Yeah, I'm going to politely disagree that one can do multidimensional statistics and understand what one is doing without rudimentary understanding of linear al

Yeah, I'm going to politely disagree that one can do multidimensional statistics and understand what one is doing without rudimentary understanding of linear algebra and probability and basic concepts of calculus (derivatives, integrals). The branch of science specialized in analyzing data is known as "statistics": it's a mature field that's been around for some time, and the things a working statistician should know are quite well established. Similar attitudes in the past have lead into misconceptions like if you are only applying statistics in your research, you don't really have to understand what p-value is, just run the magical tests and report if it's "significant" or not.