Bioinformatics (Which math and comp sci courses to take?)

[carophil]

Hello, I am starting university this winter and I have a question for those of you who know a little bit about bioinformatics.

My school allows me to take 3 minors (Math,Computer science,Software engineering) and turn them into an applied science Bachelor's degree. This allows me to skip a lot of the humanities and business courses I would otherwise be forced to take and let's me get a much deeper mathematical formation and more compsci credits than the regular formation.

My minor in math has 5 required courses
1.Introduction to scientific programming
2.Calculus 1
3.Linear algebra 1
4.Probability 1
5.Statistics 1

After that, I have to pick 5 math courses to complete my minor. Should I go more into statistics&probability or more into discrete math(like graph theory and combinatorics)? Which would be more useful to someone who wants to become a bioinformatician.

Also for the computer side...What should I really look out for? Should I take all the algorithm design and advanced data base courses or go into another aspect of computer science? Thanks!

 

[carophil]

bump :P

 

[sarbruis]

This should help:

http://www.compbio.cmu.edu/Admissions/prerequisites.html

Make sure to reserve room for some biology courses (it may be a better idea to change the software engineering minor to a Biology one, if that's an option). Also, most of your questions depend on what you mean by "bioinformatics", as it can mean myriad things--it's a very broad field (just look at the wiki page or the research interests of people in the bioinformatics department at a big university). As you go along on your studies you'll discover what's more interesting and what you want to study, and that will direct you to whichever classes you need to take. It's pretty difficult to predict a priori which classes will be more useful without more information; however, if you have all those prerequisites (sans maybe P-chem unless you're into simulations) from the link, you'll be in good shape (for whatever it is you want to do; you haven't stated what).