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Yes. Do be a scientist. Don't be an academic. Dropping out of academia was amongst the more difficult decisions I've made. Also amongst the best. There are hu

Yes. Do be a scientist. Don't be an academic. Dropping out of academia was amongst the more difficult decisions I've made. Also amongst the best. There are huge opportunities for scientists today. I'm a physicist. I've worked in computer-assisted surgery, medical physics, image processing, computer vision, genomics, computational physics and a few other things besides. It has paid well and let me do all kinds of interesting research that I would never have been able to touch as an academic. Things to do as a student: study modern statistics hard. Being a card-carrying Bayesian is like the secret handshake to an unlimited world of really cool stuff these days. There's a childhood friend of mine who's (finally) finishing his PhD in psychology, and when we reconnected a few years ago we were amazed that we could meaningfully talk to each other about our work because we both spoke the same statistical language. It really is a universal grammar, and anyone in any field who speaks it fluently has a world of opportunity waiting for them, from finance to fisheries.

Xcelerate 12y ago
> study modern statistics hard This is something I've been thinking about doing. My work is in computational materials science, and I often feel there is a complete lack of statistical rigor in analyzing the results. (Peter Gill joked at a conference that the only difference between applied mathematicians and quantum chemists is that the mathematicians calculate the error once they get their answers). I know basic statistics: distributions, standard error, correlations, etc. But I don't know anything about the terms Bayesian or Frequentist. In your opinion, what would studying these topics provide for me?
noobermin 12y ago
I'm curious, how far into your academic career were you when you dropped out? Post-doc? Grad student?
wavegeek 12y ago
> study modern statistics hard Would you recommend some texts that cover this? A friend suggested: * Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial by Devinderjit Sivia, John Skilling * Bayesian Data Analysis, by Andrew Gelman, John B. Carlin, Hal S. Stern * Introduction to Statistical Inference by Jack C. Kiefer, Gary Lorden Currently I am working my way through this. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher M. Bishop These books are expensive and very time-consuming so it is important to pick the right ones.

Xcelerate 12y ago

> study modern statistics hard This is something I've been thinking about doing. My work is in computational materials science, and I often feel there is a complete lack of statistical rigor in analyzing the results. (Peter Gill joked at a conference that the only difference between applied mathematicians and quantum chemists is that the mathematicians calculate the error once they get their answers). I know basic statistics: distributions, standard error, correlations, etc. But I don't know anything about the terms Bayesian or Frequentist. In your opinion, what would studying these topics provide for me?

noobermin 12y ago

I'm curious, how far into your academic career were you when you dropped out? Post-doc? Grad student?

wavegeek 12y ago

> study modern statistics hard Would you recommend some texts that cover this? A friend suggested: * Data Analysis: A Bayesian Tutorial by Devinderjit Sivia, John Skilling * Bayesian Data Analysis, by Andrew Gelman, John B. Carlin, Hal S. Stern * Introduction to Statistical Inference by Jack C. Kiefer, Gary Lorden Currently I am working my way through this. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher M. Bishop These books are expensive and very time-consuming so it is important to pick the right ones.