十一月初出席了一项数学，统计学及其应用的国际学术研讨会。会议的其中一位受邀主讲人，Prof Regina Liu分享了美国人对统计学的看法及统计学毕业生的就业前景。非常有趣。在此与大家分享其摘要：
--Dream job of this decade: being a statistician..... (New York Times, Washington Post)
"...The really sexy job in the 2010's is to be a statistician because they are the people that can make data tell a story...." (Hal Varian, Google Chief Economist)
" The ability to take data - to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it .... that's going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades" (忘了是谁说的)
毋庸置疑，统计学对各领域和学科的贡献与影响是非常深远的。在这谁掌握资讯，谁就掌握先机的竞争模式社会里，我们必须很客观地应用各种统计学工具来发掘埋藏在大量数据背后的正确资讯。而这种工作除了有赖于统计学家的努力外，更重要的是一个国家/社会各阶层对统计学的认知和观念取向是否正确。回顾这些年来,无论是马来西亚政府机构，政治人物和媒体人在处理数据时充斥着（故意或非故意)人为偏差及普罗大众对统计学的盲从或无知的现象来推测，这一条路我们还需走很远。
