2007-12-12 05:58:09 · 5 answers · asked by Harmeet l 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Higher Education (University +)
If you ever want to go into research, learn SAS and SPSS. These software packages are used in statistical analyses and are key for doing research studies. It also helps if you take a class in stats or biostats so you know what to do with your results.
Bioinformatics is a burgeoning field and a lot of bio students branch out in this direction. Bioinformatics relies heavily on database management. Start out with MS Access and get comfortable using it. Then learn SQL. Many bioinformatics databases are done in SQL. Using SQL and Access also ties into using SAS, too. Gotta store your data somewhere so you can analyze it later.
Also, you should be comfortable using MS Excel and PowerPoint. PowerPoint isn't difficult, but it's difficult to do well because a lot of people have no sense of design and their presentations wind up being hideous eyesores. If you do research, you spend a lot of time presenting your findings, so please learn to finesse your PowerPoints.
2007-12-12 06:17:32 · answer #1 · answered by Gumdrop Girl 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
First off I wasn't a bio major in college. I'm not sure what specialization of biology you plan on going into. But if you're talking about computational bio, then that specialty of bio would basically be statistics that is applied to biology. I'm very good at stats, and I had used a lot of stats softwares in college.
If it's computational biology that you're really going into, then I would say Stata, maybe. Stata is a very powerful stats software. I wouldn't say it is like excel because it's not. But think of what excel could do... Stata can do almost everything excel could do but way faster, and much much more.
In case you get a chance to learn R. R seems to be used only in the academia. So if you plan on becmoing a PhD then R is probably ok to learn. But don't waste your time on it if you plan on working for a real company.
2007-12-12 06:27:52 · answer #2 · answered by Lylyth 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well a lot depends on what they use in the department.
In some instances SQL or Excell is enough.
The four primary front end langauges are C++, Visual BASIC NET, Perl and C#
A friend of mine did a front end for a clean room indicator in Perl.
C++ is the primary software language
But you can do statistical graphis in Excell
The thing of it is, most of the math operators are the same in most langauges.
2007-12-12 06:38:46 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I wish everyone would have as thorough and complete answer as gumdrop girl. Wow...
2007-12-12 07:42:04 · answer #4 · answered by ConnorWilhem3 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
learn windows...most hospitals use windows operating systems
learn latin, if you can....it's difficult but helps a lot
2007-12-12 06:06:25 · answer #5 · answered by mike 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