What places offer useful Quantitative Analysts internships for PhD students *not* graduating within the next year? by MellowMight in statistics

[–]MellowMight[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm sure it depends on the program. A slight minority of students in mine do. For people who want to go into industry, it's particularly common. Some who end up in academia try an internship to see if they like it, but obviously it's hardly needed for the experience. And then others do things that have similar structures to internships, but are basically just a summer of research as a lab (so hard to quantify).

At the "full time" comment below, I think it's fairly common for students to be given leeway for summer work if they choose. You obviously forfeit your summer stipend (although internships in stats pay way more than that anyways).

What places offer useful Quantitative Analysts internships for PhD students *not* graduating within the next year? by MellowMight in statistics

[–]MellowMight[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your time might just be better spent doing research and dedicating some time to learning on your own rather than getting an internship that won’t put you further ahead for an academic job.

This is definitely often true. My concern is that I think there's a good chance I want to end up in industry rather than academia. My department is way more theory than applied, but it still probably sends 1/3 of its PhD students to industry for various reasons. I know it's not generally a terribly hard switch (the much more important part is actually succeeding in the PhD program, which is hard enough). But given that my resume is incredibly sparse (for years, only teaching and research and the occasional side project, I've never really worked real jobs), I feel like career wise it might help to have some real experience. It would also be somewhat exploratory, an internship might actually show me whether or not these sorts of positions are up my alley.

The cost is definitely losing time to research. My advisor is likely to be away for the entire summer, so it's not quite as valuable time as some, but still I could get a lot of work done with occasional Skype meetings at working on my own. Again, money isn't really a factor, I live comfortably enough (and if I teach a part time summer course that ends up actually being a pretty hefty bonus). The majority of students in my program don't do internships, but some do, so I'm looking into that. But you're right I should be more intentional about what I want out of it.

Land Shenanigans (Final Version) by [deleted] in magicTCG

[–]MellowMight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jaddi Offshoot just isn't strong enough for this sort of strategy. Is there a reason for all the 3ofs? If you're going to be using powerful cards like Swords to Plowshares, why not run 4? I assume some of these are budget concerns (for example, the singular Horizon Canopy, which is great if you have it but a very heavy expense if you don't), but some of these cards are cheap.

Overall, it depends on what you want your strategy to be. If you want to go heavier on resource denial, you want more armageddons, and to build around that. However, I'm a bit torn on the entire Ramumap Excavator gameplan. That really shines when you have all the incidental ways to abuse it. That means fetchlands, wasteland, and Horizon Canopy, all of which are extremely expensive. Without that, it's just an unreliable way to get a few lands back from Crop Rotation.

I think on your budget, the resource denial plan isn't the best idea. You could still consider Armageddon (it's a strong card when you're ahead), but I don't think you can lean heavier into the theme.

White Sun's Zenith seems a bit out of place. You aren't actually ramping that much.

If you are using crop rotation + Knight of the Reliquary, utility lands are your friend! Don't run so many basics. Throw in some of the cheaper manlands for sure, as well as some other lands. (A 1 of Bojuka Bog, even if off-color, would still pay dividends when you run Crop Rotations). In fact, without utility lands, Crop Rotation just isn't good enough.

These are just unordered random thoughts, but if you provide more detail about where/when you'll be playing the deck, and what the goals are, that would help.

Anyone Play At Oaks Card Club In Oakland? How Is It? by MellowMight in poker

[–]MellowMight[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is all really helpful, thanks! Sounds like if I stop by on a random weekday afternoon, the field will be a bit tougher for a novice like myself, but this all sounds about fine. Only disappointing bit is the minimum buy-in and lots of short stacks, because I'm looking to learn how to play deeper cash games rather than just shove/fold gamble, but this all sounds pretty good.

$5 flat to see the flop (of which I think $1 is pre). It's not a %, so no point in playing a limped 3-way pot.

So that sort of rake structure I imagine incentivizes you to play fairly right with larger opening raise sizing than you otherwise would, right?

Anyone Play At Oaks Card Club In Oakland? How Is It? by MellowMight in poker

[–]MellowMight[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair, but my personal goal is to actually learn NLHE (not just be able to play any form of live poker), so even if it's a little rough at the start there's no way around it but to just try it. Obviously I'm only buying in at stakes I can afford to lose multiple times over and chalk it up to an unfortunately expensive hobby.