TITLE: Technical phd after 33
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: Is it a good idea to get a math/stats/theoretical cs phd after 33 in the hope of becoming a professor? I am an electrical engineer who did his phd in EE at a low ranked school. I have been working in industry with a lost soul. I did enjoy my research and published quite a few papers. I have taken courses till Algebraic number theory and audited lectures on etale cohomology. I am thinking of a decent school like UCLA or UC Berkeley to pursue a second doctorate.

REPLY [11 votes]: In my opinion, people are not giving the OP enough credit for already having a PhD in a related field.  This means s/he has a better grasp of what it means to get a PhD than 99% of the general population, has already shown considerable technical skill, the drive to complete a task which requires years of hard work, and so forth.  
So far as I know, by far the most common reason for someone to drop out of a doctoral program in math (or any discipline) is that they just didn't really know what they were getting into: they had no way of properly gauging the scope and amount of work involved.  
I am currently involved in graduate admissions at UGA.  I have only been doing this for a little while, so my ideas may change, but at the moment if I saw a candidate who had a decent undergraduate background, test scores within the normal range of our successful applicants (e.g., greater than 50% on the math subject GRE) and already had a PhD, I would be tempted to put them towards the top of the list.  Thinking it through as a hypothetical admissions decision, my only major concern would be that the candidate's undergraduate background may not be as fresh or relevant as that of our other strong applicants.  Thus I would recommend taking a few math classes at the advanced undergraduate level.  With good performance on those, I see no reason not to count the candidate's previous experience as an advantage, rather than his/her age as a disadvantage.