Online Masters Degrees

[hedgie]

What are the mathematical requirements to succeed at Iowa State as it is the non-applied program? Does one need real analysis etc...I see they have a theory of linear models course required and theory of probability and statistics I & II which I assume is their math stats taught from Casella and Berger. Is it fairly theoretical/mathematical program? I guess defer to Dason since he's in it.

[hedgie]

How are these degree's viewed in the marketplace? If one goes to Iowa State and does the online degree....no one knows on the transcript since it's just a MS so how does it look to potential employer's? Is one better off getting a MS Iowa State, Texas A&M, or Penn State online which since they are top 20 schools versus going to a lower tier school say top 40-50?? Or are the connections you receive for employment significantly valuable if one does a program in person?

Hope someone has some insight. Thanks.

[Dason]

What are the mathematical requirements to succeed at Iowa State as it is the non-applied program? Does one need real analysis etc...I see they have a theory of linear models course required and theory of probability and statistics I & II which I assume is their math stats taught from Casella and Berger. Is it fairly theoretical/mathematical program? I guess defer to Dason since he's in it.

Yes the masters theory courses basically are Casella and Berger. Do you need Real Analysis to go through C&B? No - but it certainly helps. If you're planning on doing the PhD here then you might not necessarily need Real Analysis coming into the program but you'll definitely take it before you leave (most students take Real Analysis the summer before doing the PhD core where you go through measure theory).

I wouldn't say that the masters program is overly theoretical. And the level of rigor certainly fluctuates from professor to professor (although I think the theory courses are a little more set in the expectations since they basically follow C&B - I'm more or less thinking about the 'methods' course 500/511). My stat 500 course was very applied which is what I think they go for with that course - it's basically an overview of ANOVA and regression and some other techniques but for the most part it's actually performing analysis with linear models. Stat 511 is supposed to be the theory behind the linear model so it's a lot of matrix algrebra and proofs. At least that's what I had - although apparently Dr. Dixon taught it a couple years ago and they didn't prove a thing. So it definitely varies...

One of the reasons I went with Iowa State is because I feel that you get a good dose of theory but it's almost always keeping the applied in mind. I didn't want to go to a school that was all theory all the time where you're just proving things about Martingales and Markov Chains from day 1 but I also didn't want to go to a program where at the end of it I wouldn't be able to deal with issues that arise that complicate an analysis if I didn't already know how to deal with that - and I feel you need a healthy dose of theory to be able to overcome those types of problems. In terms of that I think the best course for helping my understanding and thinking in that regard would be Stat 601 which I don't believe is offered online so that's a shame but it's also a PhD level course (but I think masters students could benefit A LOT from it as well).

[bryangoodrich]

Is that graduate level real analysis or undergraduate real analysis? The two are -very- different, and I suspect if you're doing graduate level measure theory you're covering graduate level real analysis. But that should be a full year sequence (at least in most math programs) and is one of my biggest deterrents to applying to a math grad program: my real analysis undergraduate course SUCKED and I basically didn't learn anything beyond what I taught myself. It certainly wasn't mathematically rigorous. It was a trial in memorization and poor proof thinking. But I digress! lol

[Dason]

Is that graduate level real analysis or undergraduate real analysis? The two are -very- different, and I suspect if you're doing graduate level measure theory you're covering graduate level real analysis. But that should be a full year sequence (at least in most math programs) and is one of my biggest deterrents to applying to a math grad program: my real analysis undergraduate course SUCKED and I basically didn't learn anything beyond what I taught myself. It certainly wasn't mathematically rigorous. It was a trial in memorization and poor proof thinking. But I digress! lol

For masters level it would be beneficial (but not completely necessary IMO) to have undergraduate real analysis. There are students in the masters program that didn't have a math undergraduate degree so they didn't necessarily have real analysis and most of them do alright in the theory course (although they probably have to work harder to understand some of the concepts). For the PhD it would be very difficult to get through the measure theory course without one semester of graduate level real analysis.

[hedgie]

one of my biggest deterrents to applying to a math grad program: my real analysis undergraduate course SUCKED and I basically didn't learn anything beyond what I taught myself. It certainly wasn't mathematically rigorous. It was a trial in memorization and poor proof thinking. But I digress! lol

I feel your pain! Similar experience. Spent more time reading other undergrad level RA books and learning it on my own.

[bryangoodrich]

Yeah, since the course I've looked through other books, learned more concepts (in foundations, especially), and watched other lectures, so I have a better grasp on the concepts. My class (math program) is super dumbed down, though. They purposely avoided teaching us crucial concepts as the topological concepts they are, such as compactness, etc. Like the 2nd half of most of the chapters delved into the topological properties but we would avoid those parts. Keep everything in terms of closed and open sets and not use the topological properties to make our proofs easier and congruent with wtf we'd do if we went to -any- other advanced course! Ugh.

[hedgie]

I can relate to that.....my prof kept it dumbed down but we did cover the topological parts at least......

[nickbowersox]

Just seen yesterday on the web that Columbia University in NY is going to offer it MA in Stats and MS in Actuarial Sciences online.....http://quants.columbia.edu/

[calyp]

Hello everyone, my first post here. I work in Market Research and while most of my work is done through databases and Excel (a lot of VBA coding), I don't actually use Statistics until now.... as my group must now work with our new analytics group and I need to understand their models and be able to communicate them to clients in layman's terms.. I also do find the prospect of learning/doing data mining exciting.... Due to work and family, I am considering online MS Stat or certificate programs. My main concern is the level of math that is needed as I am very rusty - I took Calculus/Linear Algebra/Differential Equations about 20 yrs ago (yikes, I am old :-). I do not fear linear algera as the matrix stuff I can pick up back pretty quick, I fear the Calculus part (esp. the trigonometric functions since I never had good grounding in Trig.). Could you tell me (and perhaps Dason can help the most), just what portion of Calculus I need to know/review in a real classroom setting? For example, do profs. at great programs like Iowa St. or TAMU expect one to know multiple integrals, differentiating/integrating trignometric functions.... I am thinking of studying videos on khanacademy.org and/or see if there are online Calculus refresher courses. Any suggestions for this 40 yr old greatly appreciated.

BR, Jay

[calyp]

BTW bryangoodrich, I asked around about the USC GIS program, it is not about $40K but they also have a certificate program. The program for both the MS and cert involves spending one week in Catalina island for Remote Sensing field work. Some URLs:

recent webinars: http://gis.usc.edu/media/webinars-podcasts.asp
Catalina Island video: http://gis.usc.edu/webtemplate_video/catalina.wmv
Schedule of Classes: http://web-app.usc.edu/soc/ Summer classes are listed under Spatial Science.
USC Spatial Science: http://spatial.usc.edu/

furthermore, I think another alternative (at least for me) could be online programs in Analytics, DePaul and Nortwestern both have Masters in Predicative Analytics via Distance Ed. CUNY has a Masters in Data Analytics. These programs has some stat component obviously but lean more toward using current tools to get data mining/insight results. Just my 2 cents.