The curriculum and degrees offered through the Department of Statistics are designed to equip students with decision-making skills for careers as professional statisticians in industrial organizations, government agencies, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, universities, and research institutes.

Statisticians in business find information in big data and design experiments to model, predict, and optimize business outcomes. Students who are quantitatively oriented and interested in business, government, and health are well prepared by this emphasis. The Applied Statistics and Analytics emphasis includes a greater number of statistical analysis and data management courses and fewer of the mathematics courses required for graduate study in statistics.