# Law School vs. Masters in Computer Science or Data Science?



## MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls (Nov 2, 2020)

I'm a high profile accountant with 10 years of experience. I'm getting an MBA and it's pretty easy. I'm planning on doing something after like Law or Computer science. I always want the option to work on my own cause that's what America is about and I'm American, through and through. Yet at the same time, I'm always curious about programming and computers. I did a few years of computer science and was doing very well in my classes but I started having dreams of Anubis licking my face in ancient egypt every night so I just progressed my career in accounting.

Any tips? Maybe there is someone who did both? Please give me some lighthearted commentary on the matter. I won't take anything beyond a grain of salt but I would definately enjoy reading your two/thirds of half a penny.


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## LeafStew (Oct 17, 2009)

I use to be in accounting (in short I didn't do CPA, so I decided to take another path to make a better salary), now doing business intelligence (finishing my master and already working in the field). There's a good value added to mix business and computer sciences knowledge in the specialization of business intelligence. You have to understand the need of the business in order to provide them value and productivity gains. If you have admnisitration background you have the tools to make strategic dashboards, reports and process that help the company make better decision and indirectly more money. All you need is a bit of technical knowledge to go with that foundation.

I say you need to check if you like programing in business intelligence you use mostly SQL which isn't too hard to learn, some job require VBA too (if the company use Excel and Access extensively). If you have to code ETL from scratch you could also need to learn another language like Java or C#, a lot of company use ETL software so you don't have to code that. Sometimes depending on how the job is split between department, you could be a business analyst and you take the needs/requirements of the business and bring them to the developpers and you don't have to code that much.

If you want to do data sciences, you need to master Python (sometimes you can use R too). There's a lot of libraries in python to do all kinds of stuff. Usually they require a Master or a Phd to be a data scientist.


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## MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls (Nov 2, 2020)

LeafStew said:


> I use to be in accounting (in short I didn't do CPA, so I decided to take another path to make a better salary), now doing business intelligence (finishing my master and already working in the field). There's a good value added to mix business and computer sciences knowledge in the specialization of business intelligence. You have to understand the need of the business in order to provide them value and productivity gains. If you have admnisitration background you have the tools to make strategic dashboards, reports and process that help the company make better decision and indirectly more money. All you need is a bit of technical knowledge to go with that foundation.
> 
> I say you need to check if you like programing in business intelligence you use mostly SQL which isn't too hard to learn, some job require VBA too (if the company use Excel and Access extensively). If you have to code ETL from scratch you could also need to learn another language like Java or C#, a lot of company use ETL software so you don't have to code that. Sometimes depending on how the job is split between department, you could be a business analyst and you take the needs/requirements of the business and bring them to the developpers and you don't have to code that much.
> 
> If you want to do data sciences, you need to master Python (sometimes you can use R too). There's a lot of libraries in python to do all kinds of stuff. Usually they require a Master or a Phd to be a data scientist.


Definately not getting a Phd but a masters is do-able. Thanks..that's another angle i didn't consider.


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## xraydav (Jan 3, 2013)

MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls said:


> I'm a high profile accountant with 10 years of experience. I'm getting an MBA and it's pretty easy. I'm planning on doing something after like Law or Computer science. I always want the option to work on my own cause that's what America is about and I'm American, through and through. Yet at the same time, I'm always curious about programming and computers. I did a few years of computer science and was doing very well in my classes but I started having dreams of Anubis licking my face in ancient egypt every night so I just progressed my career in accounting.
> 
> Any tips? Maybe there is someone who did both? Please give me some lighthearted commentary on the matter. I won't take anything beyond a grain of salt but I would definately enjoy reading your two/thirds of half a penny.


Do what you're more skilled at. I've done Law, if you're not good at it in the first few courses, nothing magical is gonna come your way and help you there. Better to do computer science if you're sure you're good at it already


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## Drecon (Jun 20, 2016)

In general I'd say that computer science is more about teamwork and communication and law is more about logical arguments and research of specific cases. There's a lot of overlap in skills required, but I also think there's a lot of difference in the types of people that study it. 

If you want to work on your own I'm not sure if either one of these is perfect. Computer science is always done in large teams where everyone works together on a product and law is practiced in firms where there's a strict chain of command. There's a lot of room in either one though to be independent in how you do your things.


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## MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls (Nov 2, 2020)

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. Definitely something to consider.


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## Handsome Dyke (Oct 4, 2012)

MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls said:


> I did a few years of computer science and was doing very well in my classes but I started having dreams of Anubis licking my face in ancient egypt every night


What the hell does this mean?


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## MrBigStickAndSoccerBalls (Nov 2, 2020)

Saiyed Handsome **** said:


> What the hell does this mean?


It means that I had regressed to a state that existed even before my physical birth and that I was living in ancient times.

So I took it to mean that I should back out. Anubis is the Dog headed god of dreams. In this dream he was my martial arts instructor - a hot tempered fiery and quite large German who stood around 6'5" and tried to take my head off regularly during training. So you see...I decided to well, switch back to business.


