Bob Anastasio BS Mathematics, 1984 Fairfield University MS Statistics, 1986 Rutgers University Director of Marketing and Membership Mathematical Association of America

When I was young, I had a real interest in numbers. I’ll never forget the day I received the Baseball Encyclopedia for my birthday. A five-inch thick book that was filled with every statistic imaginable. For a boy who dreamed of pitching for the New York Mets, this book was the perfect intersection of my two passions, math and baseball. Being good with numbers, it seemed natural that I would study mathematics, but it soon became apparent that there were certain parts of math that caused me consternation. I struggled a bit with the theoretical courses, but really enjoyed the applied ones. Though I had tremendous respect for those who could dabble in mathematics for the shear beauty of it, I found that I needed real world applications to spark my interest. I knew I had found my mathematical niche when I took my first Probability and Statistics course during my senior year of college. I ultimately went on to graduate school and obtained my Masters degree in Statistics, but without really knowing what to do with it. I eventually started my career as an actuary but didn’t feel this was my true calling. When a recruiter contacted me about a job as a statistician at Readers Digest, working in a business environment on real-world problems, I was intrigued. I ultimately took the job and began working in a segment of the business world that has come to be known as Database Marketing. The marketing world is very data driven. The more you know about your customer, the better you can meet their needs and target them with the right products and offers. I ventured into an environment where having lots of data and computing horsepower was never a problem. By applying statistical techniques such as regression analysis, analysis of variance, neural networks, and cluster analysis I was able to help my employers optimize return on investment in their marketing campaigns. I’ve now been in the industry for more than 20 years and have worked for some top notch organizations (National Geographic, Time-Life Books, and the Smithsonian Institution). In addition to managing statistical analysis departments, my career has branched into the areas of database development, and over the last few years, into the more strategic areas of marketing. If you are in interested in this more applied side of mathematics, you should consider taking some business courses (marketing, finance, accounting) in addition to applied mathematical courses like Probability and Statistics, and Operations Research. This type of work has become very prevalent over the last decade and most savvy marketers now utilize sophisticated database analysis. The banking, insurance, retail, publishing, and even non-profit sectors are always looking for analysts to fill jobs in Database Marketing and Data Mining.