Why Statistics?

The job market in statistics is extremely strong, and has been so for many years. We regularly send our better students on to graduate study at UCLA, USC and elsewhere, usually in combination with paid on-the-job training. See the careers/jobs page for more information.

Statistics is a varied and intellectually stimulating field. It lies at the intersection of classical analysis from pure mathematics, numerical analysis from applied mathematics, and real data and urgent questions from the client. The structure of probability models ties it all together.

Modern statistics is the language of science, in the designed experiment and the p-value. It is at the forefront of computing, with very large scale problems in image processing, data mining, and graphical representation of data in high dimensions. (How do you draw a scatterplot in five dimensions???) It is fundamental to business and finance, with the market survey and quality control in manufacturing

Modern statistics is also why we live so long: our unprecedented expected life spans, up from 40 years in 1900 to over 80 years now, are a direct consequence of the application of statistics in public health surveys and randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. Indeed, the first professor of statistics was appointed through the efforts of Florence Nightingale, who’s mission in life was to reduce the appallingly high mortality rates in the late 1800’s.*

Your statistics professors here at CSUF will try to give you a taste of the excitement we sometimes feel when we get our hands on a messy, tangled, and important data set, and unravel its story piece by piece.

*For this fascinating story, read the chapters on Public Health in Roy Porter’s book The History of Medicine.