Statistics: Marketing the Practice Applying

Statistics: Marketing the Practice

Applying one's knowledge and skills in statistics and statistical applications is not too difficult, especially when the client or end user is concerned about the validity or reliability (or both) of the data. However, as with other practice of experts in a particular field or area of expertise, the challenge to promoting the use of statistics is on the manner by which practitioners (i.e., statisticians) "market" this discipline and their expertise.

The science of statistics make this field an especially exclusive niche for academicians, and at most, practitioners working as "specialists" for statistics-dependent industries, such as market/business research and management consulting industries. Statisticians working for the academe and specialist industries have different approaches to implementing statistics in their respective fields. Statisticians working for the academe implement statistical principles, techniques, and applications with great rigor, and they usually work on projects that look at issues or problems from a generalist's approach. That is, statistics as applied in checking for data quality and analyses in the academe caters specifically to the project itself, with a broader look at how the project's findings will be used as a becnhmark or standard to similar kinds of studies.

Statisticians working as specialists for a specific industry, meanwhile, would have a more specific approach to applying statistics in their chosen field of expertise. Statisticians working for market research agencies or consulting firms would apply statistical techniques and principles to answer a client's business needs and issues, and each project's findings will betreated as confidential and would not be integrated for public use. Instead, this compilation of studies would be developed as the agency or firm's database, for the agency/firm's proprietary use as part of its norms/benchmarks on specific types of studies.

As explained earlier, statisticians in the academe and in specialist industries apply principles and techniques of statistics in different ways. Statisticians in the academe apply their knowledge of statistics in more scientific approaches: multivariate analyses, for example, are reported in a scientific manner, usually communicated in a scholarly approach through journal articles and published or unpublished research reports. Industry specialists, meanwhile, implement statistical principles and techniques more creatively, for their clients/end-users to understand the statistical techniques used and findings culled out from the analyses. Multivariate analyses that may have been reported scientifically by academicians would be converted and simplified as "maps" (e.g., perceptual maps, quadrant maps) to 'laymanize' statistical findings and make it easier for clients to relate the findings to their business needs and issues.