This paper begins with a brief discussion of the role of the statistician and how this is changing, particularly in view of the microcomputer revolution. Historically the training of the professional statistician has been undertaken within academic institutions and has often incorporated little practical training. The advent of relatively cheap and accessible computer power has allowed more applied elements to be incorporated into statistical education, in particular larger and more realistic data sets may be used, models fitted (and compared) with greater ease, and so on. There are numerous ways in which this computing power may be exploited in the education of statisticians and this paper outlines a number of these and discusses their usefulness.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education