How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math Major

Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by huac on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @12:20AM (#9529590)

Perhaps PhD math programs don't hold your hand through teaching data science, but it isn't a horrible way of preparing you for a (first) job in data. Color me impressed when a history major picks up data science!

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by Gmo on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @03:45AM (#9530093)

Yeah, I confess I only read the title, but I don't understand the "despite".

I mean, surely, you need a good background in mathematics to model and extract meaningful information from the data, so I don't see how it is crazy to do that with a PhD in mathematics ...

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by mauricemir on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @06:07AM (#9530585)

I think his point was that pure math can be very devolved from real world as I found when i tried to go from a Engineering to a HNC in Maths Stats and Computing.

Back then it was virtulay all Pure maths with the computing side being shall we say Antique - most of my course mates where working at Tier 1 RnD workng at the bleeding edge, my employer hired the first non academic knowledge engineer in the UK

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by cpfohl on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @07:45AM (#9530966)

That was my reaction too. I'm a computer science graduate who's constantly wishing he'd taken more mathematics courses so I could read and implement more ML algorithms...

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by learnstats2 on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @04:17AM (#9530195)

I'm a math major and most of the expert data scientists I would recommend are social science graduates.

They have a lot more experience with real-world data and a lot more knowledge about what statistical techniques and assumptions correctly apply in real situations - quantitatively and qualitatively. You simply don't get this knowledge and experience from a maths-led statistics course.

I would be happy to recommend you a history major.

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by relet on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @03:42AM (#9530084)

Yup, I was thinking that should read "...because I am a Math Major". Sounds like a natural choice to me.

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by dagw on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @05:44AM (#9530508)

As a math major working with data analysis and data science, I've come to the opinion that domain knowledge of the area you are analyzing as far far more important than being good at math. If I was hiring for a data science position in for example analyzing marketing data I'd definitely hire someone with a background in marketing over someone with a background in math all else being equal.

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by wodenokoto on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @05:36AM (#9530468)

The highest GPA at my data science master course (Well, NLP and machine learning) was a history undergrad.

One of the best in my class was a philosophy major.

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Re:How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math ... by sten on Tuesday May 12, 2015 @05:48AM (#9530528)

I went from sociology major to developer mostly on moocs. Minored math though.

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