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I think statistics is one of the most misunderstood field of mathematics relative to how much the general person believes he or she knows about it. I know this

by thecopy 12y ago

I think statistics is one of the most misunderstood field of mathematics relative to how much the general person believes he or she knows about it. I know this article was about researchers and not the general public, but I can definitely sympathize with them; I have a MSc in engineering physics and I still have to think three times about a number before I know that all assumptions I have made while calculating it were correct and not biased, and three times more about what this number means and what conclusions I can actually draw from it.

CamperBob2 12y ago
Absolutely. If I were in charge of curriculum development for engineers, I'd swap out a couple of semesters of math that the student will never see again unless they end up working on EM simulators, and replace it with statistics course(s) that will be helpful throughout their careers. Unfortunately there's a lot of coursework in engineering that amounts to institutionalized hazing. The professor had to do it, so by the hallowed beard of Frobenius, the students have to do it too...
- tjl 12y ago
  They combined the probability and statistics courses in my undergrad engineering program. When I went through the program, they were separate and I found the statistics course to be excellent. Unfortunately, they had already made it less valuable before they were combined because they had dropped other components of the course. They combined the courses so they could spend more time on the introductory math courses. Before, there was a grade 13 that provided a better math foundation for university, but since that was eliminated, they needed to spend more time on the math as students were doing consistently poor. Things have improved in the math courses since the change, though. The other reason why they combined the courses was that we were the only engineering department that had separate courses for them. But, we were also the only engineering department with machine learning and pattern recognition courses as well. Now, those courses need to spend more time at the beginning covering the material lost from combining the courses.
- CHY872 12y ago
  At one top British university, the first year Physics practicals are universally reviled, everyone gets within a few marks of each other, the experiments are trivial (roll a ball down a slope!), and at every meeting the academics all agree that they'd prefer that they were dropped. Unfortunately there's some kind of government requirement for practical work, so they stay.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >the experiments are trivial (roll a ball down a slope!) they should replace it with trivial experiments of the 21st century - photon counting for Bell inequalities testing. Wrt. the original article - good riddance, one less orthodoxy in science. Because it isn't about a tool - p-values in this case - itself, it is about orthodoxy which is the main enemy of science.
    - megablast 12y ago
      Oh exactly, sounds like there is ways of getting around the government mandate.
  - thrownaway122 12y ago
    Do they not take the chance to teach error propagation and some related statistics etc in this course? As well as the basics of scientific writing. And encourage students to invest in learning LaTeX already.
    - CHY872 12y ago
      Oh, absolutely! However, you don't need 32 hours in a lab and 4000 words of formal reports and 100-odd pages of handwritten notes in order to prove that.
      - thrownaway122 12y ago
        Yeah point taken. However, I suspect that the lab sessions are tedious enough to help put a lot of students off studying physics (worked for me) and this may be part of the reason that they are so boring...

by thecopy 12y ago

CamperBob2 12y ago

Absolutely. If I were in charge of curriculum development for engineers, I'd swap out a couple of semesters of math that the student will never see again unless they end up working on EM simulators, and replace it with statistics course(s) that will be helpful throughout their careers. Unfortunately there's a lot of coursework in engineering that amounts to institutionalized hazing. The professor had to do it, so by the hallowed beard of Frobenius, the students have to do it too...

tjl 12y ago
They combined the probability and statistics courses in my undergrad engineering program. When I went through the program, they were separate and I found the statistics course to be excellent. Unfortunately, they had already made it less valuable before they were combined because they had dropped other components of the course. They combined the courses so they could spend more time on the introductory math courses. Before, there was a grade 13 that provided a better math foundation for university, but since that was eliminated, they needed to spend more time on the math as students were doing consistently poor. Things have improved in the math courses since the change, though. The other reason why they combined the courses was that we were the only engineering department that had separate courses for them. But, we were also the only engineering department with machine learning and pattern recognition courses as well. Now, those courses need to spend more time at the beginning covering the material lost from combining the courses.
CHY872 12y ago
At one top British university, the first year Physics practicals are universally reviled, everyone gets within a few marks of each other, the experiments are trivial (roll a ball down a slope!), and at every meeting the academics all agree that they'd prefer that they were dropped. Unfortunately there's some kind of government requirement for practical work, so they stay.
- trhway 12y ago
  >the experiments are trivial (roll a ball down a slope!) they should replace it with trivial experiments of the 21st century - photon counting for Bell inequalities testing. Wrt. the original article - good riddance, one less orthodoxy in science. Because it isn't about a tool - p-values in this case - itself, it is about orthodoxy which is the main enemy of science.
  - megablast 12y ago
    Oh exactly, sounds like there is ways of getting around the government mandate.
- thrownaway122 12y ago
  Do they not take the chance to teach error propagation and some related statistics etc in this course? As well as the basics of scientific writing. And encourage students to invest in learning LaTeX already.
  - CHY872 12y ago
    Oh, absolutely! However, you don't need 32 hours in a lab and 4000 words of formal reports and 100-odd pages of handwritten notes in order to prove that.
    - thrownaway122 12y ago
      Yeah point taken. However, I suspect that the lab sessions are tedious enough to help put a lot of students off studying physics (worked for me) and this may be part of the reason that they are so boring...