Hi! May I ask if anyone know any Statistics Phd program that also offers fundamental math/statistics courses? I had my undergraduate and graduate programs in a non-math major. I wish to advance my education in a statistics career.
What are you looking for in terms of a “statistics PhD”? Lots of social science PhDs include a substantial amount of applied statistics, analyzing large data sets, and don’t require any math background. S has learned R but hasn’t done anything beyond Calc BC in high school and a quant methods course in college, and spends a lot of time using statistical methods for data analysis (in public policy research). Likewise my spouse had no math after high school but did statistical analysis work in linguistics in a PhD and postdoc. That’s mainly descriptive using established techniques.
Although I don’t have direct experience, it seems the next step up is economics, where most (but not all) money and prestige nowadays is for mathematical analysis (teasing out cause and effect relationships in datasets, including experimental work) and you need a fairly strong math background alongside economics to get one of those slots.
The third option of a theoretical PhD in probability and statistics (my PhD is in this area) is completely different and requires a very strong math background. It typically won’t involve applied analysis at all, it’s about figuring out new techniques, for example in linear programming, queuing networks etc from first principles.
If the long term objective is to work in industry, for example as a data scientist at a tech company, there’s certainly no need to take the third track. The first or second is fine. And in academia, even social science quant methods professors usually don’t have a math background at undergrad.
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Agreeing with @Twoin18: what is your actual goal? A PhD is a research degree- there are a lot of careers in stats that do not need (or, frankly, benefit from) a PhD
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I’ll echo what other posters have said. What are you trying to do with a PhD? What career path are you on or trying to pursue? You seem to already have a Master’s degree. What field is it in?
@Twoin18 @1NJParent @collegemom3717 Hey, my dear friends! Thank you so much for reviewing my questions! I didn’t expect anyone would reply me, so I didn’t check my post in time. Now you all commented on this post, I really appreciate it!!
I had a bachelor of product design and I’m pursing a Master of design research degree in US. I will graduate this December. I plan to become a User/Design Researcher in the next 5 years, and make a career path to become a college professor in design academics. However, I found this job is in high demand like a STEM major. So I thought whether I should pursue a STEM major in phD that not only advances my original discipline in design research, but also broadens my career choices, and even makes it an advantage to become a college professor earlier. So I ended up with a statistic phD. And I probably need to relearn the math. So I tried to ask if anyone knows about a statistics phD degree that offers fundamental trainings.
Thank you for reviewing all my words. Your time is precious. Please feel free to come to me if you have any questions about high level education in product design or design research.