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## counterintuitive (Apr 8, 2011)

I'm a data scientist. In my experience, Python and R are the most commonly used languages, similar to what @LeafStew said. I mostly use Python and also have used SQL in past jobs. Generally prefer to use Python for the object-oriented programming. I have a master's degree; I'd say that's not necessary but strongly preferred in the job market. Most of the data scientists I've worked with have a bachelor's or master's, but rarely PhD.


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## LeafStew (Oct 17, 2009)

counterintuitive said:


> I'm a data scientist. In my experience, Python and R are the most commonly used languages, similar to what @LeafStew said. I mostly use Python and also have used SQL in past jobs. Generally prefer to use Python for the object-oriented programming. I have a master's degree; I'd say that's not necessary but strongly preferred in the job market. Most of the data scientists I've worked with have a bachelor's or master's, but rarely PhD.


Would you say data scientist mostly work with a lot of data and apply some data processing on it to provide information? Like they take data, clean it and then apply statistical algorythm and machine learning on top of it?


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## counterintuitive (Apr 8, 2011)

LeafStew said:


> Would you say data scientist mostly work with a lot of data and apply some data processing on it to provide information? Like they take data, clean it and then apply statistical algorythm and machine learning on top of it?


It depends a lot on the job. The full data pipeline can involve everything from data collection (via web scraping, etc.), storage, some kind of ETL stuff, data cleaning, and then the statistical/ML stuff. But in a lot of companies, it's not the same person that does every part of this, there are different roles for different areas.


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## Ewok City (Sep 21, 2020)

Hi, sorry for popping out of nowhere! I noticed that there are a lot of people in Computer Science here, so I can't help but participate in the discussion!😆

I was actually working as a video game developer before deciding to enroll in Bachelor's for Computer Science. But I thought that self-taught programmers won't go as far as degree holders, due to them missing out on the theoretical aspects that is taught in university.

What are your thoughts about it? I heard that Data Science uses a lot of Linear Algebra, is it true?

For someone who's not doing Data Science, have you ever directly implemented any Data Structures or Algorithms that you have learned before in college? Excluding the interview, of course.

Any insights would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!


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## LeafStew (Oct 17, 2009)

counterintuitive said:


> It depends a lot on the job. The full data pipeline can involve everything from data collection (via web scraping, etc.), storage, some kind of ETL stuff, data cleaning, and then the statistical/ML stuff. But in a lot of companies, it's not the same person that does every part of this, there are different roles for different areas.


I know a lot of companies use cloud base suites for their big data, did you have to work with Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud?

Maybe I'm mixing Data Scientist and Data Engineer. I guess both can work together and the jobs can overlap.

I know for Data Engineer, they often ask to be good with Glue, Spark, ElasticSearch. Hadoop or non SQL database like Hbase, MongoDB, Kassandra, etc.


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## Drecon (Jun 20, 2016)

Ewok City said:


> Hi, sorry for popping out of nowhere! I noticed that there are a lot of people in Computer Science here, so I can't help but participate in the discussion!😆
> 
> I was actually working as a video game developer before deciding to enroll in Bachelor's for Computer Science. But I thought that self-taught programmers won't go as far as degree holders, due to them missing out on the theoretical aspects that is taught in university.
> 
> ...


It's not necessarily true. It's true that in corporate environments it's common that a company wants to have a certain style of programmer that works in a certain way. That kind of way of working is often learned in computer science. 
It also depends a lot on the position that you're applying for. If they just want someone who can take orders and produce code, you might be at a disadvantage. However, if they want someone to work in a team and produce solutions to problems, it might actually work to your advantage to have a background in self-taught game development. 

There are no clear-cut answers here and it depends a lot on the types of opportunities that are available to you. It also depends on if you're looking to stay in game development, because if so, education is really of secondary concern. Game studios are mostly just interested in seeing a good portfolio and examples of what you can produce. 

I have definitely used my knowledge of search algorithms, but I must confess that I slept through data structures (the teacher was very boring) and ended up switching to a Bachelor's degree in AI before finishing Computer Science. CS was just too boring for me and AI had all the right ways to stimulate my brain. 

So no clear answers, but maybe this can help in trying to figure out what you want to do.


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## Ewok City (Sep 21, 2020)

Drecon said:


> I have definitely used my knowledge of search algorithms, but I must confess that I slept through data structures (the teacher was very boring)


I see, that's reassuring! 

When I'm working on my assignments, sometimes I wonder why are we learning to write everything from scratch when there are libraries out there that already implements it for us. Like, why make life difficult when it can be easy?



Drecon said:


> So no clear answers, but maybe this can help in trying to figure out what you want to do.


Your answer is definitely helpful! Thank you so much for the explanation.


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## ronron9 (Oct 20, 2020)

If you hate it, don't study it. Go with the subject you're interested in because you can just do postgrad studies at a better university. I used to be in the exact same boat. I did ICT at A-Level as well as AS History. I applied for ICT and then decided to change it to either computer science or law. Before uni started, I reviewed my final decision of studying ICT and decided to go for Law instead. I used this service to get help with my application review. The thing with law is that it has many transferable skills - there is a lot of opportunity and careers that you could enter. Conversely, with ICT the opportunities aren't as broad but it does hold value within the IT world. I am more of a 'talker' so being in an environment where I would be with computers didn't appeal to me. So, personally I went for Law because workings with individuals is more my thing that working in a place with computers!


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