Paper Published: Why Swipe Right? Career Interests and Aspirations of Incoming Statistics Majors

This research, “Why Swipe Right? Career Interests and Aspirations of Incoming Statistics Majors”, was a collaboration among Florian Berens (Universität Tübingen), Kelly Findley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Nicola Justice (Pacific Lutheran University), and me. We wanted to know more about statistics students’ ability to navigate the disciplines of statistics and data science. Do stat students see themselves in the discipline? Do students identify with the work of statisticians and data scientists beyond graduation? What does it mean to them to feel as though they belong in the statistics and data science disciplines? These kinds of questions - among others - are what we wanted to explore through a longitudinal study of statistics students as they matriculate. Our research was elucidated in a journal article form and accepted as of this week by the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (JSDSE).