What is a Statistician?
Statistical methods have applications in almost all areas of science, engineering, business, government, and industry. The practising statistician is involved in such diverse projects as designing clinical trials to test a new drug, economic model-building to evaluate the costs of a guaranteed-income scheme, predicting the outcome of a national election, planning a survey of television viewing habits, and estimating animal populations. Today’s consumer is bombarded with the results of so many quantitative studies using statistical methodology that it is necessary to know something about statistics in order to be properly critical. A basic knowledge of statistics should be an integral part of everyone’s general education. Probability theory is used to analyse the changing balance among age-groups in a population as the birth rate changes, the control force needed to keep an aircraft on course through gusts of wind, the chance that the demand for electricity by all the customers served b
A statistician is a person who works with the mathematical field of statistics. A statistician may specialize in either applied or theoretical statistics. There is a need for a statistician in many different fields, ranging from journalism to the hard sciences to finances, and many people find it to be a lucrative career. A statistician often works in tandem with an expert in a specific field, to apply an understanding of statistics to examining some aspect of that other field. For example, statisticians may work with medical researchers, financiers, insurance agencies, government officials, or environmentalists to help them predict outcomes, analyze existing data, or come up with business models. In the United States, there are roughly 20,000 people who identify themselves as statisticians, and nearly half of them work for the government in some capacity. Although one can study statistics in an undergraduate program at a university, generally a professional statistician possesses at l
The stereotype of a statistician tabulating and summarizing masses of numbers fails to capture the diversity and creativity of statistical work. A statistician does collect and analyze data, but there are many aspects of this work, and as a statistician you will be involved in all of them. You will design sample surveys and laboratory experiments to maximize the information gained within time and budget constraints. You will modify standard analytical techniques so that they can be applied to the available data. You will also spend time educating students and colleagues about what statistics can and cannot do and learning from those colleagues about their problems. Statisticians can be classified as “applied” or “mathematical,” although those with advanced degrees find that they wear either hat as the occasion requires. An applied statistician primarily works at solving problems for and with clients from other disciplines, frequently as a member of a multidisciplinary team. A mathemati
