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January 2009 Archives

January 6, 2009

GRE scores by discipline

The folks over at econphd.net compiled average applicant GRE scores (from 2002 data) for 28 fields of PhD study.

I've sorted them below by rank of mean overall score:

gre_scores_snap.png

If the overall GRE score is a measure of the "quality" of the students in a field, then the bolded ranks in the last column indicate fields with above-average quality applicants.

January 7, 2009

Why use R?

There's a good article in the New York Times on why statisticians (and lots of other folks) are increasingly using the R software package for their data analysis, prototyping, and algorithm development needs:

“The great beauty of R is that you can modify it to do all sorts of things,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And you have a lot of prepackaged stuff that’s already available, so you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

January 8, 2009

Virginia provides best-value colleges

In these tough economic times, it is gratifying to know that the state of Virginia fairs quite well at providing universities and colleges that give you the best education for your dollar values.

In the latest list of 100 "Best Value" Colleges for 2009 by The Princeton Review, the state of Virginia has seven colleges and universities that provide the best education value in the nation. In fact, the University of Virginia is the number one best value for a public university.

The Virginia colleges and universities making the list:

  • College of William and Mary
  • George Mason University
  • James Madison University
  • University of Mary Washington
  • University of Richmond
  • University of Virginia
  • Virginia Tech

January 13, 2009

Looking for a new career? Crunch the data...

A survey of 200 different jobs according to the criteria of stress, work environment, physical demands, income, and outlook results in a rather interesting ranking.

The top five jobs are:

  1. Mathematician
  2. Actuary
  3. Statistician
  4. Biologist
  5. Software Engineer

Note that the top three jobs directly use statistics and data analysis! Interesting to know, especially in a down economy.

And for symmetry, the bottom five jobs are:

  1. Lumberjack
  2. Dairy Farmer
  3. Taxi Driver
  4. Seaman
  5. Emergency Medical Technician

Who:


Kendall Giles

View Kendall Giles's profile on LinkedIn

Kendall Giles's Facebook profile

Status:


Assistant Professor
Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research
College of Humanities and Sciences
Virginia Commonwealth University

Associate Staff Scientist
Human Language Technology Center for Excellence (HLTCOE)
Johns Hopkins University

Contact Information


Email:


Office:
Mail:


first two letters of first name + last name + @vcu.edu
Oliver 2061
PO Box 843083
1001 West Main Street
Richmond, VA 23284

About January 2009

This page contains all entries posted to Digging Deep in January 2009. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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