Passing on the Passion for the Profession

Abstract

For many years, statisticians have had difficulties interesting students in statistics and subsequently recruiting them into the profession. Over the years, statisticians have pointed out roadblocks to recruiting, offered suggestions for improving recruiting, and commented in general about the attractiveness of statistics to “outsiders.” Here we review the statistical literature to identify obstacles to and strategies for recruiting students of statistics. Furthermore, from a more general body of literature, we identify recruiting strategies that may be suitable for statistics. We organize the obstacles and detours around them into a recruiting map and suggest the types of statistician suited for traveling the roads. In addition, we provide tips for generating and evaluating recruiting strategies.