Cabrera, J. Statistical consulting. New York, NY: Springer. Coleman, S. Greenfield, D. Stewardson, and D. Statistical practice in business and industry. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Derr, J. Statistical consulting: A guide to effective communication. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury. Hahn G. The role of statistics in business and industry.
A career in statistics: Beyond the numbers. Hoerl, R. Hooper, P. Jacobs, and J. Skills for industrial statisticians to survive and prosper in the emerging quality environment. The American Statistician 47 4 — Kenett, R. Aspects of statistical consulting not taught by academia PDF download.
Statistica Nederlandica 60 3 — Kotz, S. Campbell, N. Read, and B. Encyclopedia of statistical sciences , second edition. McDonald, G. Shaping statistics for success in the 21st century: The needs of industry. The American Statistician 53 3 — The completely sufficient statistician. Rawlings, J. Some pearls of wisdom. Snee, R. Nonstatistical skills that can help statisticians become more effective. Total Quality Management Journal 9 8 — Spurrier, J.
The practice of statistics: Putting the pieces together. Szabo, F. Boston, MA: Academic Press. Valaitis, E. Tips for statisticians starting a career in business. Your customers, and sometimes even your management, may have little understanding and a limited idea of the potential contributions of statistics and statisticians.
You must speak the language of your customers—and not expect them to be proficient in yours. Statistical jargon must be avoided. You have to get across key ideas, conclusions, and recommendations succinctly and effectively in one-on-one or small-group settings, more formal presentations, and written communications. The ability to be quick on your feet is an important part of communicating effectively. This is especially important in such situations as fielding questions from your CEO or agency or department head, or when, as an expert witness, you are under cross-examination or, as a government statistician, informing the media or the general public.
And a significant part of being a good communicator is being a good listener. A genuine interest in others, an outgoing personality, and diplomatic skills are also highly important. So is the ability to network with colleagues with backgrounds and training that may be different from your own.
You need to be good at sizing up and diagnosing problems, appreciating their context and broader implications, and assessing their importance. As a discipline it is concerned with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, as well as the effective communication and presentation of results relying on data.
Statistics lies at the heart of the type of quantitative reasoning necessary for making important advances in the sciences, such as medicine and genetics, and for making important decisions in business and public policy.
From medical studies to research experiments, from satellites continuously orbiting the globe to ubiquitous social network sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, from polling organizations to United Nations observers, data are being collected everywhere and all the time. Knowledge in statistics provides you with the necessary tools and conceptual foundations in quantitative reasoning to extract information intelligently from this sea of data. At Boston University undergraduates can pursue studies in statistics, through degree programs in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics , in a number of ways.
Statisticians are in demand in all sectors of society, ranging from government, to business and industry, to universities and research labs. Sometimes, you may misrepresent your evidence by accident and misunderstanding. Other times, however, misrepresentation may be slightly less innocent. This can be seen most readily in visual aids. Either the range can be shortened to cut out data points which do not fit, e. Furthermore, do not fiddle with the proportions, either vertically or horizontally.
Charts A, B, and C all use the same data points, but the stories they seem to be telling are quite different. Chart A shows a mild increase, followed by a slow decline. Chart B, on the other hand, reveals a steep jump, with a sharp drop-off immediately following.
Conversely, Chart C seems to demonstrate that there was virtually no change over time. These variations are a product of changing the scale of the chart. One way to alleviate this problem is to supplement the chart by using the actual numbers in your text, in the spirit of full disclosure. Another point of concern can be seen in Charts D and E. Both use the same data as charts A, B, and C for the years , but additional time points, using two hypothetical sets of data, have been added back to Given the different trends leading up to , consider how the significance of recent events can change.
In Chart D, the downward trend from to is going against a long-term upward trend, whereas in Chart E, it is merely the continuation of a larger downward trend after a brief upward turn.
One of the difficulties with visual aids is that there is no hard and fast rule about how much to include and what to exclude. Judgment is always involved. In general, be sure to present your visual aids so that your readers can draw their own conclusions from the facts and verify your assertions. Because percentages are always derived from a specific base, they are meaningless until associated with a base.
Suppose we have two cities, Springfield and Shelbyville. Which city is having a bigger murder problem? It has to be Springfield. Hold on a second, because this is actually much less clear than it looks. In order to really know which city has a worse problem, we have to look at the actual numbers. If I told you that Springfield had 4 murders last year and 7 this year, and Shelbyville had 30 murders last year and 33 murders this year, would you change your answer?
Maybe, since 33 murders are significantly more than 7. One would certainly feel safer in Springfield, right? Not so fast, because we still do not have all the facts. We have to make the comparison between the two based on equivalent standards. To do that, we have to look at the per capita rate often given in rates per , people per year. If Springfield has residents while Shelbyville has 3. The residents of Springfield are dropping like flies. Percentages are really no different from any other form of statistics: they gain their meaning only through their context.
Consequently, percentages should be presented in context so that readers can draw their own conclusions as you emphasize facts important to your argument. Remember, if your statistics really do support your point, then you should have no fear of revealing the larger context that frames them.
Now that you have learned the lessons of statistics, you have two options. Use this knowledge to manipulate your numbers to your advantage, or use this knowledge to better understand and use statistics to make accurate and fair arguments. The choice is yours. Nine out of ten writers, however, prefer the latter, and the other one later regrets his or her decision. You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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