Any Statisticians in da house?

[fkesj24]

I was wondering if anyone is a Statistician or studying Statistics.
How is the job market like? How do you like your job?
I have a degree in a healthcare related field, but have also taken 2 stats courses for research and have knowledge of SAS and R software. I have been thinking about going the statistics route (perhaps incorporating health sciences as well)

[envirodude]

Not a statistician here, but I work in public health. I always advise people to follow their passions in career choices, so if you love stats, go for it. I perceive a huge need for qualified statisticians in health, but that is based on my INTJish desire to see things done "right". You see a lot of very poorly done stats, but whether organisations see the value added by correct statistical analysis is less clear to me.

For example, I'm trying to convince my department to hire a GIS analyst, but because of the culture, and the fact that none of the medical staff/ upper-mgt understand GIS, they haven't seen the value yet. Stats may be similarly undervalued in small departments - but if you work in a larger organisation or a research environment, you are more likely to be prized and coveted (and maybe even compensated accordingly, but don't count on it in health care!)

[Wongette]

Stats is tremendously useful in any field. For one thing, it helps you sniff out the "bullshit" factor when people present data, studies, and conclusions to you. I've also found that having stats lets you communicate more intelligently across many fields and topics, because stats is often a common language (though with dialects) across public health, engineering, many of the social sciences, etc.

[rbc]

I was wondering if anyone is a Statistician or studying Statistics.
How is the job market like? How do you like your job?
My background in statistics is only in the one lab class I took as a physics major in college. However, that, plus the interest and ability to pick up and read advanced research in the field whenever I wish, has made me the go-to guy on statistics in my engineering consulting company. It works really well! As a theoretical physicist, my main experimental interest was always in error estimation: how well were we able to measure, and how does that affect what we can learn from the measurement? I get a great deal of satisfaction out of being the official error bar calculator at work.
I perceive a huge need for qualified statisticians in health, but that is based on my INTJish desire to see things done "right". You see a lot of very poorly done stats, but whether organisations see the value added by correct statistical analysis is less clear to me.
There is a huge need for qualified statisticians in every field which tries to make decisions based on data, which is almost all of them! I agree that most of what I see is very poorly done, and people in general are very bad at understanding just how much it is safe to read into a particular data set. Unfortunately, I also agree that most organizations do not realize how much they need the help of a good statistician. Happily, it has also been my experience that upon being shown what good statistical analysis actually is, most organizations become very eager for more.
I'm trying to convince my department to hire a GIS analyst, but because of the culture, and the fact that none of the medical staff/ upper-mgt understand GIS, they haven't seen the value yet.
Have you showed them the map of the London wells and the cholera cases? That is probably the clearest medical analysis ever made!
Stats is tremendously useful in any field. For one thing, it helps you sniff out the "bullshit" factor when people present data, studies, and conclusions to you.
"Bullshit detector" is a pretty good summary of my job duties. :) The government assigns ex-pilots and history majors to make billion-dollar acquisitions of esoteric electrical engineering projects. They know they have no chance of understanding the technical background, so they pay my company to provide them someone like me as a sidekick. My job is to listen to the sales pitch presented at the program review, and tell the colonel my customer how much and about what the developer who wants his money is lying to him. My general physics background is helpful, but a thorough grounding in statistics is even more important!
I've also found that having stats lets you communicate more intelligently across many fields and topics, because stats is often a common language (though with dialects) across public health, engineering, many of the social sciences, etc.
This crossover causes me to get lots of funny looks from my company librarian. :) We subscribe to all sorts of physics and electronics publications, but I am the only one who ever asks for back issues of Biometrika or the Journal of Epidemiology -- which I want precisely because they have some of the best articles in general statistics.

[alex3ff]

I agree with everyone above that knowledge of stats is incredibly useful professionally.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but it's also incredibly hard to understand at anything past the plug and play level. Like if you want to study it even at the bachelors level, prepare to be taxed, and hard. You might end up abusing ritalin just to keep up. I've heard this is a common practice amongst math majors. Of all the classes of both undergrad. and grad. school that I took, undergrad prob n stats was probably my 6th hardest class, and graduate statistical signal processing was probably the 3rd, this out of probably 40 some courses total.

I'm encouraging you to do it, but be prepared to get dragged through the streets of mind bending mathematica by your heels :)

[PrometheusENTJ]

I was wondering if anyone is a Statistician or studying Statistics.
How is the job market like? How do you like your job?
I have a degree in a healthcare related field, but have also taken 2 stats courses for research and have knowledge of SAS and R software. I have been thinking about going the statistics route (perhaps incorporating health sciences as well)

I have an advanced degree in Statistics. I love my job and the fact that I can take my knowledge to any industry, any product, any channel, any country! Want to know more?

[Americano]

Want to know more?

Yes please. I'm considering getting a masters in mathematical statistics. It definitely looks like a flexible profession, but how mobile is it? For example can statisticians freelance?

[fkesj24]

I will send a priv message to you PrometheusENTJ.

did you have to know calculus before hand? I have not taken calc, but after working service type jobs, I am eager for math.