What is a PhD? - Page 29

On September 24 2013 14:26 Chemist391 wrote:
I'm a 2nd-year physical chemistry PhD student. The statements in the OP make it sound like getting the PhD is something you can sort of do in addition to something else...there's absolutely no way that would happen in my field. My average work week is 60 hours in the department, and I do a lot of reading at home. During the hardest weeks, I've been at work for 80 hours.

On September 28 2013 00:22 Dknight wrote:
Of course the majority here at STEM PhDs! Anyone doing anything in the social sciences? About to be an ABD in criminology/sociology with a focus on rape, case attrition, sex offenders/victims/crimes, and sex offender policy.

Nothing like 50-60 hour work weeks for a wage that's barely above the federal poverty line.

On September 24 2013 14:26 Chemist391 wrote:
I'm a 2nd-year physical chemistry PhD student. The statements in the OP make it sound like getting the PhD is something you can sort of do in addition to something else...there's absolutely no way that would happen in my field. My average work week is 60 hours in the department, and I do a lot of reading at home. During the hardest weeks, I've been at work for 80 hours.

But it's so amazing to actually be learning new things about how matter works. At this point, I'm done with classes and I don't have to TA for the foreseeable future, so it's all research all the time. Loving it!

I think the PhD represents a near total commitment to the pursuit of acquiring knowledge and skills and to generate just a tiny bit of new knowledge.

Biggest advice to anyone still in high school or undergrad: learn a programming language, no matter what you want to do later. It will pay off.

On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote:
I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.

On September 29 2013 04:05 Antisocialmunky wrote:
AI is interesting but in my experience, anything touching in pure AI/Natural Language Processing/Computer Vision is going to be really hard. There haven't been any major break throughs in AI for the last 60 years outside of solving problems using the scaling of computational power and digging around in the brains of lab animals.

You could probably find some novel applications of existing AI techniques though.

As for application of theoretical CS? You could try and get hired by a company's research division like Microsoft Research.

On September 29 2013 04:27 Abominous wrote:

Well AI has subfields like Machine Learning which has found it's way almost everywhere nowadays. And I like find the whole field appealing.

On September 29 2013 03:50 Abominous wrote:

I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?

I'm eyeing to major in AI though.

EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?

On September 29 2013 04:39 123Gurke wrote:


There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.

I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.

On September 29 2013 07:46 Kambing wrote:


It sort of depends on your definition of theoretical computer science. If you broaden your definition of theory enough (e.g., what is presented in the TCS wikipedia article), then you find that the sub-branches have lots of direct applications, e.g., mathematical logic/type theory/automata theory with software correctness, graph theory with networks, cryptography with software security, and most researchers ground their theoretical work as such. If these people move on from academia into industry, they typically find jobs where their expertise in those areas are applicable.

On September 30 2013 02:51 123Gurke wrote:


Well, I know several people who did a PhD in graph theory or related areas, but none of them who has not stayed in academia uses anything he did in his research for his job. And the only cryptography guy that I know who still works in cryptography related things outside of academia was definitely not a theory guy at university but did very applied crypto. But of course my sample is very small and probably biased, so maybe you are right and my impression is wrong.

On September 30 2013 03:16 Kambing wrote:


I think the probability of anyone applying their thesis research to their job is unlikely by virtue of the fact that theses, by their nature, are extremely narrowly defined topics. What's more likely is people using their breadth knowledge about their specialty (which they should have picked up en route to defining that narrow thesis topic) to bring value to their industry job.

I also admit this is an American-centric view of the PhD process. European PhDs are usually more theory-oriented, so I can imagine that people with a European PhD have a different experience in industry compared to their American counterparts.