Career for a verbal/pattern Aspie?

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I've been encouraged to pursue statistician as a career after completing a bunch of tests.

Anyone have any information on how to choose a career based on Aspie strengths? I have been in the service industry for all of my life and I'm burnt out completely. Vocational rehab has recommended 're-skilling' in another area and I don't want to get stuck doing something boring like data entry. >.<

I love data, I love to analyze situations and I naturally see errors in logic, but according to the WAIS-IV I SUCK at math.... oddly enough I had no trouble in my college calculus courses (well til I had to do the algebra part at the end of each problem lol ). I find finite and discrete mathematics easy and I also did very well in my logic course (philosophy department) in college. My special interest has been medicine for a long time so I thought perhaps a biomedical statistician (is there such a thing?) would be a good career choice.

Please don't move this to Work and finding a job, it's not about that, it's about what talents Aspies use to decide their career choices (which isn't technically "work").

I would say programming - depending on the language (for example, MATLAB, Prolong, C/C++etc.) you learn you might do well. Programmers are in high demand - even in medicine.

I'm pretty sure you've gone way ahead of whatever it is that WAIS is attempting to measure, which is probably mental arithmetic, which I guess is actually a working memory test than anything really to do with maths.

Trust me, someone who can make sense of information and patterns even in an excel sheet are exceptionally useful in the workplace.

Study some medicine (if you are able), then learn some programming or at least know how to make excel or SPSS tick.

People from non-computing backgrounds who have specialised knowledge in another discipline, who can then provide data handling and programming skills are often more employable than computer science majors.

Jason.

If you like calculus, statistics is probably not too farfetched. Try taking a stats class and see if you like it.

Whatever anyone says, computer science *is* mostly about programming, algorithms and systems. This is a great choice for the typical systemizing aspie, but it can be a ropey career choice and some people hate it.

When I finally got my masters in computer science it was combined with business administration, i think mixing it like this is the way to go. If you are not from a computer science background you might need the extra modules to catch up, but your success in computing is dictated by how much time you put into it.

I wouldn't worry about the maths, as a rule unless you get into signal processing, encryption or graphics most of the math is exceptionally simple. Take a look at the syllabus carefully or find a masters course that has a good choice of ellectives to find something that follows your interests.

Jason.

I have similar strengths as you (I love information, googling, analyzing info and situations and I naturally see errors in logic and writing is my forte), but I'm not good at Statistics or Math. The logical career choice for me would be Information Specialist, but there's no market in my country so I didn't bother go that path. If I lived in the US, I'd certainly pursue that as a career.

Related options could be technical writer for hitech marketing, and translator if you happen to be bilingual.

You could also pursue chemistry. If you go into the realm of analytical chemistry, there is lots of data and not a whole lot of interacting with other people.

Management Analysts/Consultants need to understand and use statistics. But you'd have to look at whether the other requirements would suit you.

kirayng see this site for information about preparing for a career in biostatistics. In reading it over it sounds like there would be some involvement as far as social interaction with physicians and other clinicians to help set up research projects and also it mentioned that sometimes teaching or instructing others may be needed. It may depend on what you like to do and feel comfortable doing.

http://stattrak.amstat.org/2011/08/01/biostaticscareer/