Advice: take some data mining/machine learning courses

[DMX]

I know many MFE candidates are busy with stochastic calculus, PDE etc. for learning the theory of quant finance, but can I please advise MFEs to take a few data mining/machine learning courses within the stats/comp sci department? Few observations:

1) Not everyone can get that front office (or even middle office) finance job. But there is a BIG demand from many quasi finance/tech companies (credit card companies, insurers, social network) for people who are savvy with big data (hadoop/PIG etc.) and machine learning techniques.

2) Compensation for the above jobs can be substantial (personally know an MFE working at a credit card company making well over 100k first year, another MSOR at the same company making 200K after 5 years, another MFE at an insurer making 120K 2nd year). 'Data scientist' type jobs at Fbook/LinkedIn etc. also pay extremely well (low to mid 100s first year).

3) Finance is not everything! There are many many rewarding jobs out there in which you can utilize quant techniques to do some really cool stuff!

Anyways, the job market for MFEs has been stagnant at best for the past few years (at least from my observations), so keep your options open.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Wise words of advice. "Big Data" is the keyword of the future because that's a big problem needs to be solved in every industry. This is going to be a huge industry in itself with a big need for people who can work with vast amount of data.
Columbia University just announced a new INSTITUTE FOR DATA SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/seas/IDSE/index.html

 

[Jose T]

Thanks for the advice.

Actually, I am taking Data Mining next term. As I am in the Statistics program, we use this text:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Statistical-Learning-ebook/dp/B00475AS2E/

I am wondering, if you know of a similar book (mid-level, giving exposure to modern methods) from the Computer Science perspective, i.e. in Machine Learning?