Statistical work: the changing occupational landscape

Abstract

It never was the case that only statisticians work with statistics, but the occupational landscape is becoming more and more diverse. This chapter looks at the work of statisticians and data scientists, but also at how journalists, campaigners, and academics such as economists and psychologists work with statistics, and how the resulting variety of approaches and orientations shapes the discipline of statistics and how it is seen. I consider the following questions. First, who analyses what data? In particular, how do two relatively new occupations, data scientist and data journalist, fit in? Second, who presents the results to which audiences, and in particular, how are statistical findings communicated to the general public? Third, who defines what statistical analyses are appropriate, and to what extent is the ‘replication crisis’ really a crisis for statistics? Fourth, who trains whom in working with data, and how might that depend on the influence of data science? None of these questions have straightforward answers. There have been and continue to be changes in all of them. They all involve people who would not be described, by themselves or others, as ‘statisticians’.