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Stanford Degrees in Statistics

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Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#2

Post by tbatchelli »

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together.

What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#3

Post by b_emery »

tbatchelli wrote: post #2

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together. What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

A class per 10-12 weeks is a reasonable pace with a full time job. I did a lot of my course work prior to enrolling in graduate school this way. There were a lot of late nights powered by chocolate chip ice cream and the light of my monitor, followed by not-very-productive days at work. Being enrolled helped - in my case through an extension program. Sometimes you need other people to explain things, and sometimes you need to have something to lose - just to keep you going.

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#4

Post by llasram »

tbatchelli wrote: post #2

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together. What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

I've been enrolled in an MS Statistics program part-time while working full-time. I'm around half-way done, and by the end it will have taken me three years total taking two classes at a time, although that includes a few extra courses beyond what the program strictly requires.

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#5

Post by achompas »

tbatchelli wrote: post #2

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together. What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

About that, yeah. It took me three years to finish my Masters in CS part-time with a 9-5.

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#6

Post by legoartwork »

b_emery wrote: post #3
tbatchelli wrote: post #2

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together. What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

A class per 10-12 weeks is a reasonable pace with a full time job. I did a lot of my course work prior to enrolling in graduate school this way. There were a lot of late nights powered by chocolate chip ice cream and the light of my monitor, followed by not-very-productive days at work. Being enrolled helped - in my case through an extension program. Sometimes you need other people to explain things, and sometimes yo…

I'm doing something similar. What degree program were you accepted into (MS, PhD) and what field?

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#8

Post by ktamura »

I'm still amused/saddened by how little theoretical work you need to do at Stanford to get a statistics BS (they call it Mathematical & Computational Science). I get it: you don't need a rigorous foundation of math to be useful as a workaday "data scientist". That said, university is probably the last time you get to indulge/immerse yourself in deep, rigorous, mathematical thinking. Not requiring students to take theoretical courses is such a pity.

In hindsight, I am glad that I studied math at Stanford (also I ended up doing something completely different: marketing). It pushed me to think deeply and patiently about a problem at length and taught me how to mix intuition with analytic rigor.

I believe it was Paul Graham who said that math was one of the better subjects to pursue in school because it's one of the most difficult. I kind of agree with pg on this one: I was nowhere near the top of my math classes, but whenever I took theoretical CS or stats classes, I found them shockingly easy and did well with much less effort.

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#9

Post by ktamura »

I'm still amused/saddened by how little theoretical work you need to do at Stanford to get a statistics (they call it Mathematical & Computational Science). I get it: you don't need a rigorous foundation of math to be useful as a workaday "data scientist". That said, university is probably the _last_ time you get to indulge/immerse yourself in deep, rigorous, mathematical thinking. Not requiring students to take theoretical courses is such a pity.

In hindsight, I am glad that I studied math at Stanford (also I ended up doing something completely different: marketing). It pushed me to think deeply and patiently about a problem at length and taught me how to mix intuition with analytic rigor.

I believe it was Paul Graham who said that math was one of the better subjects to pursue in school because it's one of the most difficult. I kind of agree with pg on this one: I was nowhere near the top of my math classes, but whenever I took theoretical CS or stats classes, I found them shockingly easier.

Re: Stanford Degrees in Statistics

#10

Post by wyldfire »

tbatchelli wrote: post #2

This is very helpful to me, and I bet to many that want to get into Data Science the right way. A big "thank you" to whoever put this together. What are we looking here for someone that wants to learn all this while keeping a full-time job? 3 years?

> whoever put this together

I posted it but the heavy lifting was all /u/aormiston on /r/pystats:

> I just finished scraping all the required and optional readings (textbooks mainly) from nearly every Stanford undergraduate and graduate level stats course. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d_MNmIGY7yzrpnStnZqz... I only did the suggested courses for the Data Science track in the MS Stats program. Feel free to do the others and leave links in the comments if you like. This isn't exhaustive (some courses were harder to find than others), so this'll likely be a living document. Feel free to send me anything I've missed or better texts for any subject that I should add to the document. Also, for free technical textbooks, I've found freecomputerbooks.com to be very helpful (despite the fact that it sounds like clickbait). I'd recommend you check that out before shelling out for any of the textbooks listed.

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