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How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

chrisstucchio.com

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Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#121

Post by moldbug »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #108
moldbug wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it matters, but for "1992" read "1994." 1992 was when I started at UCB (and presumably around when eli_gottlieb was born).

Actually, I was 3 years old at the time.

At least this makes you ineligible for my most important piece of advice. But others may care so I'll say it anyway: never go to grad school, especially in Computer Science, before both (a) you're old enough to drink, (b) you have actually had a drink. (It's completely ok to be a virgin, however.)

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#122

Post by theprettyllama »

VMG wrote: post #53
robertskmiles wrote: post #25

> 100 passengers have queued up to board a plane, and are lined up in the order of the seats on the plane (n=1..100). However, the first person lost his ticket and selects a random seat. The remaining passengers will occupy their assigned seat if it is available, or a random seat otherwise. What is the probability that passenger 100 sits in seat 100? It really worried me that I couldn't figure out how to work that ou…

I think this is more slightly more on-topic as a reply here > Consider the integers from [0,1000]. Suppose a particle starts at position n. At discrete instants of time t=0,1,2,…, the particle moves up or down with p=0.5. What is the probability that the particle reaches 0 before t=1000? The answer is 50%, right? I can't explain it properly, but my thinking is that the random walk is symmetric and 0 and 1000 should h…

I read this problem a few days ago and just decided to give it some thought now (I would love to know the correct solution).

The answer will certainly be a function of n (because, for example, I could give you n = 1001 and that should have 0 probability whereas if I were to give you n = 1, that would have a very high probability).

My first thought was to write out a recurrence relation f of n and k (where n is the current level and k is the number of moves left). From this, we get: f(n, k) = .5f(n-1, k-1) + .5f(n+1, k-1) with f(n, k) = 0 when n > k and f(0, k) = 1. So to solve this, we just take f(n, 1000) = [a rapidly exploding function].

Any thoughts?

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#123

Post by eli_gottlieb »

moldbug wrote: post #121
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I was 3 years old at the time.

At least this makes you ineligible for my most important piece of advice. But others may care so I'll say it anyway: never go to grad school, especially in Computer Science, before both (a) you're old enough to drink, (b) you have actually had a drink. (It's completely ok to be a virgin, however.)

I'm actually happily engaged and can control my drinking quite well, thanks.

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#124

Post by eli_gottlieb »

moldbug wrote: post #114
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, you don't think you can shock people with Karl Marx, do you? The point isn't to shock. The actual point was that you're not supposed to talk politics in the workplace . I wasn't preaching Marx to coworkers, so why were they railing on about Hayek? Yeah, that's what I mean. Dedicate yourself completely and unreservedly to the foul, foul art of money-grubbing, and/or money-saving. Or possibly money-stealing. A…

Conning investors is quite different from making an actual go at a business . What is the difference? The difference is that when you invite investors to invest in your new location-based social network for morticians and coroners (or whatever the fsck), you are making an actual go at a business . Whereas when you invite investors to invest in your new programming language, you are conning investors . Conning the gov…

What is the difference? The difference is that when you invite investors to invest in your new location-based social network for morticians and coroners (or whatever the fsck), you are making an actual go at a business. Whereas when you invite investors to invest in your new programming language, you are conning investors.

I see little difference. Neither of those is ever going to make money.

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#125

Post by theprettyllama »

theprettyllama wrote: post #122
VMG wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more slightly more on-topic as a reply here > Consider the integers from [0,1000]. Suppose a particle starts at position n. At discrete instants of time t=0,1,2,…, the particle moves up or down with p=0.5. What is the probability that the particle reaches 0 before t=1000? The answer is 50%, right? I can't explain it properly, but my thinking is that the random walk is symmetric and 0 and 1000 should h…

I read this problem a few days ago and just decided to give it some thought now (I would love to know the correct solution). The answer will certainly be a function of n (because, for example, I could give you n = 1001 and that should have 0 probability whereas if I were to give you n = 1, that would have a very high probability). My first thought was to write out a recurrence relation f of n and k (where n is the cu…

I posted this to /r/math on reddit and got some very interesting insight. (http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/ryy5n/interesting_litt...)

It appears that a basic knowledge of stochastic processes is required to actually be able to solve this problem, so it's one of those things that are actually much more complicated than they first appear.

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#126

Post by xixi77 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #66
hagy wrote: post #45

What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interesting? I ask as a grad student with a background in chemical engineering. I’ve known two professors who’ve done the inverse – industry to academia – and they’ve provided convincing stories for academia. In both cases they found academic research (in engineering…

> What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interesting? I left academia after undergrad, despite applying and getting into graduate school. My degree is in Computer Science, my specialty track was Programming Languages and Compilers, and my senior thesis was in Systems Programming Languages. I had job offers…

> Live-to-workism and California Ideology

Wow, I haven't realized that libertarianism and Austrian economics are now such an integral part of the Left Coast ideology! things must have been changing fast there lately.

Interesting perspective, otherwise. I do suspect you may not find academia entirely to your liking either, but good luck.

For something that was not mentioned, one thing which is often rather unsettling for people who move to industry is discovering a system that is not actually focused on maximizing your individual productivity/output/value added/job satisfaction/etc, although of course circumstances vary.

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#127

Post by a_bonobo »

imaginaryunit wrote: post #116
a_bonobo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the journal you're publishing in. Lots of journals (at least in my biological sciences field) require you to submit your code along with your publication so that a) the editor can repeat your results to accept your publication and b) for other scientists to repeat your stuff. Biostatistics AFAIK has an editor responsible solely for reproduction of results. Personally saying lots of my code is repeatedly re…

Your point is well-taken and (thankfully) there are safeguards in place at top journals. However, Rob Tibshirani examined this a while back with a case study and came up with some unsettling conclusions about reproducibility: http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/FL/report/ . The case study highlights the importance of debugging not only code, but also the entire experimental process.

True!

If you want a newer example, here's a very recent paper which looks at the results of a couple of RNA-Seq-papers and after being able to reproduce only 12% of the results, concludes that they all used the wrong assumptions in their statistics: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

Which shows that the editor really needs to know what's going on and why in each paper - I don't think every editor can know everything about his or her field.

Re: How to leave academia (for science PhDs)

#128

Post by Rickasaurus »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #90
bearmf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all this high paying jobs? Average data scientist salary at glassdoor is probably less than 100k.

Is it just me, or are we quite privileged when we no longer count a job paying less than six-figures as "high-paying"?

It all depends on where you live. In NYC making under six figures means you live in a ghetto with room mates and can't afford to eat out.
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