I’m looking to major in math and most of the schools I’ve applied to offer majors in both Pure Mathematical Sciences and Applied Mathematics. I’m looking to go into statistics, so either way I’d go for a concentration in statistics and minor in computer science, and probably end up go for my MS in statistics eventually. Which is better for a future in statistics, a pure math major or applied math major? What are the main differences? Thanks.
I believe applied math sometimes is under engineering school while math is often in school of arts and science? Don’t know if that matters in anyway.
Following. Also want to know how to find which schools are good in math related majors.
I would lean towards pure math, but it doesn’t matter too much, it depends on what you find most interesting. Often the most closely associated courses are in areas like optimization which would tend to come under pure math.
Making a sweeping generalization, at the very top levels, pure math can be more competitive (due to a bigger achievement gap between average and truly exceptional students: you can either solve the hardest problem sets relatively quickly or you can’t do them at all), and may sometimes attract less funding for PhD places etc. (engineering and physics get more money since they need labs etc). I certainly found that more of the good but not outstanding students gravitated towards applied math, whereas more of the truly gifted students ended up in pure math.
It’s not surprising that it’s a pure math problem in Good Will Hunting rather than applied math:
http://math.unideb.hu/media/horvath-gabor/publications/gwh2.pdf
You might want to look for a school that offers majors or concentrations in Data Science…which combines math, CS, and statistics together. That kind of sounds like the direction you’re heading.
Have you looked at actuarial science?
Doesn’t really matter for your two options.
It doesn’t really matter. Both are more than adequate preparation for a master’s in statistics and future work in statistics. The differences are really going to be based on the curriculum at the individual school: at Columbia, for example, the difference between pure math and applied math was simply that applied math majors actually had more requirements - their math electives were restricted to the more applied courses in math, engineering, operations research, and finance. Pure math majors had a variety of classes they could take to satisfy their requirements, and a pure math major could actually put together her own version of an applied math major if she wanted to.
I do think some of the applied classes may teach you more skills that employers are looking for their majors to have - maybe R, maybe SQL, maybe Python - but you could probably still take the ones you want as a pure math major.
So look at the required curriculum in the handbook/catalog at each school, if you are super curious about this.
If you want to go into Statistics why don’t you just major in Statistics with a minor in CS? Pure math is in many respects a long ways away from statistics.
my schools don’t offer a major in statistics, only math majors with concentrations in statistics.
Math with Stat concentration should get you there.
Either path is good.
Regardless which path you take, there HAS to be two courses taken in your junior/senior year to prepare you for graduate Statistics:
Mathematical Probability
Mathematical Statistics