If you're looking at quant jobs with focus on data, I think you can forget about PDEs as I doubt you'll need any.

QuoteOriginally posted by: jawabeannever. they're not even stupid. stupid's too much of a honor for machines.I highly recommend to read Stanislaw Lem novel "Mask". It is a brilliant modelling of "to be" situation.of course, it is SF, but I would rather join TraderJoe in his comment.

QuoteOriginally posted by: dmaniyarThank you all for your comments.@veeruthakur: During my phd, I developed probabilistic projection algorithms for projecting high-D data onto lower dimensions. Mostly I implemented the algos by myself (but in matlab and used the matlab toolboxes as well). I also developed a user-interface promoting my methods which is now being commercialised by my uni and is successful in a few industry (pharma, environmental science) in the UK. Though I would say I have very good maths/stat skills in Bayesian statistics and probability theory, I struggle with PDEs. I will see crack's book and further work with some real-life time series data as you suggested. Thanks.@DCFC: Though I can understand your frustration with many CS grads, I beg to differ about generalisation of this as I think in many other countries, you do a lot of math when you are taught CS. I have taught CS courses here in the UK during my PhD and I was surprised with the content. When I did my CS degree in India, the emphasis was very different than what it is here for the CS undergraduates and the studies were much more rigorous.@madmax: Thanks for your encouragement. As you said, I can only do what's in my hand and the best I can do is keep on applying and make myself stronger and stronger in the skills required and work with some real life data.@MJ: Though I have done all most all the exercises, I haven't done the computer projects yet. I have used QuantLib and contributing a little there so probably I will also do the projects if time permits. I still need to buy your C++ design pattern book .One downside of doing bayesian learning is that you learn little numerical skills, the farthest you go is to sample from some standard distribution. This weakens other math skills that are required for a quant job (for example optimization).You mentioned that you did your CS degree in India. Was it from one of the IITs? The general perception in the market is that IIT CS graduates are smart (which is true on average). That also means that you would have a strong alumni network to get you interviews, and you need not go through headhunters.Also, you should take MJ's advice and just code all the projects in his book. They are non-trivial.

I talk with CS grads/PhDs from pretty much everywhere on the planet, though with an obvious skew to the English speaking subset.Chinese CS degrees seem the worst. I don't claim expertise in the process by which people end up in a particular course, but the impression I get is that the smart kids are much less likely to do CS, which now seems to be the case in the UK/USA.India seems to have had the opposite, but with the education often lacking depth, so one encounters people with clear high potential who seem to have ended up learning Macromedia Flash, but with weak theoretical underpinnings.Flash is no worse than Java as a first language, but again my point is that a CS grad should know several languages.I ought to explain how I view people though. Those who've done AI properly (rare) ought to know the difference between search space and control space.As an analogy, imagine I was looking for tall people.I'd know that Dutch and Kiwis are the tallest people, and that men are taller than women. Thus my search is more effective if I look in those sets first.However, once someone enters the evaluation process, where they come from is of zero value, a 2 metre tall person is tall whatever their sex and nationality.I get sad and slightly sarcastic with people who say Java can be used to teach operating systems, and yes I've seen it used for AI as well.I don't give a toss that Java is slower than C++, and actually that reminds me of the test of whether a CS grad is any good.A good CS grad should be able to write code in Java that runs faster than a physics or maths grad can write in C++They ought to be able to code up something faster in C++ than a non-CS can code in VBA.In other words they should be able to fight with one hand tied behind their back.It should not cripple them if they haven't done C++ on their course, since if they are a Computer Scientist, not a 2nd rate web designer they should be able to learn C++ faster than someone who comes from a different discipline.

I used to think that starting up my own company for example or doing contracting work in some other area would be somehow more risky than trying to get a quant dev job, but maybe not really.

