depending on what you put into the profession "DBA" you might or might not need knowledge about algoritm efficiency. Not a deep knowledge, but you need to intuitively know which is the more efficient of two algorithms if you're going to study and understand execution plans.
Finally: You always need to know about mathematics. It makes life easier, regardless of you profession. But that goes for a lot of academic disciplines, so if you're going to follow the rule "learn whatever you will later find useful" you would study a lot and work very little.
↧