Statistical methods have applications in almost all areas of science, medicine, engineering, business, politics, psychology, law, and the environment. A practicing statistician is involved in a diversity of projects: testing the effectiveness of a new vaccine, working on the human genome project, forecasting stock yields, examining the effectiveness of television advertising, predicting election results.
Today we are bombarded with information from quantitative studies, information generated from the application of statistical methodologies. While much of this information is valid, some of it is not. An understanding of applied statistics will make you a critical consumer of numbers presented by the media. A basic knowledge of statistics should be an integral part of everyone's education.