About "Staticians"

It's becoming increasingly apparent that no one can conceive of what Spencer will do as a statician (Grandma Karford's word). I will grant that the connection is not as direct as med school = doctor, law school = lawyer, MBA = businessman, farmer = crops. But he gets these looks—I get these looks—when it comes up in conversation. Blank stares, really. Pittying blank stares.

So in brief,  for the few family members who ever read this blog, statisticians analyze data. All kinds of data. Data about your DNA and about crime in your neighborhood, about air pollution and new medicines and financial regulation and product-line efficiency and on and on and on. Where do they work? Anywhere. Is it a crappy degree? The New York Times doesn't seem to think so: see "For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics." Quote: “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

Anyway, statisticians are also featured on magazine covers, like this one, below, of Jonathan, one of Spencer's stats program buddies. Jonathan is quite possibly the smartest person we've ever met. And he—not an engineering, not a pre-med, not a pre-dental, not a biochemistry student—is the college's poster boy.