QuoteI used to think that starting up my own company for example or doing contracting work in some other area would be somehow more risky than trying to get a quant dev job, but maybe not really.Doing something yourself is always riskier than working for a wage.Quote... smart kids are much less likely to do CS, which now seems to be the case in the UK/USA. India seems to have had the opposite, but with the education often lacking depth ...This shocked me when I moved to the USA. Computer Scientists have almost no respect here, the smart kids aren't really going into CS -- they go to med school, become lawyers, or end up on wall street. (One of the main reasons I chose not to go to academia in CS -- can't get good students.)In India, lawyers don't make the kind of money that they do in the West. (This is slowly changing.) Until recently medicine was seen as public service rather than a license to print money. (This too is changing.) And until 10-15 years back there was no significant financial market to speak of. The IAS (Indian Admin Service) is the government bureaucracy that draws/drew a lot of people wanting to make a quick buck via bribes. IIM MBA grads were seen as corporate bureaucrats, other MBA programs were non existent -- this has changed, now that private sector has been forced to be competitive. Job opportunities were the best for engineers, and computer jobs were the best of the engineer jobs. The students in Commerce and Arts backgrounds are typically those who were below the 50th percentile in high school. The smartest kids in the country studied engineering or medicine, and the smartest of those applicants got into the premier institutes which are/were order(s) of magnitude better than other places. Most engineering colleges (except IITs, RECs) teach only programming and software development in the name of "computer science", hence the situation DCFC describes. Graduates from these 2nd and 3rd tier colleges are 100x more numerous than from IIT (The IITs admit 5k out of 200k applicants, of that, the top 150 or 200 are invariably in computer science) and they typically have no exposure to Maths or even algorithms(!), let alone a well rounded education with a dose of humanities.

ArthurDent: "This shocked me when I moved to the USA. Computer Scientists have almost no respect here, the smart kids aren't really going into CS -- they go to med school, become lawyers, or end up on wall street. (One of the main reasons I chose not to go to academia in CS -- can't get good students.)"This isn't true at all. I think you overestimate the amount of draw professional schools and Wall St have on the most talented people. The small number of quant/trader positions available to undergrads are snapped up by some very bright and talented people, but analyst positions are dime-a-dozen and available to any idiot who wants to work 115 hours per week. Medicine is a good career and certainly draws some brilliant minds, but it's not nearly as good as it used to be (insurance companies + malpractice suits) and not every med student is brilliant-- some are just obedient and study hard. Law school is attractive to a certain type of brilliant person-- the type of person who started studying constitutional law at 13 and dreams of clerking for the SCotUS-- but most law students aren't exceptional either, and the life of a big-firm lawyer sucks donkey balls (banking hours for 1/2 the pay; sub-10% partner-make rates). Likewise, there are some incredibly bright people in MBA programs, but business programs (unlike PhD, JD, and MD) aren't selective at all and therefore can't be drawing that much top-talent from CS programs. Out of the 100 smartest people in the country, if there were any conclusive way of measuring that, I'd make a market of 35 - 60 on the number who go into PhD programs-- many in subjects like math, physics and computer science. A substantial portion of the remainder are founding their own companies. The top-of-the-top still tend toward academia, because the rewards academia provides for the top-of-the-top "stars" are incredible. It's the middle-of-the-top who realize the dilemma is between $1M+/year in 10-15 years on Wall St vs. $28k as an adjunct at West Podunk State, and therefore leave/eschew PhD programs/post-docs in favor of industry.There is a theory I've heard that academia is developing a bimodal distribution, since Wall St. tends to draw out the middle of the pack; I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it seems plausible. Academia's all about reputation, and the name of a person's advisor and department carries more weight in advancement than anything else, so the quality of grad students is correlated much more strongly to school prestige/rank than it is for undergrads (where the correlation is very low). If your frame of reference is a department where job prospects are poor, I'd imagine there wouldn't be many good students. At the top 20 or so (maybe more) programs, though, the students are really good.

I might buy the bimodal distribution idea.We have seen a slightly worrying wiggle in the curve between how we rate people, and their probability of getting hired.It is the case that academia does have the ability to offer a rather nice life to people it wants, so the relative attractiveness of banking is a lot lower. For historical reasons CS departments have relatively good funding, which might explain my experience in that model.Had an entertaining conversation with DCFC 2.0's computer teacher who seemed to genuinely believe that CS courses still attracted the cream.If it were up to me, IT wouldn't be taught before the age of 18.The subject is so shit that it must do more harm than good and is certainly a waste of time.They teach Pascal.Yes really, fucking Pascal. Only by a fluke have I been hating Pascal longer than DCFCs teacher has been alive.Pascal ?Fuck me.What was scary was that this was the "smart kid" option. The rest do collage.You must remember collage ?It's art where you cut things out of magazines and paste it to paper.That's IT in schools. You paste pictures from the web into some package.That's it. You can easily do 12 years of that shit.

