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Statistics is taught wrong from the get go. Who cares about z-tables and chi values? It distracts from the important underlying laws of probability. Statistics
by jostmey 12y ago
Statistics is taught wrong from the get go. Who cares about z-tables and chi values? It distracts from the important underlying laws of probability. Statistics has never been more important, and yet the vocabulary is badly outdated leaving students with a huge mountain of knowledge to climb before reaching anything of real utility.
- osazuwa 12y agoI don't quite agree, as the standard normal and Chi squared distribution are obviously important to understand. I think what you mean is that teaching stats based on hypothesis testing on simple experiments with small samples is not the best way to introduce students to this world. But the history of statistics was heavily influenced by designed experiments, while most of the data that is out there is observational. That is hard for older generations of statisticians to swallow.
- eric_bullington 12y ago> Who cares about z-tables and chi values? I think the problem is how these concepts are taught, not the concepts in and of themselves. Too many people leave their graduate-level stats courses (that they take for X scientific/engineering/sociological discipline) believing that 0.90, or 0.05, or 1 SD are somehow magical values. Too few students understand the concepts behind them (I had to work hard on my own to gain a glimpse into them).