>In article <1993Aug29.213231.5582 at c-mols.siu.edu> shriver at qm.c-biochem.siu.edu writes:
>>We are in the middle of a discussion here concerning the pros and cons of
>>having graduate students in biochemistry and molecular biology take a
>>short course in computer programming and data analysis. The molecular
>>biologists feel that this is an old fashioned requirement, while the
>>biophysicists feel that todays students are becoming less and less
>>acquainted with quantitative approaches. I have been asked to determine
>>if any biochemistry or molecular biology graduate programs still require
>>their students to have been exposed to computer programming (in any
>>language) and data analysis.
Definitely, and without question, take a computer programming
course/numerical analysis course at some point. I have background
and degrees in both biochemistry and physical chemistry and both
require these skills to various extents. I thought, while achieving
my biochemistry degree,that I would not need the math skills.
However, while tackling such problems as enzyme kinetics,
radiometric analysis and any kind of spectroscopy, I learned
otherwise and ended up playing alot of "catchup". Also consider
this, the world (like it or not) is all computers and even the
molecular biologists will need the computer graphics capabilities
to do molecular modeling (requiring both math and computer skills)
and sequence analysis/identification.
-Scott