almosteverywhere says: I think you overestimate the amount of draw professional schools and Wall St have on the most talented people. The small number of quant/trader positions available to undergrads are snapped up ...I speak of grad students in computer science departments at top universities. I spent 7 years doing my PhD at a top 10 univ. It is top 10 or top 20 in every department, even football.. and is pretty much the best school in a five hundred mile radius.CS/CE/EE was predominantly foreign. It is politically incorrect to say so but these foreign students were in general far superior to the citizens, possibly because of more exclusive selection criteria. Americans were conspicuous by their absence in Engg/Sc grad school. There were a large number of Americans in MBA/Law, and a small few in Maths/Physics.More than 50% of the CS undergrads were pathetic -- several would have failed in (or not been admitted to) my undergrad program. For instance, one did not know how to read "(a V b) => c" a few weeks before his 3rd semester final, and he got a C in the course on "Advanced logic". Ha ha ha. My prof never again asked me to grade anything -- he said the university would fire him if so many tuition paying undergrads got low grades.This is at a top 10 university mind you.... (bunch of other things) ... can't be drawing that much top-talent from CS programs.I dunno what's happening to all the smart people then, because I didn't see too many on a top 10 campus. And I refuse to believe in racial supremacy theories. It's possible they are all building startups in Silicon Valley, as you say below.Out of the 100 smartest people in the country, if there were any conclusive way of measuring that, I'd make a market of 35 - 60 on the number who go into PhD programs-- many in subjects like math, physics and computer science. A substantial portion of the remainder are founding their own companies. The top-of-the-top still tend toward academia, because the rewards academia provides for the top-of-the-top "stars" are incredible. It's the middle-of-the-top who realize the dilemma is between $1M+/year in 10-15 years on Wall St vs. $28k as an adjunct at West Podunk State, and therefore leave/eschew PhD programs/post-docs in favor of industry.Exactly. The top of the top goes to academia wide-eyed with a promise of a great future and discovers what? I know several such top-of-the-top from my (academic) generation are CS faculty members in top 10/20 universities, their constant gripe is: (1) where are the really good students? (2) why do most students leave after an MS? Long term success in research depends a lot on the quality of your colleagues and of the students you (get to) supervise, so it is not an insignificant matter.It is not enough to get 10 good PhD students a year (in a class of 50, that is a very good ratio for any school) -- if there are 30 or 40 active faculty members, this means a prof on an average gets a good student to supervise every 4 or 5 years (except Stan/UCB/CMU/MIT), profs at places like UIUC / UT/ Georgia (which are really very good places for CS grad studies) have trouble, let alone the mid-of-the-top that have gone to second or third tier places.Admittedly Stanford/UCB/MIT/CMU would have a good share of the ultra-smart but that's just 4-8 tenure track professor posts available a year isn't it?As for "Academia's all about reputation ... of a person's advisor", that's another way of saying that there is a large amount of politics. And I have seen that too -- tenured CS profs with 20 year reputation adding themselves as 3rd and 4th authors on mediocre works to network with people; political machinations to angle for Turing award; people stealing ideas to strengthen their own CVs; formation of research cliques -- for instance a prof and a student send a paper to a conference, it gets rejected, the next year the student sends it by himself and it gets in -- reason being prof not in favor with the program committee picking reviewers. (seen this happen both in C.S. and in O.R.) Luckily none of this was in my department or affected me directly, except to warn me away from going into academia.In short, the smart people in the US are not studying C.S. any more, much as DCFC stated, and that is precisely what I found very very surprising when I moved to the US. Another thing that took me by surprise was that the US has a strong anti-intellectual bent, anyone with half a brain is an object of ridicule and a complete misfit in society. Also note the recent Conservative governmental patronage of creationism; but that is a whole different story. DCFC says: They teach Pascal.What do you want DCFC 2.0 to learn in elementary school? C with pointer arithmetic? Looks like someone someplace had to make a decision and they decided not to pick object oriented languages (Java), complex memory handling (C), functional languages (Scheme, ML) and so they picked Pascal. At least they didn't pick some Microsoft proprietary stuff. In my opinion, newbies (kids or adults) just need to learn to think in as many ways as possible, the language hardly matters.

