Why Study Statistics?

“The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.”
- Hal Varian, Chief Economist for Google

Statistics, like mathematics, is a field of study with a broad number of applications in the private and public sectors. Essentially the study of data and learning how to extract information from that data, statistics plays a large role in our public and private lives. Applications and uses for statistics can be applied to practically any field such as public policy, data analysis, social sciences and research, biostatistics, business applications, data science and mining, the medical and pharmacological fields, psychology, political science, veterinary science and even zoology.

In demand in practically all sectors in society, as a statistician you can be involved with the development of new lifesaving drugs in pharmaceuticals, the shaping of public policy in government, the planning of market strategy in business, or the management of investment portfolios in finance. Careers in statistics generally can be quite lucrative, with statisticians of sufficient experience often able to earn six-figure salaries and there are a wide variety of exciting opportunities for statisticians. CareerCast has Statisticians being paid a median salary of $79,990 and job growth is expected to grow by 34% between now and 2022.

Not only do statisticians and mathematicians earn a good salary, they also enjoy higher levels of job satisfaction. CareerCast ranks 200 jobs in 2014 according to environment, income, outlook, physical demands, and stress. Based on these criteria “mathematician” outranks jobs in medicine, finance, engineering and law.

“Overall employment of mathematicians and statisticians is projected to grow 33 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. Businesses will need these workers to analyze the increasing volume of digital and electronic data.”
- Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bureau of Labor Statistics