Dr. Wikle writes the following to describe his talk. Here is a snippet of a typical conversation: Joe/Jane Public: “What do you do?”

Stat Professor: “I’m a Statistics Professor at Mizzou”

Joe/Jane Public: “Oh, I’m sorry … I hated Stat.”

Stat Professor: “Why did you hate Statistics?”

Joe/Jane Public: “It was boring.”

Let’s face it; although there are some great teachers of introductory Statistics out there, the material does not easily convey how important and relevant Statistics has become to science and society. In this talk, after a brief historical trip through Statistics land, I’ll give some snapshots of the important research problems that are being conducted in the Department of Statistics at the University of Missouri. These research problems are often motivated by real-world problems in medicine, ecology, wildlife biology, meteorology, climatology, economics, psychology, sociology, and oceanography (to name a few). Indeed, relatively recent revolutions in the statistical sciences have allowed subject matter scientists to consider much more complicated problems than they could have in the past. Such collaborations have, in turn, led to further developments in Statistical methodology. I will also discuss some of the opportunities available to graduate students in Statistics at the University of Missouri.