Donoho's JCGS (in press) paper is a spirited call to action for
statisticians, who he points out are losing ground in the field of data science
by refusing to accept that data science is its own domain. (Or, at least, a
domain that is becoming distinctly defined.) He calls on writings by John
Tukey, Bill Cleveland, and Leo Breiman, among others, to remind us that
statisticians have been dealing with data science for years, and encourages
acceptance of the direction of the field while also ensuring that statistics is
tightly integrated.
As faculty at baccalaureate institutions (where the growth of undergraduate
statistics programs has been dramatic), we are keen to ensure statistics has a
place in data science and data science education. In his paper, Donoho is
primarily focused on graduate education. At our undergraduate institutions, we
are considering many of the same questions.Comment: in press response to Donoho paper in Journal of Computational
Graphics and Statistic
