If you’re considering what you might like to study at college, or you’re thinking of changing career later in life, and you want to achieve some additional qualifications to make this change easier, then it’s advantageous to learnmore about the courses available to you.
If you’re not sure of which career to begin, then it’s best to choose a well-rounded subject to open up a wide amount of opportunities, and statistics is one of these topics.
It may not seem like something that will have numerous applications, but read on to see what just some of the areas statistics can be used in are.
Weather Forecasts
Those who are able to determine the weather and what it is most likely going to do in the upcoming days are not able to see into the future, they are using statistics to give the best guess as to what is going to happen.
In the past, weather forecasts were much more difficult to determine, and could often be wrong, but thanks to weather models and computer programs that use statistics at their core, weather forecasting is much more accurate, and is getting better all the time. If you think that understanding more about what the weather is going to do sounds interesting and you want to be able to predict it in your career, then a Masters in Statistics could be very useful indeed.
Preparing For Emergencies
It’s all very well and good determining what the weather is going to do, and to say that there is a hurricane coming or that floods are likely, but you will also need to know what to do when bad weather is on its way. Again, statistics can play a part in this, and in preparing for emergencies in general.
Statistics can help to determine where the worst of the problem is going to be, no matter what it is, and in this way organizers can ensure that there are enough emergency responders in the correct places in order to help as many people as possible, and to mitigate the destruction that a disaster can wreak.
Predicting Disease
If you read a newspaper or a news story online or on TV, you might notice that statistics are often reported when it comes to diseases. This can help people to take the right measures to prevent the disease from spreading.
Knowing how many people currently have the disease is one thing, but it’s not overly helpful. Knowing how the disease spreads and how many people it is likely to affect (and who they are) is something much more useful, and it is down to statistics that this can happen.
An example would be lung cancer. Knowing what percentage of lung cancer develops from cigarette smoking will show how likely it is that a smoker will develop lung cancer (dependent on how long they have been smoking, and how much they smoke).
Genetics
Some diseases are genetic, and statistics can help to determine how likely it is that someone related to another person who is suffering from a genetic disease will develop it themselves. They can also see whether it is likely that they could pass this disease on to their children.
This is hugely important, and if the disease is a fatal one, or one that will cause severe disabilities, the decision to have children at all could be affected by this information. Statistics can uncover the truth and give people the information they need to make their own decisions.
Political Campaigning
Even political campaigns can benefit from using the right set of statistics, and if you are interested in a political career, understanding those statistics is always going to be a useful skill to have.
Whenever there is an election happening, predictions will be shown (often on the news, but also on social media in various pages). These predictions are created using statistics. As well as this, statistics can provide invaluable information to the people running for office. If they can determine who is most likely to vote for them, they will be able to run their election campaign focusing on those people, ensuring the vote.
Alternatively, they can look to the sets of people who wouldn’t normally vote for them, and try to change their mind.
Insurance
Everyone will need to have some kind of insurance. It might be for a car, for a home, vacation insurance, or perhaps life insurance. Whatever type or types of insurance you might need, statistics will play a part, and will determine what rate you have to pay.
The insurance company will look into the likelihood of you claiming, and will set your premiums accordingly.