Does Statistics Phd program must need Master and Bachelor degree in Math-related majors?

Twoin18
Tue, 17 May 2022 03:05:39 +0000

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.