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What do you do as a statistics person?

I love numbers and looking at different professional athletes statistics throughout the season and their careers. I prefer looking and analyzing the stats of hockey, baseball, and quarterbacks. #recruiting #statistics #data-analysis

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Ross’s Answer

Brittney,


It's great that you have a very specific application for what you want to do. Sports, is a very good application of statistics and analyses. For example, when I played recreational dodgeball, I looked at historical wins and losses to see which games are likely to be harder than others (which means for harder games, we had to find subs/players that are super good!)


I do not come from professional sports, but the steps that I take are pretty similar to what you would do for most types of analysis -- it always starts with a question or curiosity; then you gather your data; then you perform your analysis to spot patterns or prove out a hypothesis. Finally, you want to share your findings by either doing a quick, succinct writeup or a visual graph. This is extremely formulaic/average for any kind of analytical work.


I would encourage you to practice -- start simple and ask yourself questions about what you want to find out, and then perform that analysis.

Ross recommends the following next steps:

Make a list of sports questions you want to do an analysis on. Keep it simple and select one to answer.
Gather data for your selected question. Use websites or datasets online to help you. Or gather your own data.
Perform your analysis and identify what conclusions you can come down to -- what are the actions that you or others should take based on your findings?
Have a teacher/mentor review your work.
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Preeti’s Answer

A statistics person can spot patterns, trends and anomalies. One can use statistical tools for data mining, gathering information, enhancing data collection procedures, build analytical systems, verify data integrity, ad-hoc analysis and enhance data representation.
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Jody’s Answer

With my statistics/mathematics degree I analyzed clinical trial data in the pharmaceutical setting. I started my career at a major hospital that did research on combination medications for asthma. Then I jumped into pharmaceuticals where I could study new medicines never before tested in humans. Analysis includes lab experiments, then animal studies, then finally human studies. There are so many disease areas to research; some more challenging than others. On a daily basis, I apply my statistics knowledge but I don't have a "behind a computer" type of job only. I interact with my colleagues from regulatory, medical writing, project management, clinicians, medical directors, drug manufacturing, etc. When I studied stats, I worried that I would only interact with a computer, but in the research field that's SO far from the truth. Good luck deciding your next step.

Jody recommends the following next steps:

Look into student internships where you could shadow a professional in this field to learn their daily activities
Speak to an advisor who may have connections in the field
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Kurt’s Answer

Just about every company these days needs people to study their numbers and recognize trends. A few years ago the problem was getting hold of enough data. Now, the problem is that there is too much data! We call it "analysis paralysis". ;-) So the ability to look at a sea of data and pick out a handful of important trends is very valuable. Along with being able to translate the historical trends into a forward looking forecast. This could be at the "day by day" level, or month by month, or year by year. I think sports stats are an excellent gateway into statistical analysis overall.
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