Math BS/Bio minor OR Bio BS/Math minor --> MS Bioinformatics or Biostats?

College Majors Science Majors
1

<p>Ok so is it better for me to major in math and minor in bio or major in bio and minor in math? I'm trying to go to grad school for either bioinformatics or biostatistics. I'm not sure which one to do because I'm not sure which one has better job prospects.</p>

<p>Edit: </p>

<p>If I went with math major/bio minor, I wouldn't be able to fit physics and Orgo II and I would only take 2 upper level bios.</p>

<p>If I went with bio major/math minor, I would be able to take a full year of physics and Orgo II. I would also end up taking 2 semesters of computer science, 3 upper level bio classes, a seminar in bio, and a capstone project in bio. The math classes which would make up my minor would be linear algebra, calc I-III, and 2 semesters of Probability and Statistics.</p>

<p>So the extra classes I would be taking as a math major as opposed to if I just got the minor would be a proofs course, algebraic structures , intro to analysis, a seminar in math, a capstone project in math, and ordinary differential equations (my elective).</p>

2

<p>It seriously depends on what your school offers. At first, I would have advised you to do to the math major/bio minor as it’s more about knowing what biology is and being a beast in math rather than being a beast for bio with limited math skills.
However, you did point out that you would have a much broader knowledge with the bio major/math minor including chemistry, physic and cs.
To do biostatistics, proba/stats is apparently enough as prerequisite so you should be all set in both cases. I am less aware about bioinformatics but I would believe that having more classes in CS would help.
You may want to take differential equations as well if you go for the bio major/math minor but overall you will be more versatile with math minor/bio major and I think it will be better when you apply for grad school.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

3

<p>As someone considered a biostatistician, I haven’t taken a bio class since the one required course in cegep (second year, would be freshmen university elsewhere in North America). I would suggest math major with bio minor. The bio part of biostats and bioinfo isn’t all that important, what’s useful is knowing the mathematics, statistics and computer science part, and how to apply it in the biological problems (anything from genomics to wildlife management and environmental impact of climate issues). I don’t know any biostatistician who cares about or remembers organic chemistry (unless they model protein folding, but that’s just one particular application, and you learn what you need as you get involved in research) or physics (last “physics” I saw was through differential equations).</p>

<p>Really, the more advanced math courses (and computer science to a lesser extent) are more important, particularly applied math and probability and statistics courses. You need your real analysis and abstract and linear algebra proof based-courses to be able to tackle the proof-based advanced statistics course and the theoretical computer science stuff. In particular, the strong theoretical background is what allows to develop intuition about statistics and how to see it as a unified set of tools rather than a bunch of separate “recipes”.</p>

<p>One issue with only taking basic statistics/math courses, or just a statistics sequence through a minor, is that those often end up being recipe courses. It’s hard to really give a good overview of both the mathematical and the applied side together. Applied courses read like cookbooks, and the theoretical courses often end up being completely detached from applications. With a math major, you take enough courses together that it really starts to make sense after a while, especially when you take a wide variety of courses, you start seeing the connection between them. </p>

<p>With biology, many students have a tendency to see it as something with a lot of memorization. It’s partly true but it’s not the best way to go at it. In particular, it’s not a good approach to really make use of a math minor. One reason why organic chemistry is seen as a “killer” is because many students try to memorize all the different compounds rather than understand how different atoms link together. It’s this lack of sense of abstraction that makes things difficult, because there’s no way to absorb all the different pieces if you don’t want to look into the principles behind them.</p>

<p>It’s the same with computer science. I took a minor in CS back before the dot-com bubble, CS was the fastest growing department and a lot of students where there just because “that’s where the jobs are”. After your basic introduction to programming, you had a number of courses on algorithms. Students would have a hard time adapting from one programming language to the next, and would struggle with open book exams on algorithms. Why? Because their approach was to see each problem and algorithm as something separate, to memorize. I found assignments long and annoying, I barely did half of them in my first algorithms class. Yet I had no problem acing the exams without opening my notes or the book, when the class average was somewhere in the low to mid fifties (percent). Why? Because I understood the principles rather then memorized lines of pseudocodes.</p>

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<p>What use is algebraic structures, intro to analysis, math seminar, math capstone project, and ordinary differential equations going to be in bioinformatics/biostats? </p>

<p>I mean I know ordinary diff. eqns is an important class, but if I major in bio and minor in math, it’s just one class I’m going to have to go without. I don’t understand how those other proof heavy classes actually relate to bioinformatics/biostatistics.</p>

