What Are Statistics: It's Time to set the Record Straight

The authors present their views on the modern concept of statistics as a science, academic discipline, and field of activity. The urgency of the matter lies in an adequate understanding of the essence of statistics, which determines the direction for its further evolution as a tool for increasing the effectiveness of the national socio-economic processes. According to the authors, by the beginning of the XXI century, de jure statistics are associated with activities, measured by data, that reflect a set of phenomena of diverse nature while ignoring de facto activities, associated with an assessment of the quantitative side of mass phenomena as part of information support of cognitive processes and management decision-making in the socio-economic sphere. In the former case, theoretical, methodological, and practical statistical activities are based on the consideration of the statistical population as such, for which is being developed an appropriate toolkit based primarily on the unity of methods of mathematical logic, mathematical statistics, and big data analysis. In the latter case, theoretical, methodological, and practical activities are interpreted within the framework of the concept implying that the quantitative side of mass social phenomena is the object of cognition and management as an objective reality. It is based on the following categories: a statistical indicator, a system of indicators, and an information model. Analysis of the main features of the two types of activity show that their convergence is impossible. The paper concludes that while maintaining the independent status of the first type of activity, called Statistics, it would be appropriate to acknowledge the independent status of the second type of activity, called Socio-economic statistics, as a type of occupation, a specialty and area of training in higher education, a scientific specialty – a branch of science, incorporating it in the professional standard «Statistician», the educational standard of higher education «Socio-economic statistics», and the standard of the scientific specialty «Socio-economic statistics».