Why Statistics is the next sexy profession

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, recently said, “The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians.” On the Dataspora blog, Michael Driscoll explains why. The sex appeal comes from three core skills: an understanding ofstatistical principles, the ability to “munge” data into forms suitablefor analysis, and the ability to tell stories with data through visualization. (I particularly appreciated the distinction between exploratory and presentation graphics on that last point.) Put all three skills together, and you have an awesome, sexy job.

Dataspora: The Three Sexy Skills of Data Geeks

SDC Editor’s Note: I owe an apology to David M. Smith and Michael Driscoll. When I approved David’s post earlier this evening, I mistakenly thought the RSS feed had been truncated and clicked on the link to fetch the rest of the article. In so doing, I actually grabbed Michael’s entire post instead. My apologies to them and our readers. Be sure to go read Michael’s post. It’s terrific. Jerry Bowles