This is a very very very good analogy
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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Statisticians in reality are programmers, typically using R or Python to run models. You only ever touch math in undergrad.*
There's a long tradition of skipping hard math, though-- ever have a stats class that has you looking at a t-table for a critical value? That's because it gives us a cutoff to use instead of calculating a p-value (which is hard).
*Note: statistics majors in PhD programs still need the hardcore math. Matrix algebra, calculus, etc. Who else is gonna make the packages we use?
I took statistics with Roger Purves. I distinctly remember him saying that stats wasn't "math" in his intro lecture.
Hehe, I mean I'm forced to teach by-hand statistics to undergraduates and we have to do... arithmetics. Multiplication. Division. Square roots!
It's a pretty established truth that we don't really do math. Lol
And technical analysis is the astrology of the investing world
I am oscillating between "math is just applied philosophy" and this.
Then who are the chiropractors?
Economists, money math is pretty much make-believe
Economists are fantasy writers whose entire purpose is maintaining the falsehood that upholds the wealthy getting to have so much wealth. Much like lawyers whose entire job is upholding the rights and privileges of property owners
Are they constantly contradicting the advice of the rest of the mathematicians?
Mathematics is a search for absolute truth, as proven from axioms.
Meanwhile, this is said about statistics: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
And even when used in good faith, statistics tends to move toward approximate truth. Statistics can tell you the exact chance that you'll pull a red marble out of a bag of other marbles, but until you actually pull the marble, it still can't tell you exactly what color marble you'll pull. Run the experiment again, and it may turn out differently next time. You never get absolute truth, only percentage approximations.
Very different than other types of math, yes, where 2+2 is always 4, and you can know it for absolute certain in every case for all of time.
Stats is technically math but it's the softest math you can imagine. A huge amount of it is data collection and interpretation. It works different parts of your brain, requires different skills than pure math
Statistics is a sociological discipline that is based mostly on mathematical models. Choosing your interpretation, and data collection methodology, typically means much more than the math you do on the data.
Or the surgeons, who started off as glorified barbers, and to this day don’t get the title of doctor, even though “brain surgery” and “open-heart surgery” are metaphors for tasks requiring extreme skill
What? That must be a thing in other countries. Here in the USA all surgeons are doctors.
True, although the ones I know did have the medical qualifications and associated title of 'doctor' and then renounced it when they qualified as surgeons, since it's traditional for them.
That's why I was happy that my math course in uni was just 90% statistics
And then some