Mathematics, a core disipline, looks inward and risks being seen as increasingly irrelevant. Statistics, a methodological discipline, looks outward but risks being swallowed by information technology. Both professions have a stake in the survival of statistics as a subject informed and structured by mathematics. To mathematics, statistics offers not only the example of an outward looking culture, but also entree to new problems ripe for mathematical study. To statistics, mathematics offers not only the safe harbor of organizational strength, but intellectual anchorage as well: mathematical understanding is an essential part of what distinguishes statistical thinking from most of the rest of information technology. Increased cooperation between mathematical and statistical professional associations can lead the societies, their members, and their disciplines in healthier directions.
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