Desired and feared — What do we do now and over the next 50 years?

Abstract

An intense debate about Harvard University’s General Education Curriculum demonstrates that statistics, as a discipline, is now both desired and feared. With this new status comes a set of enormous challenges. We no longer simply enjoy the privilege of playing in or cleaning up everyone’s backyard. We are now being invited into everyone’s study or living room, and trusted with the task of being their offspring’s first quantitative nanny. Are we up to such a nerve-wracking task, given the insignificant size of our profession relative to the sheer number of our hosts and their progeny? Echoing Brown and Kass’s “What Is Statistics?” (2009), this article further suggests ways to prepare our profession to meet the ever-increasing demand, in terms of both quantity and quality. Discussed are (1) the need to supplement our graduate curricula with a professional development curriculum (PDC); (2) the need to develop more subject oriented statistics (SOS) courses and happy courses at the undergraduate level; (3) the need to have the most qualified statisticians—in terms of both teaching and research credentials—to teach introductory statistical courses, especially those for other disciplines; (4) the need to deepen our foundation while expanding our horizon in both teaching and research; and (5) the need to greatly increase the general awareness and avoidance of unprincipled data analysis methods, through our practice and teaching, as a way to combat “incentive bias,” a main culprit of false discoveries in science, misleading information in media, and misguided policies in society.