Computer courses are usually required to train students to produce programs to perform various statistical computations. Statistics is a relatively young field, organized around the rapidly growing body of knowledge about quantitative methods for the analysis of data, the making of rational decisions under uncertainty, the design of experiments, and the modeling of randomness in the social and natural sciences. Statistics has a theoretical core surrounded by a large number of domains of application in economics, psychology, biology and medicine, sociology, population sciences, government, anthropology, history, astronomy, physics, and computer science. A basic requirement of a concentration in statistics is to acquire the mathematical tools for a rigorous understanding of applications to substantive fields, such as linear algebra and calculus. The study of statistics offers a variety of exciting career opportunities.
Statistics deals with methods for the collection, visualization, modeling and analysis of data.
Massive amounts of data are now routinely collected in business, health, environment, engineering and social sciences. Statistics is the science that transforms these data into information that is critical for decision making. Statistics has always played a major role in marketing, public policy, social and health sciences through the design and analysis of surveys. More recently, statistical methods have been an important part of advances in medicine and engineering such as genetics, tomography, speech recognition, and computational vision. In short, the major is designed to provide the student with sufficient tools to enable him or her to contribute to the research efforts of diverse employers.