No! Statistics is no more a branch of mathematics than is economics, and should no more be taught by mathematicians. It is a separate discipline that makes heavy and essential use of mathematical tools, but has origins, subject matter, foundational questions and standards that are distinct from those of mathematics. It is true that many advanced texts and research papers in statistics use formidable mathematics, but this is misleading. After all, many a graduate microeconomics text cites the Kuhn-Tucker theorem on the first page, and many research papers in physics are intensely mathematical. Statistics is as much a distinct discipline as are economics and physics. Its subject matter is data and inference from data. It is unprofessional for mathematicians who lack training and experience in working with data to teach statistics.
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