As the first biostatistician hired by a snack food company, you didn't even need sampling data to know the snacks contributed to the obesity epidemic. You should have kept it to yourself.

You work for a telemarketing company tracking how many people buy from unsolicited phone callers, how many don't, which ones hang up, which people threaten the callers, and how many follow through.

You got a dream job as a quantitative analyst at Google. The title is dreamy; the hours not so much. But you're also working with smart people.

You work as a math and statistics professor at the University of Hawaii. Some of the journalism and psychology students are bitter because they hate math classes. What do you care? You have tenure. Aloha.

Your penchant for playing—and winning—at the craps table using applied math and memorizing your own code-devised strategies while you were in grad school got you a job as the head stats guy at a large casino in Vegas. With new and better ways of beating the house, the casino owner is using you to fight fire with fire.