Come and have fun with local useRs at SatRday LA on April 6, 2019. This is the first SatRday in LA, and the second in the states. If you have not heard of SatRday, it is a one-day affordable, inclusive, non-profit R conference organized by local R users.
What is DataFest? # DataFest is a team competition, where a team of up to 5 undergraduate students has less than 48 hours to provide the best insight gleaned from a large, complex data set — and communicate that insight to an audience of their peers and the DataFest judges. DataFest 2015 will be April 24th through the 26th, beginning at 6pm on Friday the 24th.
(This is my third post on statistics graduate school. You can read the first, on coursework, the difference between a Masters and a PhD, and proving your worth here, and the second, on advancing to candidacy, writing the dissertation, and having fun in grad school, here.)
(Note: This is my second installment on grad school, you can read the first part on coursework, the difference between a Master’s and a Ph.D., and proving your worth, here.)
Advancement to candidacy # After finishing coursework, the next step in our PhD program is to “advance to candidacy.” This is the formal process of proposing your dissertation research. Our department has a diverse set of research interests, both theoretical and applied, so dissertations can take a variety of forms. This is yet another difference between Master’s and PhD projects– typically, Master’s projects are more directed by faculty members and PhD projects are chosen primarily by the students themselves. Either way, the process begins with a conversation between the student and his/her advisor.
As a PhD graduate student in statistics here at UCLA, I’d like to talk a bit about our graduate program to give you an idea of what to expect if you’re interested in UCLA or statistics graduate school in general. First, it’s important to note that UCLA does not have a specific “data science” degree program at this point; the department offers a PhD and a Master’s degree, both simply labeled “statistics.” Some statistics departments have made the decision to change their name to “data science,” but that is often just a marketing decision. The UCLA department is pretty forward-thinking and has a focus on computation, so it’s fairly “data science”-y without having that exact name.
Below is the first of several exciting data science developments for the younger generation, happening right here in Los Angeles. This project is unique because it engages undergraduates in real data analysis, something that happens quite rarely in a classroom. If projects like this catch on as a new trend, we’re going to have some real competition for our jobs in a few years!
Many of us here in the DataScience.LA Team were also involved in organizing the useR! 2014 conference, the annual get-together of the wonderful R community, which brought over 700 R users and developers from all over the world to Los Angeles this past July.
