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Statistician
Collects, analyzes, and interprets data to find patterns and inform decisions.
Did you know?
Florence Nightingale became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society, and her rose diagrams helped persuade officials to improve army hospitals.
How subjects help
- Mathematics: Use probability to work out how likely a result is to happen by pure chance.
- Statistics: Choose a fair sample and find patterns hidden in large piles of data.
- Computer Science: Write code that cleans up messy data and draws clear charts from it.
- Economics: Measure things like prices and jobs to help leaders make better decisions.
A famous name
John Tukey: American statistician who invented the box plot and is credited with coining the word 'bit'.
Try it yourself: Which dice total wins?
- Write the numbers 2 to 12 down the side of your paper. Guess which total will come up most and write your guess at the top.
- Roll both dice, add them, and put a tally mark next to that total. Do at least 36 rolls.
- Look at your tallies. Which total came up most? Which hardly ever?
- Now list every way two dice can make each total (a 7 can be 1+6, 2+5 and so on). Does the number of ways explain your results?
Statisticians and actuaries compare what actually happens with what probability predicts, which is how they price insurance, test medicines and spot when something unusual is going on.
Adapted from NRICH (University of Cambridge): A Bit of a Dicey Problem.
Also try: Run a mini survey.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Australia, Switzerland, India