Skills for graduate students

Stat 550

Daniel J. McDonald

Last modified – 03 April 2024

\[ \DeclareMathOperator*{\argmin}{argmin} \DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{argmax} \DeclareMathOperator*{\minimize}{minimize} \DeclareMathOperator*{\maximize}{maximize} \DeclareMathOperator*{\find}{find} \DeclareMathOperator{\st}{subject\,\,to} \newcommand{\E}{E} \newcommand{\Expect}[1]{\E\left[ #1 \right]} \newcommand{\Var}[1]{\mathrm{Var}\left[ #1 \right]} \newcommand{\Cov}[2]{\mathrm{Cov}\left[#1,\ #2\right]} \newcommand{\given}{\mid} \newcommand{\X}{\mathbf{X}} \newcommand{\x}{\mathbf{x}} \newcommand{\y}{\mathbf{y}} \newcommand{\P}{\mathcal{P}} \newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}} \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\left\lVert #1 \right\rVert} \newcommand{\snorm}[1]{\lVert #1 \rVert} \newcommand{\tr}[1]{\mbox{tr}(#1)} \newcommand{\U}{\mathbf{U}} \newcommand{\D}{\mathbf{D}} \newcommand{\V}{\mathbf{V}} \renewcommand{\hat}{\widehat} \]

Something happens in graduate school

  • As undergrads, you took lots of classes
  • You didn’t care that much about all of them
  • Sure, you wanted good grades, but you may not have always wanted to really learn the material
  • And you probably didn’t try to go in depth beyond the requirements
  • That has to change in grad school
  • Even if you don’t want a to be a professor, to get a PhD, to do an MSc thesis.
  • This is the material that you have decided you will use for the rest of your life
  • If you disagree, then we should talk

Side discussion on “Reading for research”

  • You should “read” regularly: set aside an 2-3 hours every week
  • Stay up-to-date on recent research, determine what you find interesting
  • What do people care about? What does it take to write journal articles?

What is “read”?

  • Start with titles, then abstracts, then intro+conclusion
  • Each is a filter to determine how far to go
  • Pass 3 filters, read the paper (should take about ~30 minutes)
  • Don’t get bogged down in notation, proofs
  • Organize your documents somehow, make notes in the margins, etc
  • After you read it, you should be able to tell me what they show, why it’s important, why it’s novel
  • If you can, figure out how they show something. This is hard.

How to find and organize papers

  • arXiv, AOS, JASA, JCGS have RSS feeds, email lists etc
  • Find a statistician you like who filters
  • Follow reading groups
  • Conference proceedings
  • Become an IMS member, SSC member (ASA costs money:( )
  • BibDesk, Zotero

Ideal outcome

  • If you need to learn something, you can teach yourself
  • Know how to find the basics on the internet
  • Know how to go in depth with real sources
  • Collect a set of resources that you can turn to regularly
  • If you need to read a book, you can
  • If you need to pick up a new coding language, you can

What this doesn’t mean

You are not expected to have all the answers at the tips of your fingers.

But you should get progressively good at finding them.

UBC Stat 550 - 2024