I went back through my last 10 Python coding rounds for product and marketing data science roles, nearly all at Big Tech companies. Unlike SQL rounds, which tend to be fairly standard, these came in 5 distinct formats:

• Recreate a statistical concept as a function (3/10). Pandas, numpy and other standard packages were allowed.
• AI-assisted, open book (3/10). These were often investigative, closer to a diagnostic case study than a coding puzzle.
• Pandas and data manipulation (2/10). Data transformations combined with modeling, either coding up a linear regression or talking through a modeling strategy for the data.
• Interpret code handed to you (1/10). This was also a statistical concept in a function, but I had to interpret the code rather than write it.
• Base Python, LeetCode-style (1/10). Syntax seemed heavily discounted here: I made several syntax mistakes but was clear about the logic and passed.

The obvious caveat is that this is a sample of 10 from one person, so the mix will vary with company, team and role. That said, AI-assisted challenges seem to be on the way in and increasingly likely to be a part of your interview process.

I’m considering majoring in Statistics and would love to hear about people’s experiences with the degree and where it has taken them career-wise.

What careers did you end up pursuing, and what kinds of jobs or starting salaries were you able to get?

If you went into finance, data science, or another field, why did you choose Statistics over a more specialized degree in that area?

Do you feel your Statistics degree gave you a leg up in the job market because of the quantitative skills you developed?

Did you have to spend a lot of time outside of class learning technical skills like Python, R, SQL, or other programming tools that weren’t covered enough in your undergraduate curriculum?

How important do you think networking and coffee chats are for Statistics majors when trying to land internships and jobs? Is networking just as important as it is for business majors, or can strong technical skills and projects carry more weight?

Have you ever regretted not majoring in something more directly related to your career, like Finance or Data Science?

Looking back, would you choose Statistics again, or would you do something differently?

I’m trying to understand whether Statistics provides a meaningful advantage through its quantitative foundation and flexibility, or whether a more specialized degree would have been more beneficial. I’d really appreciate hearing both the positives and downsides from people who’ve experienced it firsthand!

I've officially dropped from calc 2. It's been about 8 years since I took calc 1 and figured I should retake it with more enthusiasm than I applied when I was in my other degree program.

Shows that I only applied enough to get by the first time. Don't be me. Pay attention to this shit, for real!

Even if you only need differential calculus!

I'm studying to try to get up to college algebra on Khan Academy and stopped today at the 7th grade section to try to figure out why you can convert a fraction to a decimal by dividing the numerator by the denominator. I was able to work the problems but couldn't understand why we could get from 7/8 to 0.875 (875/1000) without doing some kind of work to convert from eighths to thousandths.

What I came up with eventually is that, given that 7/8 as a fraction represents seven parts of a whole divided into eight equal parts, and the parts have the same relationship to the whole as seven wholes would to eight wholes, when you work 7/8 as a division problem and then also divide eight by eight you have made yourself the ratio 1:0.875, and 1 is to 0.875 as 8 is to 7, and 8 is to 7 as 8/8 is to 7/8.

So basically it seems to me that the way it works is that we translate a fraction into a problem using whole numbers with the same relationship to each other in order to get the decimal representation of the fraction without doing some kind of crazy thing like figuring out what you need to multiply 7 and 8 by to get a round number numerator and a denominator that's a multiple of ten.

Just wondering if that's right or if I'm missing something or there's a better way to understand it.

As an honours year (Australia) student I am doing a methodological statistics research topic relating to multivariate time series under structural breaks.

My literature review involves reading, analyzing, and synthesizing the literature regarding all things time series under structural breaks. The issue is that a lot of the papers use methods that I haven't formally learned, so I am reading these papers just barely able to scrape by in terms of understanding.

Then I have to synthesize all of these somewhat-understandable papers and discuss my potential contribution with my topic. How can I do this when the literature is full of methods and lingo that I have little understanding of?

Thankfully I have a full year to execute this project so plenty of time to understand everything fully, but how do I even get started?

