I couldn’t agree with you more about statisticians. They’re out there (I’ve worked with them at Apple and Cornerstone) and I, like you, hope they continue to get more engaged with the new wealth of data that is opening up on the Web.

(And while I’m not a statistician, I learned more than the basics in college, and have taken a couple PhD level Stats courses subsequent to graduation, so at least there’s a bit of exposure at Swivel).

While we work together to get statisticians more engaged, there’s a lot of work that can be done on tools and data.

My experience is that 80-95% of the time spent doing statistical analysis is spent collecting and preparing the data. If Swivel can help move that ratio down to 50% or even 10%, then the amount of value that statisticians can provide the world is going to increase by an order of magnitude, and that’s a powerful thing.