Spring courses advice...

[Dason]

Also Dason stochastic or the numerical LA course do you see a lot of value I taking them or waiting till I narrow down research interests ?

I see value in both. I personally think the stochastic course would be a little harder to pick up on your own which is why if I were in your situation I would probably take that. Linear algebra is really important but it sounds like you have a good enough foundation there that for the time being you could do without the additional course. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a good course to take - just that I think the stochastic processes course would be a little more difficult to do on your own. Plus learning theory is always beneficial in one way or another - if not just to help improve your mathematical thinking skills.

[hedgie]

Thanks Bryan and Dason!

Dason so in your position youd want to take both courses? I'd love to except for funding!!

Is stochastic too much to learn on ones own...I assumed because it was more an applies. course it wouldnt be as bad. Also I assumed for certain I'd be repeating it in grad school.

I was going to take the semester to work on SAS, R, and python but is it advisable to take courses beyond the first programming course? I assumed that was definitely self teachable.

Thanks so much to everyone!

[Dason]

Well I guess it sounds more applied than any stochastic course I've ever seen but stochastic processes typically involves quite a bit of theory. I guess it depends on how the professor handles it.

Programming is self teachable but you can definitely learn a lot from taking courses. There are certain things that you might not get from books when it comes to programming whereas if you have a teacher they'll correct you or tell you why it's a bad idea to do the seemingly not-so-bad thing in your code.

[ANDS!]

Thanks Bryan that was all very helpful! What about stochastic's is that easy to pickup on my own or doable I should say nothing ever winds up too easy!

Thanks again, ...any recommendations on a numerical analysis - numerical linear algebra book? And what language is best to learn in? The book at my University I uses matlab.

When I did NA, I used R; it was quite easy and the instructor appreciated having an alternative to what everyone else was using. As others have said though, it is a breeze.

[noetsi]

I think the best advice, given above, is to take things that are going to be useful in your career (and disertation). The one thing you don't want to do as you go through a doctoral program is lose sight of your disertation. Nothing is quite so painful as finishing your course work and realizing you need several more courses to do what you need to do in that (speaking from experience here as I did exactly that).

[noetsi]

Be careful about taking them on line if you want to count for your degree (and not just to learn). You have to be sure they are acredited in a way your university accepts. And usually there are very limited number of courses (say 2 or 3) that a program will allow you to transfer into a granduate program even if properly accredited.

[hedgie]

Well these are both dual listed undergraduate-graduate courses. I have time to take them or I can do research with professors or learn R or other subjects that may better prepare me for my first year of grad school. I will be taking RA 2 at the undergrad level and Math Stats 2 at the undergrad level already. I prefer not to pay extra if I can pick the courses up on my own but also want to learn as much as possible that is relevant. Thanks so much for everyones advice/help! Any further advice is much welcomed.

[noetsi]

As you go through the doctoral program (assuming you want to be a professor) think about what your goal is. There are limited number of openings, that is professorships, far fewer than there are doctoral students. You need to pay attention to what is going to get you one of those rare professorships. While papers may help other factors can be more important notably making contact (networking) with the people who will be hiring, learning a specific skill set that is in demand or a topic area etc. With a limited number of openings being in an area that universities are looking for and having people remember your name helps a lot. So to wil publications; if you can work with a member of your comittee on a paper you should. Go to conferences whenever you can and present.

Again this is from painful experiences in my own doctoral degree. People get out of a very intensive process and then they find there are no positions, something I think no one imagines in a program. It might be different in statistics of course, there may be so few graduates that all can get a position. But I doubt it.

[hedgie]

I'm operating under the assumption I won't get one of those positions so as not to be disappointed. I have no idea how education and salaries of college prof's are not in a bubble, especially in the business's schools.

Thanks everyone for all the advice! I love the forum and the people helping out here.

[hedgie]

NW has online courses? Thanks for the post above.......I am fine with taking the course at school my main issue was time....I want to learn as much math as possible but am trying to be as efficient as possible for my PhD. Also I wasn't aware of upper level math courses online, stats yes, not math. Am I missing them? Thanks halfnormal.

noetsi: i wasn't implying anything shady. schools like colorado state, texas a & m, penn state, northwestern, etc are accredited and some are even "ranked" statistics programs.