At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls \u201call the computer and math stuff\u201d\u009d that was part of the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think of field archaeology as Indiana Jones, but much of what you really do is data analysis,\u201d\u009d she said.<\/p>\n
Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.<\/p>\n
Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand \u201d\u201d and even cool.<\/p>\n