Last month I received my accreditation as an associate statistician from the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC).

The SSC is a professional organization that seeks to promote the use and development of statistics and probability¹. They have many educational and training objectives, hold annual meetings including workshops (which I have attended in the past), sponsor local chapters and sections on application areas like biostatistics and actuarial science, and a lot more.

Once accredited, you can use the appropriate initials (AStat or PStat) after your name. This might be especially useful for others who, like me, have a multidisciplinary educational background but possess the fundamental knowledge of someone with a statistics degree. Now that I operate as an applied statistician in my consultant role for Precision Analytics, this might also be clarifying to potential clients. And most importantly, I now get to benefit from their established mentorship program².

There are two levels of accreditation: associate and professional. The associate accreditation is appropriate for recent university graduates and will generally progress to the professional designation after at least six years. For the associate accreditation, you have to demonstrate that you have the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in statistics, as well as strong communication skills and some applied experience (e.g., with real data). The accreditation committee will request references to confirm that the applicant has strong statistical communication skills, and showing proof of published statistical manuscripts is also beneficial here. The professional designation in addition requires proof of considerable work experience (academic or otherwise) as a statistician.

If you’re interested in learning more or becoming accredited yourself, check out their very informative website .