Teaching Statistics at Google-Scale

Modern data and applications pose very different challenges from those of the 1950s or even the 1980s. Students contemplating a career in statistics or data science need to have the tools to tackle problems involving massive, heavy-tailed data, often interacting with live, complex systems. However, despite the deepening connections between engineering and modern data science, we argue that training in classical statistical concepts plays a central role in preparing students to solve Google-scale problems. To this end, we present three industrial applications where significant modern data challenges were overcome by statistical thinking. [Received December 2014. Revised August 2015.]