MINI CASE 16.1
What can you expect if you look for a career in statistics?

Will it be all multiple regression?

You might find it interesting to visit the website of the Royal Statistical Society (www.rss.org.uk) where they do discuss the career opportunities available and the professional qualifications. Statistics finds many areas of applications including health, biology, industry, government and education, and the career opportunities are equally as diverse. You will find most careers in statistics involve more than just working with numbers. Like most jobs, working with people, whether colleagues or customers, is particularly important. You will be expected to have a good understanding of the products, services or issues that your work involves. You will also be expected to give clarity to any work that you do. The statistics you produce are only as meaningful as the data you collect.
The management of data continues to be a fundamental skill and a good knowledge of spreadsheets and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences - see www.spss.com) could be critical. It is unlikely that you would ever know all the features of EXCEL or SPSS but you should have sufficient knowledge to judge what analysis you need to do and whether it is adequate. EXCEL and SPSS software packages both provide useful HELP functions, tutorial support and practice data.

The Royal Statistical Society website also provides a useful overview of statistics work in various areas including the importance of the work, what the career entails, the employers, the qualifications required, salaries and useful web links. This is what was said about a career in market research: The proportion of time a market research statistician spends actually doing statistics depends on the company and the type of work it does, but may be anything up to about 80 per cent. For this reason, the career is obviously very satisfying for people who want to continue really using statistics in a commercial environment.

As a market research statistician, you will be heavily involved with the research staff who run the individual projects. You will spend a lot of time working in effect as a consultant for these researchers. You will be involved in writing proposals describing how the market research will be carried out. These proposals will cover a number of areas of which the most important from the statistical point of view will be the overall research methodology and the calculation of sample sizes and related power for relevant tests. You will have to advise about the design of the investigations; for example, there might be complex rotation plans required if products are being tested or a number of different ideas are being considered in the same piece of research.

Once the data are collected and carefully checked, the statistical analysis itself can begin. The analysis may involve anything from the most simple tests to complex multivariate analyses or modelling. Part of the challenge for the statistician is first to explain the analysis and results to the researcher, who may well have no mathematical/statistical background, and then to work with the researcher to present the results in a way that the company itself will understand.
Source: www.rss.org.uk (accessed 10 November 2011)