Statistics, statistics, location, and statistics
SKILLS FOR AN INCREASINGLY MEASURABLE WORLD
In the movie The Graduate, the advice given to a young Dustin Hoffman was “plastics”. Today, another word is being touted as the key to the kingdom: statistics.
Decision Science News found the New York Times article For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics to be an inspiration. It especially liked:
“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”
The article discusses the role of statisticians at Google. It mentions the $1,000,000 Netflix prize, recently won by a team including Yahoo! Research scientist Yehuda Koren, as well as applications like meme tracking and social network analysis.
