It would be very imporatnt to get a good background in logic and
epistemology. A wide liberal arts background that taught critical
thinking in general would be invaluable.
In order to put statistics in perspective, a good self-teaching effort
would be to scan the abstracts for the Joint Statistical Meetings, to go
to all kind of poster sessions, and to be able to put together a few
sentences about each of the sections/groups in ASA, etc.
It would also help to skim through the tables of contents of books that
are used in different disciplines, e.g., psychology, engineering,
education, demography, psychometrics, ecology, geography, medicine,
sociology, epidemiology, etc to see why people care about statistics.
One very small but valuable book in putting statistics in context in
Abelson's "Statistics as principled argument".
To help you later in your career, you might think about keeping a journal
of things that are not part of the explicit curriculum. Record instances
where someone helps you gain insights, things that helped others,
techniques used in presentation , and techniques of facilitating
communication with clients.
Cengiz wrote:
> Apologies if this is not the appropriate forum to ask such a question,
> but I'm wondering what should the entering statistics PhD student know
> before starting grad school (note: not biostatistics or genetics).In
> particular, mastery of what disciplines prior to entry is essential
> and would anyone care to give a "recommended reading" list.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Cengiz
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
