The Life of a Statistician

In the book I'm reading, the life of Stella Cunliffe is described in chapter 25. Her "tart wit" got her through many hard times with much success mixed in. After the Great Depression, one of Cunliffe's two jobs was working as a statistician at Guinness Brewing Company. I find this job choice to be very interesting yet awesome for two reasons (and not for the reason you're probably thinking right now). I think it'd be a cool place to work because I could do math while in an unusual job in the first place. Also, I'd like working at the Guinness Brewing Company because I'm sure it smells just as good as the two other breweries I've visited on vacations. I love the dark, bold smell of all that grain being combusted.

Anyway, Cunliffe liked her job there because she didn't like sitting at a desk and looking at data sent to her from field scientists. She liked to go out into the agricultural side of the business and get the data for herself. The author in this section of The Lady Tasting Tea wrote something along the lines that new statisticians should follow the way Cunliffe does things. He says that important information of an experiment often gets lost in the relay of the data back to the analyzer. So, statisticians are none to do it all: getting the data, analyzing it, and telling people about it.

The next part that I find very interesting is all the people that statisticians and mathematicians deal with. Cunliffe said that she and others in her field must be flexible.
"We have to be prepared to switch from helping a microbiologist in the production of a new strain of yeast; to helping an agriculturist to assess the dung-producing qualities resulting from the intake of particular cattle fields; to discussing with a virologist the production of antibodies to Newcastle disease; to help a medical officer assess the effects on health of dust in malt stores; to advising an engineer about his experiments involving a mass-produced article moving along a conveyor belt; to applying queuing theory to the canteen; or to helping a sociologist test his theories about group behavior".

All of these other careers sound very interesting too and I wouldn't mind at all being able to still be a part of all of them even being in a totally different field.

I think it's really cool how much mathematicians get to interact with many different types of people. It's especially important because it's that much more information and resources to use in everyday work from people in different careers.

Also, along with the whole flexibility characteristic is being able to work in different areas and to be creative in any and every area of activity. I think that I could live up to all these "expectations" that are characteristically stereotypes of statisticians and mathematicians. It might take a while to get used to and comfortable with talking to so many people but I think it's definitely manageable.