Better undergrad minor for a prospective Biostat student?

juillet
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:06:19 +0000

I don’t think it matters either, but you should certainly take coursework in both. I would give a slight edge to CS in this case. I’m contemplating changing careers to biostatistics (I’m in public health now, but more the social science side) and so I’ve perused the job ads recently. Very few of them ask for people with biological knowledge, but ALL of them want people who can program (especially with SQL) and work with statistical software (most often SAS and R). While you can learn stats software without knowing how to program, it’s easiest if you do since their languages are programming languages and writing new codes and macros is possible with some CS knowledge.

It also depends on what kind of biostatistician you want to be. If you want to work more with database/data management, perhaps data mining, and want to leave the door open to potentially work in other areas of statistics like operations research or business/tech, then do the computer science minor. If you know for certain that biostatistics is where it’s at for you, and you want to work in an academic medical center or hospital on cutting-edge, highly technical biomedical research - the biology minor might suit you (although even those researchers are looking for people who can manage their data. They know the biology; they have PhDs in it. But they don’t know jack about programming). If your interest in epidemiology is strong, and you think there’s significant potential for you to go into that, then biology would also probably be better than CS in that case.

You obviously need calc 1-3 but also stats & prob, and courses in differential equations (ODE at least but also maybe PDE) will also help. Also mathematical modeling and potentially real analysis would be good electives. On the CS side, learning at least one programming language, especially SQL, is a good idea - all of the biostat job listings I’ve seen lately ask for some experience with SQL. If you can work with a professor and learn a stats package (SAS and R would be best - R is free, so you can buy a book and practice on your own) that would be ideal. And on the bio side…if you’re not going to minor, I think the intro biology sequence and then maybe one or two other electives (like micro) would be a good idea.