How useful would a minor in one of the sciences be?

[L_Hopital]

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I couldn’t disagree more. Statistical training lets you dissect all sorts of bogus analyses in the media. Once you know how to program, you can write code for tasks you might have otherwise solved “manually” (with much more effort) or bypassed completely. It also gives you access to a much greater variety of tools and computer programs, and a whole new appreciation of technological advances. English and music studies certainly refine your appreciation of cultural history and accomplishments, but they don’t give you much tools relevant to the practicalities of life.

I agree 100%. </p>

<p>In fact,</p>

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For practicality in life, bio is up there with english, music, and a few other things. Computer science, statistics, and physics are not.

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<p>I’d probably say it’s down there with English and Music.</p>

<p>How exactly is playing a music ‘practical’? Do the words ‘starving artists’ mean anything? </p>

<p>I think programming is always a good skill. You’ll notice that sometimes, it’s not about being the best coder, or even one of the best. You have millions of lines of code, it’s not a matter of having the best guy, but rather, having a bunch of good guys to digest the code. It doesn’t matter if you are the best, since that doesn’t mean that you’ll be to do all the work by yourself. Not to mention that you can’t really expect the coder to all your job for you. I mean, I’m sure I can hire a lit. major to read things for me. Does that mean I should just be illiterate since I have someone who has (more than likely) mastered the art of reading? Of course not. Likewise, knowing how to code will come in handy, despite you not being the best coder. </p>

<p>I honestly can’t think of many things you can do with a bio major that you can’t do with e.g. physics or Chemistry aside from maybe a bio lab, but physics have physics lab and likewise for Chemistry. In fact, I think Bio always get pegged as being a ‘soft’ science in comparison to the ‘hard’ science being Physics and Chemistry because of the lack of math. </p>

<p>Then again, I don’t see how a minor in any of them would really benefit as far as practical. I agree with Barium that something like Statistics would be more practical, since it’s practically used everywhere. Familiarity with software like R, MATLAB or things of the sort also help.</p>