If you have quantitative inclinations and your favorite question is "why," you just might be a statistician. Statisticians are always in demand, but to get the a jump start on your career, it helps to plan ahead! Majoring in statistics is a great choice as you can always play in anyone's backyard.
Potential Job Opportunities
Below is a listing of industries (and representative companies) that typically hire statisticians:
- Health & Medicine: National Institutes of Health, Eli Lilly & Company, Amgen, Merck, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, The Mayo Clinic
- Consulting: McKinsey, Mercer, Deloitte, BCG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, Bain, Accenture
- Finance: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, American Express, Deutsche Bank, AIG, Barclays Capital, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan
- Actuarial: CIGNA, Towers Watson, Liberty Mutual
- High Tech: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, bit.ly
- Software: Microsoft, SAS, SPSS
- Marketing: [x+1]
- Think Tank: RAND, RTI, Battelle
- Sports: ESPN, Stats LLC
- Journalism: NYTimes, Washington Post, USA Today
- Polling organizations: Gallup, Pew Research, AP-NORC
- International organizations: United Nations, World Bank
- Government agencies: US Census Bureau, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Bureau of Labor Statistics, NSA
- Advocacy/NGO: Data Without Borders, MobileActive
More Careers in Statistics
See This is Statistics for a list and descriptions of 20 jobs in statistics.
For students interested in Actuarial Science, courses are offered at Duke across three departments: Statistical Science, Mathematics and Economics.