What do you like about the Master's specialisation and why?
I like the fact that the programme lays a solid foundation for further research. In my case that would be stochastics. There were courses that were introductory to certain aspects of stochastics (e.g. finance, estimation theory) which used my basic knowledge of mathematics to quickly ramp up the difficulty and touch on the interesting parts of the topics. If I was lacking in any field, there was room to follow introductory courses (on Bachelor's level if necessary) to get up to speeds for the Master's level.
What do you think about the atmosphere in class?
The atmosphere is quite relaxed, but productive. The small group sizes (5 to 15) allowed for extensive one-on-one help when needed and enough comradery to tackle problems together, which was encouraged.
What do you find most challenging in your Master’s specialisation?
The most challenging aspect was the organisation of the specialisation. Due to the programme being recently set up, the list of required courses was not entirely fleshed out. The examination committee was quite allowing however, when faced with a programme that was not entirely in accordance to the prescribed recipe. Another difficult part was the varying levels of difficulty of the courses. Some were very difficult compared to their EC, when others were very light. Luckily, all students helped each other to find out how difficult every course was in the programme.
Are you currently doing an internship? Or what is your thesis about?
I am doing an internship at the RadboudUMC, on the development of a two stage method, for finding and testing for interaction effects within genetic research. Big data, hypothesis testing and independence are a large part of the thesis.
What are your plans once have received your Master's degree?
With my degree, I can use the basic knowledge of the large number of topics to analyse practically any data-related problem. If it proves too difficult, I can easily research the relevant topic and quickly understand the advanced methods. This allows me to come up with a quick and dirty solution using my intuition of mathematics, and if given more time, do more research to find elegant solutions using the theory of mathematics.