"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 15:01:54 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip

He's headed for a PhD in economics, with a master's in math along the way.
His responsibilities at work are evolving. But his interest now is in
learning basic programming, with an eye to learning something useful for
his
work. He doesn't really know what he's going to do with it. He does NOT
want
to be a professional programmer, although knowing the basics probably will
help him.

snip
If at all possible, it is suggested that he take at least
one and possibly several courses in econometrics/political
econometrics as these techniques scrub out most of the
theorizing and replace it with data driven and empirically
verified conclusions.

Yeah, he studied econometrics at the undergrad level, and econometrics is
what his department does. He's very numbers-driven in his economics work.
That's what they emphasized in the econ program at Washington & Lee, and
that's what he'll be doing with the applied math master's program at
Georgetown, if he decides to go there. The Univ. of Maryland has a good
program in that, too, and he can get to either with public transportation.

He just took the GREs and scored 800 on the math portion. They accepted him
over the phone at Georgetown. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress