17 February 2009

Changing subfields

A statistic I overheard today, from a source that shall remain nameless (in case the source is wrong): three-fourths of mathematics graduate students leave graduate school in a different subfield of mathematics from when they came in.

Can anybody point me to a source?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I feel like "subfield" is so ill-defined a term, and people's subfield is so poorly defined at the beginning of grad school that I don't feel like there should exist a truly meaningful number like this.

On the other hand, it does happen all the time (I'm an example), and people starting graduate school should be aware of this.