Stats major with accounting minor?

[jsies11]

I'm a statistics major and I'm not sure what I want to do after I graduate so I want to keep my options open. Is this a good pairing? Other stats-related minors I can pursue at my school are bioinformatics and mathematics. I also have the option of double-majoring in stats and econ.

Note: A comp sci major is unavailable at my school but I do plan on taking classes to learn C++. My stats coursework also covers coding in R.

Thoughts?

 

[noetsi]

In my narrow experience if what you want to do after graduating is make a decent salary then study for the actuarial exam if you are good at math (if you are not good at math and pursued your discipline you have my deepest admiration).

Learning SQL helps a lot to. Being able to run stats without SQL is a rough way to make a living in the private sector. Usually they will want you to do both.

 

[jsies11]

Thanks for the reply. My school actually has a financial actuarial mathematics major, but it's fairly new and I'm not really sure if I want to be an actuary so I'm a bit hesitant to pursue it. With a double major in stats and financial actuarial mathematics, I might not be able to graduate in 4 years as well since that would be 22 upper div courses.

 

[bryangoodrich]

As Noetsi pointed out, it really depends on what you want to do after graduation. If you're unclear, I'd not worry about your minor right away. I basically had minors in philosophy and econ when I graduated and went to a grad program in econ, but my goal was to get into demography and environmental research. Now I'm more focused on analytics and data science since I dropped out (and laugh at economics).

If you want a business focus in your future, accounting is fine if you want to make money. Probability theory will help with the actuarial exams, but beyond that it's a very subject-specific focus (read "boring!!!"). Again, Noetsi is right that knowing SQL is powerful as it's a sort of universal basic language to database systems. Learning C++ is great to understand programming concepts and algorithms, but not very applicable unless you're going to be building your own applications (unlikely). Instead, languages like R, Matlab, and Python will be your way to programming against data and systems.

If I were doing it over again, I'd stay with the stats focus with a programming emphasize, which would probably come through bioinformatics. Regardless, it would be a useful sub-discipline. One of the reasons I chose my econ program I did was that agricultural resource economics as UC Davis had a very heavy econometrics program. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay with the program (no funding). The stats department had positions for their students to work (and get compensation); ag-resource econ didn't.

So focus on what you want to do with your life. If you don't know, don't make decisions! Or at least may strategic ones that put you in a more comfortable (and flexible) position.

 

[noetsi]

You don't have to take the courses. I am anything but an expert on this discipline but I think what they really care about is if you pass the exams. If you do I think you can find a job regardless of your formal degree. You don't have to take the courses to pass the tests (although I am sure it helps).

I would point out that what you want to do, in a difficult job market generally in the US which won't be getting better any time soon, commonly has little to do with what you actually do after graduation I think you will find that relatively few do what they trained in immediately (perhaps statistics is an exception).

What ever you do. Learn SQL. Learn SQL. Learn Sql (notice a pattern). It is very difficult to do analysis in most organizations without this. I do statistical and financial analysis and 90 plus percent of every job I have done that involves SQL.

 

[jsies11]

I am interested in business which is why I'm leaning towards an accounting minor, but that could change any minute. SQL is also covered or at least incorporated into my upper div courses. That was super helpful, thanks

 

[noetsi]

This is not always the case of course, but I earned four graduate degrees including a doctorate and rarely use any of the formal training I got in a job. I have a brilliant brother - an engineer who spends all day (at 2 hundred k a year) creating logic diagrams which you never learn in school. Modern business commonly does not use what academics train you for. Learning how to learn, getting stuff that looks good on a resume (which means something they can actually use) is what helps get a job. So does learning how to network, something which technical majors are often weak at.

But what you will do you will commonly learn on the job. Not in school. It does not hurt to be really good at excel and some statistical software. Learn how to present your findings in excel. That seems really simple, but it is incredibly important in a job environment.

 

[taiba123]

Accounting is always a good to know if you get on the business side. It's the language of business. Its only helpful if you want to go to grad school in Econ/Finance etc, or you REALLY want to get into trading or risk management as a career