With data from a 2011 study predicting a surplus of 190,000 jobs for data scientists in the U.S.  by 2022, the American Statistical Association has begun a public relations campaign intended to increase student interest in the statistics field.

The campaign will outline the various career opportunities in statistics, as well as provide information about the different types of research statisticians conduct.

Ron Wasserstein, executive director for the ASA, said one of the major reasons there is a lack of student interest in statistics is due to a lack of awareness about the field.

“The thing is that many colleges don’t have an undergraduate program in statistics, so many students are not even aware about the field,” Wasserstein said. 

Additionally, Wasserstein said many students have a misperception on what a degree in statistics actually entails, and it is not traditionally a number-crunching career.

“Statistics is very different than what they think it is,” Wasserstein said. “Many people think of statistics as a very boring area, but that’s not the case, as there are a large number of fields that statistics is used in.”

Wasserstein said one the most impressive things about the field of statistics is the number of areas that a statistician is able to work in, and many of them are surprising.

“What stands out is how many different fields that statisticians can work in: any area of business, any  production or manufacturing, the pharmaceutical industry and surprising areas like astronomy which also use data, and where there is data, there is a need for statisticians,” Wasserstein said.

Kim Kaull, account coordinator for Stanton Communications, the public relations firm working with the ASA, said one of the goals of the campaign is to disprove the perception that statistics is an unexciting area.

“A lot of students have this perception that statistics is this dry, number-crunching field, and it couldn’t be further from the truth, so we really want to break these biases and misconceptions among students who aren’t familiar with the field,” Kaull said. 

Kaull said there would be a major shortage of statisticians in the future, an estimated 190,000 jobs in 2022, illustrating the greater need to promote statistics among students.

“This shows the tremendous growth of the field, as well as the potential shortage if more students don’t enter the field,” Kaull said.  

Spencer Muse, the undergraduate director of statistics at NC State, said although the university has one of the largest statistics programs in the country, it is still relatively small compared to the undergraduate population.

“So we have one of the largest statistics undergrad programs in the country,” Muse said. “Having said that, it is still a pretty small program compared to things like engineering. I think now we have around 144 students.”

Muse also said although the number of students is relatively small, the proportion of students coming to NC State as statistics majors have increased significantly. 

“Two years ago we had 99 students in the major, so we have grown by 50 percent in the last two years, and proportionally we are seeing quite a large increase,” Muse said. 

Muse said most statistics students are also studying another field.

“Statistics by itself is not very useful,” Muse said. “It’s a helping science. Most of our majors do a minor or add a major in a second field, and nearly two-thirds of the students go on into graduate school.”

Muse said it has been difficult for the statistics department at NC State to simultaneously grow while also maintaining the integrity of the program and managing resources.

“We want to grow, but at the same time, we are kind of at the edge of how many students we can handle with our allocation of resources,” Muse said. “We’re talking a lot about how we can handle that in the short term, and the solution seems to be to make the major quite a bit more selective.”