Absolute Value

April 2013

A background in statistics can be a big plus on the job market

CARL BIALIK

BY

Students who study statistics have the numbers in their favor. The explosive
growth in data available to businesses and researchers has brought a surge
in demand for people able to interpret them.
Schools have rushed to keep pace, offering college-level courses to high
school students, while colleges are teaching introductory statistics courses in
packed lecture halls and expanding their statistics departments when the
budget allows.
Fifteen years ago, if you said you were a statistician, people thought either
you worried about baseball scores or about how many people died in New
York last year, says Philip Stark, chair of the University of California,
Berkeley, statistics department. Now theres a recognition that there are
statistical skills involved in everything from genomics to social media to
targeted marketing.
BIG DATA
Growth has been spurred by both supply and demand. More students arrive
in college with an interest in statistics thanks to the launch of an Advanced
Placement exam in the subject in 1997. The number of high school students
taking the college-level test has more than tripled since 2001, to 149,165
last year, according to the College Board.
We see students coming in as freshmen saying they want to be
statisticians, says Robert Gould, who is on the statistics faculty at the
University of California, Los Angeles. That was unheard-of before the AP
test.
In a still-soft jobs market, rising demand for statisticians also has spurred
interest in the field. At the job website icrunchdata in February, There were
28,305 postings for jobs in the statistics, analytics and big data
categories, up from 16,500 three years earlier, according to Todd Nevins, a
site co-founder.
Bethany Vohlers, a junior double-majoring in statistics and computer science
at North Carolina State University, says, I see things in the news all the time
about statisticians and analysts being in high demand. She adds: Ill be on
the front end of this wave.
Dan Thorpe, senior director for analytics and global customer insights at WalMart Stores, attributes the surge in stats jobs not only to the growth in data

available to companies such as Wal-Mart about customers behavior and

preferences, but also to increased competition in the field. That has pushed
companies to get better at data analytics than their competitors, the same
way awareness of analytics has driven competition among statistically savvy
executives in baseball.
HUMANS REQUIRED
Many observers also point to a comment by Google chief economist Hal
Varian, published in January 2009, as a key moment in the cultural shift
toward statistics. Dr. Varian told the McKinsey Quarterly, I keep saying the
sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.
He expects the demand for statisticians will persist. Data availability is
going to continue to grow, Dr. Varian says. To make that data useful is a
challenge. Its generally going to require human beings to do it.
Joe Blitzstein, professor of statistics at Harvard University, thinks some of the
buzz about statistics careers is overblown. However, he says he expects only
slower growth, not a collapse, in the market for statisticians. One reason is
that the trend isnt dependent on one industry, but on an entire economy
seeing the value in data. Were not seeing lots and lots of statistics startup
companies, he says. What were seeing is every company out there seeing
the importance of working intelligently with data.
There have been growing pains. Some business executives seeking to hire
statisticians say academic departments are doing a good job teaching
statistical tools but could do better at teaching ways to apply those tools.
The bulk of the people coming out with statistics degrees are technically
competent but theyre missing the consultative and the soft skills, everything
else they need to be successful, Dr. Thorpe says.
Also, some departments dont have the budget to add faculty or classes. And
departments with the funds to grow can find it difficult to attract qualified
candidates.
Finding Ph.D.s in statistics who are willing to devote themselves to teaching
is getting harder and harder, says Richard De Veaux, professor of
mathematics and statistics at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.
Everybody wants them.
Ms. Vohlers, at N.C. State, says she still occasionally gets negative reactions
when she tells classmates her major. They look at me funny and say, Stats?
I hate it, she says. Its a little bit reassuring. It means Ill have a little less
competition in the job market.

PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ON A

SEPARATE MS WORD DOC:
1. Why is statistics a growing field?
2. How are educational institutions responding to demand for statistics
graduates?
3. Why does Google economist Hal Varian see demand for statisticians
growing over the next 10 years?
4. Why are some colleges struggling to expand their statistics programs?