Tyler Thomas, an applied statistics doctoral student, tells his story:
I came to the University of Alabama in 2018 to pursue a Master’s of Science in Applied Statistics. I chose the program because the applied aspect of the program was a lot more interesting to me than the more theoretical alternatives that I was considering. I had an amazing time during the masters and felt like I learned more in the year than my previous four years in undergrad. I also spent a lot of time participating in a data analytics club within the Institute of Data Analytics (IDA). I ended up applying and eventually getting admitted to the PhD program, and cannot imagine working towards my doctoral degree anywhere else.
I got introduced to an investment management firm in Birmingham, Vulcan Value Partners, at an IDA Data Analytics Club meeting, and ended up interning on the data science team during the summer of 2019. During the internship, I mainly worked on text classification and extracting domain specific insights using financial text (filings, earnings transcripts). Due to the programming and statistics background that I acquired during my masters, I was easily able to adapt to the problems that I encountered on the job. The internship was so successful that they worked with me to find a way that I could continue working full time as a data scientist while I started work on my PhD coursework. The project that I was working on had a firm end date around the time that I would be starting research full time. They ended up paying for my school while I worked there, and I commuted from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa for classes two days a week. The department was extremely flexible and worked with me to make sure I was able to continue progress through my coursework.
During my time as a data scientist I led the predictive modeling effort within the firm. This period was an extremely busy and fun time for me. My coursework and work at Vulcan had an incredibly large amount of overlap. I was constantly learning new things in class, such as different methods of transforming skewed variables, that were instantly integrated into my work. One of the semesters, I had classes until 7:45 p.m. (it was this time to help accommodate my schedule) and on more than one occasion, I drove straight to the office after school. I could not wait to integrate a new idea/topic, that I had just been exposed to in class, into my work.
In the end, we had an extremely successful finish to the project. In May 2021, I stepped down as the project wrapped up, and went to work on research for my dissertation under Dr. Volodymyr Melnykov. We are currently working on research of statistical applications to finance, so my financial experience has also been able to impact the direction my dissertation.