What is a typical day of statistics phd?

[Laoceberg]

Hi,

I just want to know how is life looks like for a statistics phd. Is it a 9 to 5 work?  I asked my professors but they did their PhD more than 20 years ago and things changed a lot. Can anyone share some experiences or links to a similar question?

Thanks

[Stat Assistant Professor]

Typically, the first two years will be spent taking courses and preparing for qualifying exams. At some elite programs, students will begin reading statistical literature in their first or second year in order to identify potential research areas of interest and potential advisors.

Starting in your third year, you'll finish up remaining coursework (maybe 1-2 classes a semester), but the research phase of your program is what consumes much of your time. At this point, your time will be a lot less structured. You do need to set your own schedule, and it requires a bit of self-discipline (you can work as much as or as little as you want -- nobody is going to "force" you to do anything, so if you took a couple of weeks off and didn't accomplish much, probably nobody would notice). I started off the first few months of research just reading papers and a book and familiarizing myself with work that had previously been done and trying to find open problems. Then once you identify problems that show promise, you try to work on these open problems. This involves a lot of: rereading papers, browsing new ones for inspiration, playing around with formulae and computer simulations, and later on, writing, revising, and preparing manuscripts for submission to journals.

In short, it varies from day to day, but in general, expect to spend the first 2 years primarily on courses, and starting in your third year, be prepared to spend at least a couple of hours everyday on research, plus anywhere from 5-15 hours a week on RA or TA (if you aren't supported by a fellowship).

[Laoceberg]

5 hours ago, Applied Math to Stat said:

Typically, the first two years will be spent taking courses and preparing for qualifying exams. At some elite programs, students will begin reading statistical literature in their first or second year in order to identify potential research areas of interest and potential advisors.

Starting in your third year, you'll finish up remaining coursework (maybe 1-2 classes a semester), but the research phase of your program is what consumes much of your time. At this point, your time will be a lot less structured. You do need to set your own schedule, and it requires a bit of self-discipline (you can work as much as or as little as you want -- nobody is going to "force" you to do anything, so if you took a couple of weeks off and didn't accomplish much, probably nobody would notice). I started off the first few months of research just reading papers and a book and familiarizing myself with work that had previously been done and trying to find open problems. Then once you identify problems that show promise, you try to work on these open problems. This involves a lot of: rereading papers, browsing new ones for inspiration, playing around with formulae and computer simulations, and later on, writing, revising, and preparing manuscripts for submission to journals.

In short, it varies from day to day, but in general, expect to spend the first 2 years primarily on courses, and starting in your third year, be prepared to spend at least a couple of hours everyday on research, plus anywhere from 5-15 hours a week on RA or TA (if you aren't supported by a fellowship).

Thank you so much for your information! That helps a lot!

[Stat Assistant Professor]

No problem. The "typical" day does tend to vary from day to day (some days of mine were spent preparing manuscripts, other days only doing simulations/data analysis or working out new theorems and proofs, and many more days spent just reading/rereading papers). I do have a set "routine" though to spend a certain amount of time per week on research activities, but the actual day-to-day tends to vary.