Critique my Coursework (Statistics Related)

Blobof
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:36:02 +0000

OK, let me chime in some more. I missed the categorical/glm bit, different places have slightly different names and approaches to courses. Advanced calculus is not a bad course to take, but in a way it’s not that useful either, as it will mostly help consolidate multivariate calculus notions. Depending on the school, it might be “equivalent” to analysis but really, to me calculus and analysis are different sides of the same topic. Calculus is the more applied, mechanical type, where the “final result” matters, while analysis is all about proofs and abstract constructs. They both have their uses depending on the situation. Those who only do calculus and never see the abstract side and have a harder time understanding proofs and extensions to the theory, while those who only bother with analysis might not be able to actually integrate their way out of a paper bag (though they’ll prove a solution exist), or, as I’ve seen in statistics, come up with methods that have no value in real life problems.

I was myself a math major back in the day, so I had more core math courses first and fewer statistics and probability courses (over the last two 2 years, 5 courses total). I do see the usefulness of starting with a solid mathematical basis which is why I find it weird to put basic courses like Analysis and ODEs later.