All good, but I think statistics as I understand it, is only a facet of the work involved. And the outcome or goal of their work seems generally to be the creation of a knowledge-based system for predictive analysis; to derive ontological meaning from numerical data (mostly about humans and human activity).
Not a bad article, if a little short, on wikipedia kinda captures it for me [0]:
* Assessment of the problem
* Development of a knowledge-based system shell/structure
* Acquisition and structuring of the related information,
knowledge and specific preferences (IPK model)
* Implementation of the structured knowledge into knowledge
bases
* Testing and validation of the inserted knowledge
* Integration and maintenance of the system
* Revision and evaluation of the system.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_engineering