<p>If I majored in bio and minored in math supplemented with a few CS courses, wouldn’t I be more prepared for a field in biostatistics/bioinformatics as opposed to a math major/bio minor with almost no experience with the field of bio itself or computer science.</p>

<p>I want to keep my options open and the bio major/math minor allows me to complete my premed requirements.</p>

<p>I really just don’t know. I know I want to get into bioinformatics/biostatistics, but I want to keep my options open. I’m not a good med school applicant, so my plan was to do something after college that I enjoy, pay off some loans, then consider med school in my late 20s.</p>

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<p>Let me put it this way: it’s much easier to train a mathematician to do biology than to train a biologist to do mathematics. And that’s not just my personal opinion. I work with medical doctors and other biostatisticians and they all say the same thing.</p>

<p>Course-wise:
Intro to analysis is proof-based calculus, and probability is really a subfield of “measure theory”, which is usually part of a 3rd or 4th course in Analysis. You may not deal with measure theory as a biostatistician, but those epsilon-delta proofs do show up in some very fundamental results, like the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem (aka the fundamental theorem of statistics; unless you’re from France, then the FDS is the Borel-Cantelli lemma), both are about limits/convergence of sums of random variables, and convergence and limits are much better understood with analysis than with a “computation” based calculus (which has its own value).</p>

<p>Algebraic structures: if you take a graduate course on experimental design, you’ll see those pop out again. </p>

<p>Differential Equations: those are quite fundamental, in fact so much that they’re a required course for pretty much all engineering and physics program as well. Not as much in biology but modern biology is full of them, and if you do environmental statistics of any sort you’ll run into them. I took 3 full semesters of courses with Differential Equations in their name (Ordinary, Partial and Numerical) and I barely scracthed the surface of the subject.</p>

<p>A seminar to me isn’t a required course (well not where I’ve been, though there are such required courses in universities), but it’s something you want to attend to see the recent development in the field, applications, get a glimpse of the variety of research subfields there are. If you want to go to grad school, it’s good to attend seminars aimed at undergraduates. Capstone project I have never heard of.</p>

<p>In terms of computer science, most math major programs now require or at least encourage students to take a course or two. I recommend at least two (one basic programming, analysis of algorithms). Basic programming is good for any science or engineering major, and the second course really helps see what programming is for beyond whatever language (is it still JAVA?) they taught you in the first one.</p>

<p>Finally, premed is way overrated. You don’t want to become a doctor. Trust me. Both my parents are doctors, and that’s why I never wanted to be one (they never pushed their children to become doctors either, they supported whatever choice we made). Working in hospitals is no fun, dealing with sick and dying people takes dedication, genuine caring, empathy and a desire to help that most people don’t have. The hours are not good and the stakes are incredibly high. The vast majority of premeds have no clue about that, and think of the prestige and salary of the field. And they also are terrible students from an instructor’s point of view (really, ask your profs and TAs what they think of premeds). They don’t want to learn, they want an A so they can “get to med school”, and they have exactly the wrong personality and attitude they need to be half-decent doctors. And they’re often nastily competitive (i.e., not friendly about anything that involves grades). Math students, on the other hand, while some may be quite quirky, are usually a friendly, collaborative bunch (once you get pass the shyness).</p>

<p>However it’s up to you. If you’re not fond of math, you may not want to do the math-major and go for the bio major. It may be a better fit for your interests and that’s fine. However, you’ll be a much more common type of bird, and to really stand out you’ll have to not only work hard, but really have a passion and dedication to your studies that well beyond your standard “top student”. You want to talk to your profs about research, get involved, and not just for “brownie points”.</p>

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<p>You bring up some very interesting points. I am more interested in mathematics than I am with biology. And the reason I mentioned pre med is because of the job security. I’m just afraid of what the future holds and I feel like a lot of pre meds choose to go to med school because of the strong job security.</p>

<p>As I said before I’m trying to pay off my loans and I’m not that good of a pre med student. I just want to leave the pre med option open, but something tells me it’s better to major in something I like such as math.</p>

<p>Small question: Is orgo II and physics I and II really unnecessary for what I want to do? If I major in Math, I’m going to have to sacrifice these classes. and is it worth taking 2 more upper level bios?</p>

<p>What are some good careers I can look into outside of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics if I decide to go with the Applied Math major with a stats concentration? I know I will have atleast 2 CS courses under my belt as well as 1 or 2 upper level Bios, 2 semesters of gen chem, 1 semester of orgo, and an Economics minor. </p>

