Statistics is the mathematical and computational study of data and chance. It is a methodological discipline -- statisticians often work closely with people in other fields to design production of data, analyze data, and draw conclusions from data. Statistics is one of the few major disciplines in which the expertise of a professional can have significant effect in fields as diverse as analytics, bioinformatics and medicine, finance and insurance, management and marketing, agriculture and forestry, economics and education, as well as communications and software design, to name a few. Statisticians design methods for collecting and interpreting data gathered by government, business and industry, and academia to aid in the planning, decision making and research crucial to modern society. Statisticians use computers as a tool for analyzing complex or massive data sets and solving mathematical problems. They use statistical techniques to discover relationships between disease and differences in the DNA sequences among individuals, predict election results, population growth, or the behavior of financial instruments, establish insurance or quality control standards, determine new drug effectiveness through clinical trials, or estimate the number of animals remaining in a vanishing species. The statisticians who hold advanced degrees develop and analyze statistical methods along with the mathematical and computational theories behind them.