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Should we start teaching "Aliens" as Americans to increase the number of Statistics graduates in Australia?

  • 14 Dec 2022 9:46 AM
    Reply # 13024348 on 13021920

    The system is totally different here. Anyone with any bachelor's degree can do a stats masters here. Then they can land on a related job. Or even can do a PhD in stats.

    As a statistician with BSc, MSc and PhD all in statistics, I would say that doing a bachelors degree in a field you enjoy and then jump on stats pathway with a masters by coursework is way easier then getting a stats BSc from a Statistics Department.

  • 13 Dec 2022 2:54 PM
    Reply # 13023390 on 13021920

    Even though I called myself a statistician for decades, I am not sure what it means now. It has specialised into sub-fields: econometrics, financial modelling, biostatistics, machine learning, business analytics. This might be the sign of a matured discipline where the value has been inserted into many fields.

    However, I think the material many students might miss is the general understanding of how to model uncertainty: concepts like explaining variance, bias-variance trade-off, experimental design, frequentist versus Bayesian paradigms, the difference between an estimate and an estimator.


  • 12 Dec 2022 10:54 AM
    Message # 13021920
    Ayse Aysin Bilgin (Administrator)

    I wonder why there is not even one "Department of Statistics" in Australia while in US new "Department of Statistics" are created.

    I wonder why in Australia, statistics is not valued as much as it is valued in US.

    Is it because of the "Aliens" (see figure 7 in the full story) they teach? Should we start teaching "Aliens" too?

    Read the full story at https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2022/12/01/statsbiostatsdegree/

    What can we learn from what is happening in US? How can we turn the trend of downsizing the Statistics Teaching and attract more students and new academics to Australian Statistics Education pool?

    A/Prof Ayse Aysin Bombaci Bilgin (A2B2)
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