<p>Should I talk to my advisor and ask to see if she could help me out with some internship opportunities?</p>

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<p>Most definitely talk to an advisor. A biostatistician or bioinformatician has many opportunities, essentially doing statistics or programming in various places from industry (Google, pharmaceutical companies, banks, etc) to government to academia. Job security is another issue, but at least, as these days job security is rare, the demand is high enough that statisticians don’t stay unemployed for long. In fact, due to demand in statistics, places like banks will even hire pure math PhDs to do statistics, because, well, good PhDs in statistics quickly find jobs, while Lie Algebra PhDs are a dime a dozen…</p>

<p>If you’re not meant to be a doctor, applied math/stats will almost guarantee some relatively secure employment and constant job opportunities. We live in a data rich world, there is so much that those who have data don’t know what to do with it (data mining is pretty darn big these days, and that’s a subfield that’s between statistics and computer science). I have friends and acquaintances in statistics (and computer science) at Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other tech companies, in hospitals, working for consulting companies, in banks, government… you name it. They had no problem finding jobs. Those with PhDs in pure math… well, they had a tougher time finding something, took a postdoc or two (what’s the average in biology?). And many of those who did ended up doing statistics… And I don’t even count the number of master’s and PhDs in pure (and even applied) math who’ve switched to statistics before the end of grad school. You don’t see it going the other way around.</p>

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<p>^^ I disagree. Originally I was also going to major in Math.</p>

<p>But then I kept having people ask me the same question over and over again. “What are you going to do with a math degree?” </p>

<p>You can’t do a whole lot with a math degree. If you decide to go into an engineering program, you will have to take approximately 30-60 credits of engineering classes to even be considered for a masters.</p>

<p>Same goes for computer science. Math is like the “jack of all trades, master of none”. You are better off majoring in Biology and minoring in mathematics so you get the fundamental math classes and don’t have to take the extra proofs classes that will be useless later on in your career.</p>

<p>A major in Bio/minor in Math will better prepare you for a BIOinformatics or BIOstatistics program as well as a BIOmedical engineering. Physics and Organic Chemistry are fundamental sciences that any student trying to pursue a STEM field should have basic knowledge of. You are severely putting yourself back by not taking these courses.</p>

<p>This is how I see it. You can major in Bio and minor in Math, have a lot of knowledge/opportunities for research in Biology and at the same time have USEFUL quantitative skills coming from the math minor. The few math classes you take will make your useless Biology major into a useful major.</p>

<p>If you major in math and minor in bio, you will severely lack the knowledge if you are only going to end up taking a few upper level Biology courses. You will lack knowledge of research, thus crippling your chances of being a good candidate for a MS Biostats/Bioinformatics program.</p>

<p>You will also lack the knowledge of Physics and Organic chemistry, two fundamentals of any physical science. The classes you have to take on top of the classes you mentioned for the minor aren’t worth taking because they are heavy on proofs and will be of no use to you in any future jobs/careers (except that ODE class). </p>

<p>Even if you decided to pair your math major with Econ, what are you going to do with that? You can’t go into banking, it’s virtually impossible to get a job for wall street right out of college with a math degree. They want someone who knows the business world and a business or econ major does a pretty good job of that. Sure, you would know complex math, but most math in the business world is basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.</p>

<p>I say don’t go for the applied math major. Ask yourself what you can do with the major by yourself. You can’t really do anything with a Bio major or a Math major by themselves, but a Bio major plus a Math minor unlocks a plethora of options in the science field and healthcare.</p>

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<p>Bump need more insight from others</p>

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<p>Jack-of-all-trades, master of none??? Applied math and stats don’t count to you? Because they certainly do in programs like biostatistics in bioinformatics.</p>

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<p>That’s where you couldn’t be more wrong. I work in an institution with biostats program, which is shared between epidemiology department in the medical school and the math-stats department in the science faculty. The biology department is not involved. My alma mater of McGill university has an epi and biostat department, and the biostat people are most involved again with the math and stat department, not the biology people. Biology majors are a dime a dozen. Graduate schools with bioinfo and biostats program look for candidates with a strong mathematical background, not so much a major in biology. I’m a biostatistician, I’ve never taken organic chemistry, ever.</p>

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<p>If you’re worried about satisfying premed requirements, could you take the courses you need over the summer or something?</p>

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<p>For any type of research you won’t need anything past 2 semesters of stats. You need to have a fundamental basis for lab work and research. Physics and organic chemistry are fundamentals.</p>