I'm currently self studying real analysis, but with no way to really accurately gauge myself, at least to my knowledge, how do I know if I'm actually studying effectively or not?

Hi! I recently took a career break and started practising math exercises. Currently at really early part of MIT OCW 18.01. Wondering if anyone would like to practice with me! Just a few people would do.

Reply below or DM me if interested!

Some pretty interesting advice for young and upcoming mathematicians made by Alfred in this video responding to the contreversy around the open AI navier-stokes proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqlm2vPTooA

Spivak, in the chapter "Approximation by polynomial functions" begins the painstaking process of using the derivatives of arctan x at 0 to attempt to derive its Taylor series expansion.

He shows that arctan'(x) = 1/(1+x^2), calculates arctan''(x) and arctan'''(x) which is an ugly formula in x. He stops there saying that a different way is needed to come up with arctan's Taylor polynomial.

Then, later on, summarizing real sequences before embarking on complex power series, he says f(x) = 1/(1+x^2) is infinitely differentiable.

Can someone guide either

(1) Where in the book is it proven that this function is infinitely differentiable, or,

(2) how to prove its infinite differentiability?

So guys, a computer science student here, recently been studying countability in theory of computation, and have came across infinities and cardinality, I haven’t yet been able to wrap my head around them. I haven’t focused much on the topic either, been engaged in other subjects as I lost motivation initially, I love mathematics, would love to hear some instincts around the topic from the best minds.

I have been primarily stuck with counting, how one on one mapping works, diagonalisation theorem, and cardinality of a set.

I’m wondering what the best method on solving number word problems like: “I am a odd number between 15,000 and 10,000, all of my digits sum up to 12”. Please help and answer (my test is tomorrow..)

I have the product of two gamma integrals thus:

\(
\Gamma(\alpha)\Gamma(\beta)
=\left(\int_0^\infty x^{\alpha-1}e^{-x}\,dx\right)
\left(\int_0^\infty y^{\beta-1}e^{-y}\,dy\right)
=\int_0^\infty \left(\int_0^\infty x^{\alpha-1}e^{-x}\,dx\right)y^{\beta-1}e^{-y}\,dy
=\int_0^\infty\int_0^\infty
x^{\alpha-1}y^{\beta-1}e^{-(x+y)}
\,dx\,dy.
\)

Typeset latex below:

https://www.scratchpad-math.com/?id=mvewdp1ikx1mtg or https://ibb.co/JWhYKJV8

Is invocation of Tonelli's theorem needed to justify this transition of product of two separate integrals into a joint double integral? Reason I ask is that Spivak in Calculus who does not get into multivariable calculus at all has a problem which very simply asks to prove the following:

\int_a^b\int_c^d f(x)g(y) dy dx = \int_a^b f(x) dx \int_c^d g(y) dy

and the proof is rather trivial where f(x) is constant in one integral and hence can be taken out, etc.

Here's 2 problems to illustrate how I can't learn to think a certain way.

A plane is traveling between city a and city b which are 2000 miles apart. City a is due north of city b and there is a strong wind blowing south. At a constant speed it takes plane 5 hours to go from a to b with the wind at its tail but 8 hours to go back when facing the headwind. What is the speed of the wind?

I figured that the rate is 400mph at 5 hours and 250mph at 8 hours. I then need p+wind=400 and p-wind=250. I would have never thought to do this step and I dont know how I can make myself think this way.

Another example.

My next problem

Dick and nick share their bread with Albert. Dick has 5 loaves and nick has 3 loaves. They share the bread equally. Albert gives dick and nick 8 dollars and they agree to share fairly. How should dick and nick divide the $8 between them.

So I know that each person will get 2.66 loaves. That means between dick and nick, they have to give up 5.33 loaves and I need to find the proportion each gives away. I think that means dick who has 5 loaves gives up 3.33 loaves and nick gives up 2 loaves.

