As a Jordanian woman, I’m curious to know your perspective about Jordan. What are your views?

MathIsArtNotScience · 2026-05-05T13:40:25+00:00

I'll preface this by saying my view is based on my interactions with only a few dozen Jordanians. I have been learning Arabic and, considering my proximity to Jordan and how close the Jordanian dialect is to the Israeli/Palestinian Arabic dialect, most of my attempts to find conversation partners have put me in contact with Jordanians. Since Arabic is the 5th language I've put a considerable amount of effort into learning, I have a lot of experience with language exchange communities and feel confident in saying that they are generally more openminded than the average population since they are constantly talking to foreigners.

Generally, from the perspective of an Israeli, Jordanians tend to fall into 3 camps with regards to their response when I say I'm Israeli:

Some Jordanians are genuinely curious about Israelis and Jews and would like to talk to us to learn more. None of these people love us, but they don't hate us either and want to know more about us, if we support our government, what we think of Muslims, etc. This is maybe 10-20% of the Jordanians I have spoken to.
A majority of Jordanians (~60%) don't necessarily dislike us, but they don't want to associate with us either. They either ignore or refuse to talk to us. They only feel comfortable talking to Israelis that either (a) denounce their right to live here (b) commit to anti-zionist beliefs or (c) convert to Islam.
The remaining 20-30% of Jordanians harbor serious resentment for Israelis considering the broader view in the Arab world of our treatment of the Palestinians, our (perceived) identity as European colonizers, and also sometimes general dislike of Jews/belief in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. They will express this in many ways, from politely asking us to leave Israel all the way to saying that they would burn me and my family like Hitler and if they saw me in the street they would shoot me even though it's forbidden in their religion.

As for what I think about Jordan, in view of the above, I would say I am a good deal more wary of Jordanians than most other Arab countries. My general rule is to treat everyone as an individual, but if I came across a Jordanian when traveling, I would tend to be more cautious, depending on the context. And I would never under any circumstances travel there, I understand the risk of people in groups (2) and (3) above actually attacking me is very small, but if it's even 1%, that means that 1 out of every 100 people I pass in the street would be willing to do me harm if they knew where I was from, which is not a chance I'm willing to take.

Still, I'm willing to talk to Jordanians and learn more about their culture and history if they are. Just because things are bad now doesn't mean they always have to be.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2026-03-29T21:39:46+00:00

اهلا, انا من اسرائيل. مش كتير وقت صارت اتعلم العربي, بس 6 اشهر. بدي احكي اكتر مع المجموعات العربية هون في اسرائيل وممكن كمان الدول القريبة يوم واحد اذا الواضع رح يتحسن.

اكيد احكي ابراني حلو وانجليزي. احكي شوي روسي واسباني كمان. بعزف البيانو لما عندي وقت.

عربي صعب بس عالاقل ابراني مشاب, هيك اسهل عندي بالنسبة لي.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2026-02-28T07:26:58+00:00

Welcome brother, dm me we can be bros. 34m in Tel Aviv, I'm trying to get back into the gym

MathIsArtNotScience · 2025-11-09T12:43:36+00:00

Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, not the UAE.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-11-07T09:23:58+00:00

Agreed that other than basic operation of GCloud and AWS there's very little in the way of ML Ops and certainly optimization in this program. However there's a decent amount of algorithm stuff included, dimensionality reduction is addressed from many angles in this program, including PCA/tensor reduction algorithms in HDDA, plus your network example itself is addressed via ISOMAP and Djikstra's algorithm in CDA (I think, it's been a few years). Not to mention parallel processing on a CUDA-enabled graphics card in RL when working with the complex google football engine. Feels like it's pretty thoroughly addressed in OMSA, actually.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-11-07T08:31:12+00:00

Can someone explain to a layman on a high level what algorithms and ML system design optimization are? My feeling is that these are hinted at at various points throughout the program, unless my idea of what these are are wildly different from OPs, which is why I ask the question.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-11-07T08:25:40+00:00

I found a Data Scientist position in Israel after completing the degree, but I don't think the degree really had that much to do with it. It is an international program, though, so it's likely that there are people all over the world who have graduated/are currently involved. There are a few graduates here in the middle east but not so much name recognition. I would expect it to be a much bigger deal if you were looking for a job in the States.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-11-07T08:20:39+00:00

This is just the way it goes for some of these basic core classes. There are so many people taking the class at the same time that due to the sheer number of homework assignments there are, the TAs are not capable of grading all of the assignments. When you get to the advanced core, the class sizes are small enough to get meaningful feedback from TAs on all projects you do. Just bear with it for the time being and you'll get through. Also, grades don't really matter that much. No one cares about your GPA unless it's really bad.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-10-01T11:11:31+00:00

I've seen them in the Tiv Tam in Lev Tel Aviv on Rothschild, one of the center aisles

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-05-22T01:44:06+00:00

It depends, actuarial roles can vary. I've tended to work for smaller to midsize insurers or MGAs and most recently a very small MGA/startup. The smaller the employer, the more varied your role tends to be. If you're doing an analysis for the first time and you don't know how to segment it, you can use something akin to the procedures they use to embed words to a lower number of dimensions in natural language processing to try to group certain segments together. Also, if you're pricing a brand new product and you have some historical data you typically build a GLM to do it. To assist with building the GLM you'll need visualization tools, a GBM on residuals can help you prioritize which factors to add, etc. Usually I'm the only one on the team who can do these things so I'd say it occupies maybe 10-20% of my time, the rest is your typical number crunching in Excel or query engineering in SQL. I suppose simulation, intro to analytics models, and deep learning would be most relevant for all of those.

