Stockholm university

Statistics

Are you looking for an exciting job that allows you to develop tools to understand and analyse data for many different fields including public policy, biology, psychology, industry, web and retail? Statisticians are currently in great demand and have access to a wide labour market.

Subject description

Statistics as a science entails developing methods in order to conduct statistical surveys and then analyzing the results. When you study statistics you learn about methods for collecting, processing, analyzing and drawing conclusions from data.

You practice discussing and evaluating the effects of different sources of error during studies of data material. Probability reasoning plays an important role for describing uncertainty. The use of computer programmes is also an important feature of the education. During the first semester the emphasis is on practical applications. There is greater focus on statistical theory at higher levels.

Depending on the current supply, you can choose to specialize within different specialist areas, such as multivariate methods, sample surveys or survival analysis with demographic application. The department’s research areas include experimental design and official statistics.

Career opportunities

The labour market for statisticians is currently good and this trend is expected to continue for both recent graduates and experienced statisticians. Statisticians are required within all areas and are sought after by both the public sector and private companies. Opinion and marketing institutes, the financial market, pharmaceuticals companies, the State, municipalities and interest organisations are some examples of work areas with opportunities for statisticians.

Courses and programmes

Degree

In order to be awarded a degree of Bachelor with statistics as the main field of study, you can either study freestanding courses of 90 credits in the subject, together with courses of 90 credits in optional subjects, or choose any of the following programmes:

  • Bachelor’s Programme in Economics and Statistics (and select statistics as the main field of study)
  • Bachelor’s Programme in Urban and Regional Planning (and select statistics as the main field of study)

After the bachelor’s degree, you can study the master’s programme in statistics.

Research

Research at the Department of Statistics, Stockholm University focuses mostly, but not exclusively, on three profile areas which reflect research interests of past and present chairs at the department.

Official Statistics
The research area comprises all aspects of production of official statistics and similar types of statistics. Thus it includes data collection methods, assessment of measurement errors, nonresponse issues, sampling, estimation, temporal issues of survey inference, register-based statistics, statistical disclosure control, response burden and total survey quality.

Bayesian Inference
Bayesian inference has, in recent years, gained strong ground within both practical and theoretical statistics. The fundamental idea is that all inference should consider previous knowledge in the process of decision making. Many dissertations have been produced in this area within the department.

Design of experiments
Experiments have been conducted in many areas like medicine and manufacturing industry, and have recently been extended to the behavioural sciences and economics.