Why do people think that statistics is boring???

Everyone I meet thinks I'm crazy to even think about getting a PhD in statistics. Even the chair of my department mistook it for public health. I'm not doing boring stuff like the census, or epidemiology or even constructing cutesy little histograms everyday!! Statistics involves a lot of math and math is just beeeeautiful! And even better that you get to use math for real life applications. I find the extreme abstractness of pure math too difficult and irrelevant for my future cancer research, so statistics is the way to go. I know what I'm doing, it aaaall works out!! =)

Some people who also applied to the same bioinformatics schools now think I'm wasting their space in the incoming class if I applied also to stats and am thinking about stats phd instead of bioinformatics phd. It's not a separate entity! I'm just choosing between the title and the school, I'll still be doing the work I want to do! Besides, just because I applied doesn't make it that much less likely that they get in and I do have a right to apply. =p It's just sucky that I can only choose one skool....