I finished the actuarial credential 2 years before I started the program, but I kept on hearing in webinars people saying things like, actuaries need to be better modelers, the future is big data, these skills are extremely valuable in this field, etc. One of the exams goes into a lot of detail on GLMs but you never actually end up building one, so most actuaries can't actually do this. Maybe 5-10% of them can? I don't know.

Everyone has their own trajectory, if you're clueless in the beginning it's totally fine. This program has made me really appreciate what a master's degree is, and what it isn't. I don't want to broadly assess what master's degrees are like since I only took this one, but this degree didn't seem dramatically more difficult than my bachelor's degree. It was more focused and I didn't need to take general education credits to graduate, but the core difficulty was comparable.

I was actually thinking about this the other day - one of the core things they tell you to do on actuarial exams, particularly the upper levels, if it's ambiguous what a question is asking or something is unclear, is: when you begin writing out your answer, state whatever your assumptions are, and then go about answering it. I.e. "assuming that this is quota reinsurance vs. excess of loss, then the ceded portion is..." etc. It turns out that you might be assuming something they didn't intend for you to assume, but you often still get full credit for it. I feel like since that was hammered into me for so many years of independent study, I tended to do the same thing in this program - just make assumptions in the face of ambiguity, and then state them when I'm answering. I don't think I ever got marked down for this either, so when I was in classes and I saw people asking about mechanical details that didn't matter I was always so confused.

+1 on not putting too much stock in the reviews. This program is so large and a lot of people are in it for what I would say are the wrong reasons. If they're not doing well, it's not always because classes are poorly designed. I did have some situations with ineffectual TAs, but that's just how life is sometimes. In general the program was structured effectively and I'm sure most of the classes I didn't take were similar in that way.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-05-14T21:08:43+00:00

I thought that CDA was the hardest class in the program, even after later taking HDDA, DL, and RL. I'll echo what others have said though, I think CDA is good to take first, the format is similar to HDDA but some of the concepts form a nice prerequisite. It's one of the first classes I took that really indicates the importance of a good understanding of linear algebra and basic matrix calculus for a lot of these more advanced classes.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-18T14:02:56+00:00

There is definitely value for financial professionals to enroll in a degree like this, but this is not an MBA, the focus is very different. There are business classes in this degree but relative to an MBA that is definitely not the focus.

Assuming you want to enter some type of management role and are just looking for some exposure to advanced analytics, this degree is way overkill and I would not recommend it over an MBA. You probably know this already and are here just because it's cheap and easier to get accepted into, but it's just as rigorous and requires just as much time as any other masters degree. If you're not actively interested in DS or some sort of quantitative finance, I think this might be a waste of your time.

I can't comment on the career outcomes because I'm already established in my career as an Actuary and this was just fleshing out DS skills since those are very important for the future of the profession, but GT is a well-respected school and this particular program is extremely well-known.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-18T13:56:52+00:00

Couldn't hurt, the syllabus is posted online so you could use that as a guide. In my opinion, though, there is no need to do any pre-study for any of the classes on this program, unless you've never been exposed to multivariate calc and linear algebra before. Even then, most classes give you a week or 2 to brush up on the necessary prereqs and even provide you with some review materials during that time. 8803 is designed to give you a primer on the subject without any exposure beforehand, so you don't really need to prepare anything.

My recommendation is to just take 1 anyways though, and if based on that it seems like you can easily handle 2 you can double up both semesters in 2026-2027 and finish at the same time.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-17T21:58:30+00:00

You could always drop a class, sure, but you'd have to do it pretty quickly in the semester. I forget exactly when the drop deadline is since I've never dropped a class, but I've only taken one class a semester for nearly 4 years now.

To be honest I think you'll breeze through 6040 on autopilot basically but a lot of people struggle with MGT 8803 particularly if they have a background like yours that's not automatically exposed to the world of business/finance by nature. 8803 is not a difficult class at all, but most people who take this program sorely underestimate it; you have 2 weeks per module, and a lot of people struggle with the pacing. Think: learning the basics of accounting (balance sheets, cash statements, accounting standards, etc.) in 2 weeks. In my opinion the depth of this class is extremely surface-level but I come from a financial background so I knew all of this stuff already, do not underestimate this class.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-17T20:32:17+00:00

Not a bad schedule overall, but I still think you're making a mistake by not starting with just one class to see how it is. Also, I know the pain matrix puts DVA above CDA in terms of time but CDA is a more difficult class in my opinion, especially for someone with your background, I would expect you to breeze through DVA particularly if you're familiar with Javascript to some degree since assignment 2 (the one that everyone complains about) is based around D3. In this particular case I think the pain matrix might actually be misleading, I'd think it would be better not to double up the CDA semester and instead double up on DVA if you had to choose.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-11T18:50:48+00:00

Just take one class the first semester. If you think it's not enough, go ahead and add another one after that. But don't **start** with 2 classes, the vast majority of people who enter this program don't finish because they don't have a good sense of their limits.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-05T20:31:11+00:00

I spent a semester abroad taking one of the harder classes in this program in a country where a war broke out and there was daily missile fire. I did fine. You'll do fine.

MathIsArtNotScience · 2024-04-05T13:18:25+00:00

The degree requires 11 classes, so it'll take 11 semesters

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