SAS, MiniTab and 6-Sigma is back in demand
Posted on 04/10/2010 5:45:25 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Being a math geek has never been cooler, at least in Silicon Valley.
As Bay Area technology companies ramp up hiring out of the recession, they are in hot pursuit of a particular kind of employee: those with experience in statistics and other data-manipulation techniques.
Rather than looking for just plain-vanilla computer scientists, who typically don't have as deep a study of math and statistics, companies from Facebook Inc. to online advertising company AdMob Inc. say they need more workers with stronger backgrounds in statistics and a related field called machine learning, which involves writing algorithms that get smarter over time by looking for patterns in large data sets.
That is leading to opportunities for quantitative specialists like Andrés de Lucca. The 30-year-old, who graduated from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management with a concentration in analytical consulting in 2009, says he found himself sought after by some major technology companies. He was hired by Social Gaming Network Inc., a Palo Alto online videogame maker, late last year.
At SGN, Mr. de Lucca now manages a three-person team that studies game-play data, such as how long people spend in certain parts of a videogame, to detect areas to improve. For example, by contrasting various missions of SGN's "Skies of Glory" fighter pilot game, Mr. de Lucca and his group found that people were quitting when the game was too easy rather than too hard.
"Some patterns aren't as obvious as they seem," says Mr. de Lucca. Using the findings, SGN gradually increased the game's difficulty, getting people to play it longer and spend more on virtual goods inside of the game, he says.
The focus on math aces like Mr. de Lucca shows how Silicon Valley tech companies, which have long been data-minded, are now becoming obsessively so.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
SAS, MiniTab and 6-Sigma is back in demand
In contrast to AlGore, who just keeps getting dumber all the time.
96.29311% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Company I know has been actively searching for YEARS for somebody who has a PhD in biostatistics. The candidate has to be a black, Native American, or Hispanic, and preferably female. Trouble is, none of those groups turns out very many biostatistics PhDs. They’d cut their collective hand off before they’d hire a white or Asian guy.
Thanks for your comment. The policy of the company you described is racist BS.
Speaking as a white person who was clearly and specifically told that I could not get a promotion because I am the wrong color and they were going to preferentially hire and promote “disadvantaged” minorities, yeah, I’m aware it’s racist b.s. Fortunately, as of yesterday I and 500 of my closest friends wee laid off so it’s no longer an issue.
Sorry to hear about your layoff. Good luck.
You should sue and sue BIG.
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