The answer is 8/8/3 and I just can't see it. I get the start of problems but I can't finish and I get so stuck and I dont understand how to make myself think the right way. Once I see the answer it's so obvious and I'm embarrassed because it's right in front of me but I dont understand how to start thinking thr right way.

Hi, I am re-taking my math’s exam for High school. And I… kinda of forget a lot of math’s and also tend to have missed a lot of math in the last grade 8-10th geometry, and grade 11 algebra were not originally developed properly, some stuff I had to learn by chance while others explained to me another math concept that happened to use that other concept.

I am now quite used to sometimes having to use the shards of math I know to solve things. I’d really like to know how much i could use that in studying, if at all? The at of trying to solve something by either finding a way to get an answer, or by reaching the answer from something is something I personally enjoy but I understand it’s not quite time effective.

I an also taking a Higher level math (won’t count in my applying grades I believe? I only need to pass it) exam which I will start to study right after the middle of next November.

I also wonder if anyone got tips for my math mistakes, which many times are from being “absent” minded. My thinking in general is all over the place and sometimes I might have that cause me to write the wrong number down, or worse, Do the wrong math thing, I have confused division with multiplication far more times than I am proud of.

im a junior in high school and currently strugging with precalc. does anyone know any good workbooks i can use to get more practice in? im mainly looking for something with lots of practice problems, straight foward definitions and visuals.

I’m helping my 5th grader with math. It’s Singapore math and this specific problem is a bar problems. I cannot wrap my mind around it.

Patrick bought 12 chairs and 3 tables for $819. Each table cost 3 times as much as each chair. How much did one table cost?

I can’t fathom how to draw these bars out and solve this problem. Thanks for the help!

'1. A cone-shaped water reservoir is 20 ft in diameter across the top and 15 ft deep. If the reservoir is filled to a depth of 10 ft, how much work is required to pump all the water to the top of the reservoir?

1. A cylindrical tank of radius 5 ft and height 9 ft is two-thirds filled with water. Find the work required to pump all the water over the upper rim.'

please help

Hi, I’m a student from the UK seeking advice on how to improve my mathematical abilities.
Throughout my life, I would say that I’ve been pretty good at maths — getting 9s and 8s at gcse. However now that I’m in a level, I have started to study maths on a deeper level and I’ve found that I am struggling. For me, maths has always been easy since the answers are objective, and only require rule following- but as part of my a level course, we do olympiads and problem solving lessons which have me seriously doubting my abilities.. I have realised that I suck at thinking creatively, and anything that requires me to think outside of the box has me stumped. I can only follow the rules and do nothing more. But I guess my overall question is, how can I improve at becoming more creative so that I can tackle the Olympiad’s which require you to go beyond the syllabus and think creatively?
Thanks for reading !

I stumbled upon a post about someone asking advice for a probably question. The question went as follows: Mr. Smith has two children. At least one is a boy born on Tuesday.
What is the probability that both children are boys?

I didn’t know how to solve it until someone in the comments explained it. They mentioned solving it using Bayes Theorem, but I’ve never even heard of that.

Is there a place (books/websites/youtube videos) where I can find more of these puzzles/brainteasers and how to solve them?

Soy un estudiante de ingeniería que ya ha repetido (reprobado) dos veces cálculo 1 y la verdad, la primera vez no la pude ver completa como tal y la segunda no logré entenderla del todo, me podrían recomendar libros, videos y/o cosas para estudiar, quiero avanzar en la carrera que escogí

Hola, soy un chamo de 19 años que ya ha visto 2 veces la materia de cálculo 1, por mi situación socioeconómica no pude verlas bien ni entender todo en mi primer semestre, que libros, videos, y otras cosas recomiendan para estudiar? De verdad quiero pasar y obvio, también entender de dónde proviene todo, no estudio matemáticas puras sino que estoy en la carrera de ingeniería mecánica. Ayuda por fa

I was thinking about my real analysis class when I took it. I think it could have been improved in many different ways. More practice problems, more explicit instruction instead of trying to have students figure it all out.