Statistics in Chicago VS Washington

[njunasen]

Hi all:

    I'm a undergraduate student in China. I have applied several Statistics PhD program in America and gotten some results. I have a problem on choosing programs. Statistics in UChicago or Statistics in UW-Seattle? That's a question. Chicago has a high rank both in speciality and overall while UW has more professors than Chicago focusing on Statistical Learning, which is my interests. I'm look forward to your suggestion. Thank you.

[compscian]

I think it depends on the "flavor" and community you wish to associate yourself with. If you prefer the more mathematical statistics and probability theory variety; associate yourself with the Annals of Statistics (journal publishing) community; and prefer to work in actuaries, finance, or as a professor - U Chicago might be a better option.

On the other hand, if you prefer the more computational statistics and machine learning variety; associate yourself with conference publishing style at ICML, NIPS, KDD etc.; and prefer to work as a data scientist in tech firms (MSR, Amazon etc.) - UW is definitely a better option.

The classification is soft though. For example, TTIC comes up with great papers in NIPS and ICML regularly, and you could possibly tap into that resource if you decide to go to UChicago. Similarly, there are more traditional statisticians at UW too. However, if you are interested in machine learning and taking a number of CS classes in addition to stats classes, then UW is the way to go.

[njunasen]

22 hours ago, compscian said:

I think it depends on the "flavor" and community you wish to associate yourself with. If you prefer the more mathematical statistics and probability theory variety; associate yourself with the Annals of Statistics (journal publishing) community; and prefer to work in actuaries, finance, or as a professor - U Chicago might be a better option.

On the other hand, if you prefer the more computational statistics and machine learning variety; associate yourself with conference publishing style at ICML, NIPS, KDD etc.; and prefer to work as a data scientist in tech firms (MSR, Amazon etc.) - UW is definitely a better option.

The classification is soft though. For example, TTIC comes up with great papers in NIPS and ICML regularly, and you could possibly tap into that resource if you decide to go to UChicago. Similarly, there are more traditional statisticians at UW too. However, if you are interested in machine learning and taking a number of CS classes in addition to stats classes, then UW is the way to go.

Really thank you for your remark.