Forum:Msc in bioinformatics - MathStatistics as optional courses?

Question

[sor.hub.lennart]

Hello all,

I hope I've posted on the right section of the forum...

I'll start my Msc in bioinformatics this year and I was wondering what courses I should add to my degree (Note: Msc here in Sweden is 2yrs). I was thinking about markov processes and computer intense statistics instead of CS courses. Will these courses benefit me, you think? When I was doing bioinformatics courses and was doing phylogenetic trees we used bayesian models (mr bayes), maximum likelihood, parsimony and so on.. It feels as if a lot of methods in bioinformatics are deduced from mathematical statistics and I feel I should go right to the source.

Many thanks for your advice!

Regards, L

[Asaf]

What is your background?

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

I'd say solid foundations in mathematics in particular linear algebra and probabilities will help you evolve and grow with the science. If you don't have these, that's where I think you should start. If you do have these, then I'd say your options are more open and it depends on what you're more interested in and what the content of the courses are.