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The intro is promise: DON’T PANIC! Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy bore a “large, friendly label” with those words, and that’s also my mes

The intro is promise: DON’T PANIC! Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy bore a “large, friendly label” with those words, and that’s also my message to you. I don’t see any reason for students to be afraid of statistics. It’s no more difficult than any other technical course, and it’s much more practical than other math courses. The mathematical details are here for those who want them, but I lean heavily on technology to relieve students of the “grunt work”.

jeffwass 9y ago
"Don't Panic" is generally true when learning most bodies of knowledge. Well any situation really, but especially math and science. I did my PhD in Physics, and I've found it's very easy to become overwhelmed by a new field of math, physics, or even a large new code base. But eventually after you bang your head enough on the math or the code base you realise it's not nearly as hard as you first thought. Everything comes down to a large number of small steps. Each baby step makes sense on its own, like each single line of code. But the feeling of being overwhelmed can cause panic and anxiety, leading people to lose their confidence that they can understand the new baby steps present in whatever they're looking at. When I was a TA back in my PhD, I would sometimes tell my students that studying physics is like jumping off the Empire State Building. If you try it in one big jump it's likely to end in disaster, but if you break the 1000 foot height into 2000 steps you can easily get down to ground level. Unfortunately some sub-par professors and teachers, or poor text books, can exacerbate this feeling of inadequacy by resorting to complicated definitions or explanations when simpler ones would suffice. Sometimes I think it's people wanting to sound smart and toot their own horns, other times it's just poor communication.
petters 9y ago
I think statistics is hard. In my country, it is taught to freshmen and it uses the Central Limit Theorem all the time. That theorem is deep and hard to prove so student are forced to take it at face value. Other math courses do not work like that. This is done precisely because statistics is so useful.

jeffwass 9y ago

"Don't Panic" is generally true when learning most bodies of knowledge. Well any situation really, but especially math and science. I did my PhD in Physics, and I've found it's very easy to become overwhelmed by a new field of math, physics, or even a large new code base. But eventually after you bang your head enough on the math or the code base you realise it's not nearly as hard as you first thought. Everything comes down to a large number of small steps. Each baby step makes sense on its own, like each single line of code. But the feeling of being overwhelmed can cause panic and anxiety, leading people to lose their confidence that they can understand the new baby steps present in whatever they're looking at. When I was a TA back in my PhD, I would sometimes tell my students that studying physics is like jumping off the Empire State Building. If you try it in one big jump it's likely to end in disaster, but if you break the 1000 foot height into 2000 steps you can easily get down to ground level. Unfortunately some sub-par professors and teachers, or poor text books, can exacerbate this feeling of inadequacy by resorting to complicated definitions or explanations when simpler ones would suffice. Sometimes I think it's people wanting to sound smart and toot their own horns, other times it's just poor communication.

petters 9y ago

I think statistics is hard. In my country, it is taught to freshmen and it uses the Central Limit Theorem all the time. That theorem is deep and hard to prove so student are forced to take it at face value. Other math courses do not work like that. This is done precisely because statistics is so useful.