Undergraduate Studies
Statistics deals with the problem of making inferences in the face of uncertainty. It provides the reasoning and the methods for producing and understanding data. Statisticians provide methodologies for making important advances in medicine, genetics, and other scientific research arenas, and for making decisions in business and public policy. Statistics plays an important role in fields such as psychology, sociology, political science, and education. It is the “language” used to analyze and present results or findings.
Jobs for statisticians are found in all sectors of society. Government agencies, as well as universities, businesses and industries employ statisticians. Statisticians are called upon to apply statistical methods in policy-making roles in government, development of pharmaceuticals, market research, finance, accounting, and quality control in manufacturing. In addition to a wide variety of exciting applications, statistics also provides for very lucrative careers, with senior level statisticians often earning six-figure salaries.
For a full list of the courses available, visit the Registrar's website and for a textbook list for all of the Spring 2011 Statistics courses click here.
Fields of Application
Economics and Business:
- Economics: analysis of key economic indicators, financial markets, economic modeling.
- Finance: development of models that help in managing risk and exploiting opportunities. Forecasting models, credit analysis.
- Marketing: analyzing customers' needs and wants, assessing new product viability. Data mining to discover patterns.
- Accounting: sampling and estimation of accounting discrepancies.
- Insurance: risk assessment, pricing and financial decisions, actuarial science.
Government:
- Law and Justice: analysis of data to help in determination of judgments, DNA test analysis, discrimination cases.
- Policy: development of government regulations, including for financial markets, pollution standards, approval of new drugs.
- National Defense: simulation, logistics, national security risk assessment.
- Demography: sample surveys and censuses for demographic and economic portraits, confidentiality of respondents.
- Forestry, Agriculture, Ecology.
Health and Medicine:
- Biomedical Research: design and analysis of experiments for medical advances, clinical trials, pharmaceutical research, epidemiology.
- Genetics: linking of genes to outcomes.
Director of the Undergraduate Program:
Dr. Subrata Kundu
kundu@gwu.edu
(202) 994-6355
Institute for Reliability and Risk Analysis (IRRA)
The department hosts a research institute, Institute for Reliability and Risk Analysis (IRRA), staffed by faculty and students from various parts of the university and collaborators outside the university. The IRRA aims to do basic and applied mathematical and statistical research for assessing the risk and reliability of technological, biological software and infrastructure systems.