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16The bright future of applied statisticsRafael A. IrizarryDepartment of Biostatistics and Computational Biology,Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteandDepartment of BiostatisticsHarvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA16.1 IntroductionWhen I was asked to contribute to this book, titled Past, Present, and Futureof Statistical Science, Icontemplatedmycareerwhiledecidingwhattowriteabout. One aspect that stood out was how much I benefited from the rightcircumstances. I came to one clear conclusion: it is a great time to be anapplied statistician. I decided to describe the aspects of my career that I havethoroughly enjoyed in the past and present and explain why this has led meto believe that the future is bright for applied statisticians.16.2 Becoming an applied statisticianI became an applied statistician while working with David Brillinger on myPhD thesis. When searching for an advisor I visited several professors andasked them about their interests. David asked me what I liked and all I cameup with was “I don’t know. Music?” to which he responded, “That’s whatwe will work on.” Apart from the necessary theorems to get a PhD from theStatistics Department at Berkeley, my thesis summarized my collaborativework with researchers at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology. Thework involved separating and parameterizing the harmonic and non-harmoniccomponents of musical sound signals (Irizarry, 2001). The sounds had beendigitized into data. The work was indeed fun, but I also had my first glimpse171