<p>Even if he went bio major/math minor the OP could still go into anything a math major can go into.</p>

<p>What if you decide you don’t want to do Biostats or bioinformatics? What are you going to do with your math degree, write proofs? All the important math classes can be fulfilled by a minor and the minor goes a long way when paired up with a science. You cut out all the bs proofs courses that aren’t important for anything but pure math research.</p>

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<p>csh123: you seem to think a math degree is all about turning coffee into theorems. That’s a really simplistic view that is not representative of even the pure math programs there are out there (though yes, some pure math students end up having no clue about the world outside of math, those are usually the kind who go on to do PhDs in pure math).</p>

<p>Biostatisticians don’t do the labs, they help plan the experiment and analyze the data. Same with bioinfo people. They don’t handle microarrays, they develop models, software and procedures to make sense of the data (often of the large p, small n kind, many parameters but few experimental units, something not covered in undergraduate statistics, or even most graduate statistics courses unless specialized in that particular area).</p>

<p>With a math or CS major that included a wide variety of applied courses, you can do any job that requires either data analysis or programming. </p>

<p>You want another example: the epidemiology department at my current place of employment created a graduate course specifically to train students with a skill that no job candidate seems to have: analysis of large databases (i.e. massive data sets linked through different registries and what not). It’s not quite a statistics nor a computer science course, it’s somewhere in between, and the examples come from the medical field, but there’s no real medicine or biology involved. It’s really about handling and managing massive databases. No statistics course covers that, because the theoretical ones work with the data in an abstract sense, and the applied ones involve example data sets that fit in a single Excel spreadsheet (and no matter how many rows and columns there are, that’s a “small” dataset in terms of dimensions). No computer science course covers that either, because the courses relating to databases are about creating the software structures and objects, connecting them together, and getting values in and out of them. They are not about analyzing their content in a meaningful way (because that would be statistics). </p>

<p>The matter of fact is that, statistics is at the core of science, and computer science is necessary to do any modern statistical analysis. You can’t do scientific research without doing data analysis at some point. In biology and medical courses, they “blackbox” the mathematical part of data analysis, they just concentrate on the conclusions based on the outputted numbers. But researchers come up with experiments and problems whose features do not correspond to your basic statistics course assumptions. If they know what they’re doing, they’ll get a statistician involved before implementing their experiment or study. If not, they’ll come crying to a statistical consultant after their paper was rejected. Or they’ll see their research invalidated by other scientists in follow-up studies.</p>

<p>One of my colleagues works with volcano data. She doesn’t have any background in geology or vulcanology. She’s done pure math as an undergrad and statistics in her graduate studies. What’s the issue with the volcano data: it’s seismic information, measured continually, you don’t get to “save” all the data. You want to know when the next eruption is coming based on the recent and historical information, so as to make a timely alert that’s not a false alarm. The volcano guys can explain everything about the processes that go on that create eruptions and earthquakes, and measuring the various volcanic activity indicators is not a problem. The issue is making sense of the measures with the clock-ticking. That part is all mathematics and statistics and computer science, you want efficient algorithms and programs that don’t need many computations, because if it takes an hour to crunch the numbers and spit out an alert, it will be too late already. They don’t need another vulcanologist to solve that problem, they need statisticians and mathematicians and computer science people. </p>

<p>One of my statistics profs at McGill was one of the big names in neuro-imaging, particularly the analysis of fMRI data. No background in biology or medicine, and getting the fMRI data was a “solved” problem (thanks to physicists and computer scientists working with doctors and biologists). What to do with it was another matter. Massive data sets (we’re talking about 3D maps of the temperature in the brain, over time), highly correlated in space and time, with few subjects. Even getting an “average brain” is difficult, because it’s a complex structure and nobody has exactly the same shape/size of the brain. Working on that involved advanced mathematics and collaboration with neurobiologists, computer scientists, mathematicians (said prof was a friend and former classmate of a fields medalist, it really helped with solving some geometry related problems), probabilists and statisticians. The applications of analyzing data from smooth random fields (the mathematical objects necessary to make sense of fMRI) include climate and astrophysics data, just to give a couple of examples (not to mention all those other fMRI datasets one can get, not necessarily the brain).</p>

<p>So let me put it another way: how many years of posdoc does your average PhD in biology ends up doing before getting a “real job”? How many years of postdoc do PhDs in statistics do before getting a real job? I don’t have the numbers at hand, but I know postdocs have been the norm in biology for quite some time. In statistics, they’re still optional.</p>