[drallison]

She should start by learning the mathematics and statistics that she will need to do the theory and the analytics necessary for her research. Then she can learn how the mathematical and statistical ideas can be applied using tools such as Matlab. Programming is seductive, because of the instant feedback it provides, but it does not provide much insight; math and statistics provides insight but connections may be obscured by a sea of data. What's needed is the combination of the two.