QuoteI spent 7 years doing my PhD at a top 10 univ. It is top 10 or top 20 in every department, even football.. and is pretty much the best school in a five hundred mile radius.Wow!!!! what did you do in those 7 years? 3 years is more than enough for any Phd

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteI spent 7 years doing my PhD at a top 10 univ. It is top 10 or top 20 in every department, even football.. and is pretty much the best school in a five hundred mile radius.Wow!!!! what did you do in those 7 years? 3 years is more than enough for any PhdWell 4 years really as the first 2 years were for the MS. Then 1 year break on an internship in a research lab, 1 year of reading and topic searching, 2 years of reasearch/publication/presentation, last one year trying some startup ideas. At the end of the PhD I have a dozen papers and 6 approved US patents, which is far more than the norm, so I guess I could have left quite a while sooner.

PS: Daniel, It is not unusual for US PhDs to take 5 to 7 years measured from completion of the BS.

QuoteWell 4 years really as the first 2 years were for the MS. Then 1 year break on an internship in a research lab, 1 year of reading and topic searching, 2 years of reasearch/publication/presentation, last one year trying some startup ideas. At the end of the PhD I have a dozen papers and 6 approved US patents, which is far more than the norm, so I guess I could have left quite a while sooner. I see, ArthurI thought it was 7 years straight research In our day we had the same more or less, except no intern. BTW that 1 year of topic research/search sounds cool. It means you can take a year off in order to broaden the horizons.

More than 50% of the CS undergrads were pathetic -- several would have failed in (or not been admitted to) my undergrad program. For instance, one did not know how to read "(a V b) => c" a few weeks before his 3rd semester final, and he got a C in the course on "Advanced logic". Ha ha ha. My prof never again asked me to grade anything -- he said the university would fire him if so many tuition paying undergrads got low grades.Ah. We're comparing apples and oranges, as I mistakenly thought you were talking about graduate students. Indeed, many students at elite undergrads are pretty pathetic, and this is probably surprising from an outside perspective. This happens because the selection process for college in this country is laughable, and tilted heavily by the university's economic needs. The college admissions process is noisy/stupid and mostly socioeconomic rather than academic. I know several such top-of-the-top from my (academic) generation are CS faculty members in top 10/20 universities, their constant gripe is: (1) where are the really good students? (2) why do most students leave after an MS?The terrible academic job market seems to be the obvious explanation. PhDs have some value outside of the ivory tower, but they seem to buy only the equivalent of 2-3 years of work experience, and sometimes less. Seeing as they take 5-10 to complete, they're not a great deal from this perspective. In short, the smart people in the US are not studying C.S. any more, much as DCFC stated, and that is precisely what I found very very surprising when I moved to the US.Some of them are studying CS. They, unless they eschew college altogether, have to study something. What is rapidly on the rise is the tendency for really smart/creative people to become discouraged and unambitious, due to the increasing obviousness of the corruption and stupidity in US society. I know a lot of smart people who drop out entirely of "the ratrace" because it isn't worth it to them to "work their way up". The 20s are an extremely awkward decade for the most talented, since the expectations of them (obedience, steadiness, willingness to defer their creative desires and "pay dues") at this age are irreconcilably incongruent with the creative mind. Some swallow the pill and charge forward, but many just give up, and the loss to society is enormous. Another thing that took me by surprise was that the US has a strong anti-intellectual bent, anyone with half a brain is an object of ridicule and a complete misfit in society.I think this is the natural extension of the uncivilized mind, which seems to be celebrated more in the US than in Europe. Hominids probably evolved in tribe-like social groups of about twenty individuals, so it's natural to look to the 90-95th percentile in observable traits (height, body mass, intelligence) for leadership, whereas 3-sigma is a threat and possibly some other animal. Having a 150 IQ is like being 6' 7; people are inclined to see such a person as a freak and a threat rather than as a leader. People can recognize this tendency as barbaric and useless in modern society, as Europeans tend to do, or they can rationalize it in a million different ways and fall prey to bullshitting rainmakers and smooth operators who populate the top of US society. For what it's worth, I don't think it's raw intelligence this society dislikes, so much as the inevitable side effects of creativity. Only a select few "get to be creative", and they're usually milquetoast charlatans because they're selected by morons.