<p>I have a feeling one of my kids is going to major in statistics. What are the top graduate schools in this field?</p>
<p>The American Statistical Association is an excellent resource for your inquiry: <a href="http://www.amstat.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=main%5B/url%5D">http://www.amstat.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=main</a> . Found this info on schools offering degrees (assume undergrad/grad) in stats, also on ASA site: <a href="http://www.amstat.org/education/sods/index.cfm?fuseaction=main%5B/url%5D">http://www.amstat.org/education/sods/index.cfm?fuseaction=main</a> .</p>
<p>I'm familiar with Purdue, UCB, CalPoly SLO, and UCLA. Textbook authors (for both college level and AP Stats courses) Moore and McCabe are at Purdue; Freedman, Pisani, Purves are at UCB; Peck, Rossman, and Chance are at CalPoly SLO. UCLA also has an excellent reputation in this growing field: <a href="http://www.stat.ucla.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://www.stat.ucla.edu/</a> .</p>
<p>Hope this gets you started.</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot Jay Devore who is also at CalPoly SLO.</p>
<p>Thanks. Great sites.</p>
<p>Forgot to add Cornell to the list - Prof. Paul Velleman is there.</p>
<p>I will add simply that the McCabe Moore textbook for AP statistics course, or the Peck Devore textbook for the same course, are GREAT reading for anyone who wants to be a well informed citizen. A lot of CC debates on various issues would be more informative if everyone involved had the basic statistical knowledge contained in those books.</p>
<p>I am not an expert, but I am a bit surprised to see the field labeled as growing. Last year, I had a few conversations with a CC Mom whose husband chaired the statistics department at one of our most prestigious universities and business schools. One of the conversations related to the fact that statistics was suffering from rapid attrition at many leading schools. It appears that that pure statistics, operation research, and actuarial sciences are shuffled between the mathematics and business departments. </p>
<p>I believe that finding the best graduate program for statistics will require much scratching the surface to find the best statistics teachers wearing new hats.</p>
<p>xiggi,</p>
<p>Hi there. I've read many of your posts and have a great deal of respect for the majority of your arguments. I'm not sure I'm all that comfortable taking you on, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. ;)</p>
<p>I agree that attrition has been an issue. But things are changing, in ways that I see will lead to growth in this field. More universities are establishing separate statistics departments from their mathematics departments. For example, UCLA (my alma mater) is now offerring a BS in statistics. The UofWA separated stats from math a few years ago. Within the statistics departments you will find concentrations such as biostatistics. I am aware of several schools that emphasize the applied statistics courses earlier, with the theoretical work following (i.e. probability theory with heavy duty calc and proofs) due to the availability of technology. Way back in the dark ages (I am a member of the punch card programming generation), my statistics courses were incredibly theoretical, not practical. Technology has made the work more accessible (and more interesting) to students who in my day were chased away by the mathematics early on. Also, the AP Statistics course is one of the fastest growing AP courses (as measured by number of exams taken). I seem to recall reading that it was THE fastest growing, but am not absolutely positive about this and cannot find the link on CB to verify. The opportunity to develop an early interest is now there. It's been exciting to watch the growth of the course at my school - 130 students for next year, the same as our AP Calc course. Our school's population is 1400.</p>
<p>dstark's intuition that his child may be headed into statistics may be based upon some of these trends in statistics education.</p>
<p>MaizeBlue, as I said I am far from being an expert on this issue. </p>
<p>I was (and still am) interested in the subject and did some digging on manners to self-study or take online classes. I also thought that it would be a booming field before starting my short discussions with the CC Mom, which provided a different insight.</p>
<p>I wonder if dstark's child would find biostatistics interesting? The prediction that I hear is that there will be growing demand in that field, in part to do safety and effectiveness reviews of new pharmaceutical products. Of course, in any occupation these days one has to be wary of the possibilities of offshoring the work.</p>