Department of Statistics at ISU 75th Anniversary

The STAT department $75^{th}$ anniversary event was a huge success. Speakers brought in so much interesting and informative topics. As this is my fifth year at ISU, things have been much more challenging and stressful to me. This event is the timely help that I exactly need right now. Invited speakers and panelists not only provided so much great advises and so much about their experience. They also give me hope, give me motivations to keep through my last year (hopefully). It is so delightful and encourging to see so many alumni working in very different areas. It makes my life much more bearable.

Dr. Karen Hulting mentioned “just don’t quit”, which is quite amusing and encouraging. It seems like most of us struggled or have beem struggling. But what did not kill makes you stronger.

Panelists mentioned what skills they think are expected in work but not taught in school. Most of them mentioned communication skill, which is not a new thing. But even though everyone knows efficient communication is important but it is hard to master that skills on time . At the same time, they said it is important to “sell” your work (or what I can remember). I also found this very important during my intership but I really have no idea how to “sell” my work.

I talked with a couple alumni, learned what they are doing for a living. It makes me believe Statistics is such a valuable tool in practice and it is applicable in so many different field. Statistics is always useful, if not, it’s my problem. It is me who cannot make full use of Statistics, which I will keep that in mind. :)

The discussion about the relationship between Statistics and Data Science is really eye-opening. Instead of debating which is more important, our alumni brought up many great perspective regarding Statistics and Data Science. The most interesting opinion is that it’s just like the relationship between Mathematics and Statistics, Data Science is a new branch of Statistics when there is much more data available in different field and as a statistician we should not be against DS but consider to master it.

We had so much going on that day, and I trully appreciate that I could join the event as a STAT graduate student in our department.

The future of Statistics will be bright. I am looking forward to it. And thanks for all the past work done by our STAT mentors.