75 Years of CSIRO Statistics

Interested in a Significant Career?

Been called to a numerical vocation? Wondering where it could take you?

If you are looking for an interesting and rewarding career that takes you to exotic places to solve world-changing problems, you should choose statistics.

Statistics is the science of turning data into insight and action. Safer treatments for disease, monitoring endangered species, understanding financial markets, improving air safety – all these things depend on good statistics.

It can be really exciting when you realise the numbers are telling you something no-one else has seen before. Scientists at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Scientists recently identified a particular sub-species of prawn within a larger population that was being dangerously over-fished. They were able to recommend changes to make the population more sustainable – and it was all because they knew how to extract meaning from the numbers.

But what about those exotic locations and world-changing problems? Here's what a few CSIRO statisticians have been up to lately.

• Maree O'Sullivan has been visiting Tasmanian salmon farmers to help them find ways to breed healthier fish. She also recently found herself collecting blood from alpacas to investigate new approaches to typing diseases. Read the article Salmon, genetics and statistics – a thriving combination (opens in a new window)
• Ray Correll is helping farmers in third world countries assess the risks associated with particular pesticides to ensure water supplies do not become contaminated.
• Bronwyn Harch has been looking at ways to monitor and report on water quality in the catchments around Moreton Bay so that everyone can enjoy clean water. Read more
• Mark Berman develops methods for instruments that can be used for rapid disease diagnosis, screening potential new drugs and even to sort and grade wheat grains.

If you'd like further information on careers in statistics at CSIRO, please contact CSIRO Enquiries by phone 1300 363 400 or email enquiries@csiro.au.

A Human Computer

Back in the 1930s, in the time of CSIRO's first statistician, Betty Allan, handheld electronic calculators and computers weren't yet invented. Instead the calculations required were done using calculating machines, which were mainly hand-driven and mechanical.

The main machines used for biometrical calculations in CSIR, as it was then known, were the Brunsviga, Facit and Monroe.

Betty Allan using a calculating machine (with a tap and sink in the foreground!)

Five years into Betty Allan's decade at CSIR, Miss RN Prowse was appointed to assist her with calculations. At the time, people working in such positions were known as computers, machinists, calculators and technical assistants. These human computers had to have a good background in mathematics. Use of the calculating machines was taught up on the job and some statistics was picked up too.

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last updated September 13, 2005 12:39 PM
Communicators@cmis.csiro.au