[ju-st]

I have the impression that at big universities maths is always the #1 topic in CS/ML. So its no surprise their graduates ask the same riddles as their profs.

[screye]

I personally know a few ML professors at my university who are not taking any CS grads as pHDs. They only want people with maths degrees.

A lot of these CS professors are themselves maths grads.

[gaius]

CS is discrete maths, which is not quite the same as statistics.