Post 1 An explanation of Statistics

“What’s your major?”
“Statistics.”
“Oh my god, why do you choose statistics? Do you need to take many mathematics courses?”
“Yes, and I like it.”
“That’s unbelievable.”

This an interesting dialogue happened on me in my chemistry lab this week. At first I confused for his surprise, after a while later, I thought that may because he “hates” numbers like mathematics as many people.

But for now, I have some questions. Do you like mathematics? How do you think about statistics? Do you comprehend the meaning of statistics? Since I am majoring in statistics, today I will introduce this major and this field to you.

Let’s talk about the definition of statistics first. Collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation and organization of data are the main jobs/processes need to be done in statistics. For example, weather forecast is a typical application of statistics nowadays. At the beginning, people need to collect and record the weather situations from the previous years. Then using software like SAS or R to analyze the data. After finish all the preparatory work, the analysis results could be used to serve in our life. That is the rough formation of the weather forecast. Meanwhile, we have many additional examples like weather forecast in statistics in our daily life.

What is the basis of statistics? Like any other engineer subject, mathematical background could deepen understanding in statistical techniques. Most time people who working in the field of statistics have to specialize to calculus because calculus need to be used for calculating the probability. Besides, linear algebra is another basic tool in statistics. This information could be found in job posting or the requirement of graduate school. What’s more, I always think programming skill is also necessary for statistician or data analyst since computer program could finish analysis data faster and accuracy.

I know many people who were graduate from statistics are working in insurance company, bank and survey research company. Working in these company are organizing and clear, which means people just need to complete their own work at most time. However, achieving overall co-ordination is never a bad thing.

The world we are living is component of big data. I heard many people said that we never use statistics in our daily life even we learned a lot about it. But to be honest, I think this idea is total wrong. As I have said, weather forecast is a good example. If you think this example is far from your life. All right, we need to eat every day, we need to sleep every day, and we need to breath every second. But data analysts have analyzed how the agriculture growth, how many hours do we need to sleep for the best state, and even the air pollution index. From these examples, nobody could say statistics is useless.

Here is the basic information about statistics field. I like this major, hope you all have learned more about this area and could like it too.