Blog 5

These are my thoughts and feelings about statistics and why I think and feel this way about statistics. I think as an academic subject, statistics can be intimidating. This is dependent on past experience, educational background and overall comfort with math. More on this last point, below. I took statistics in the early 1990’s and I don’t remember what I learned. How did we learn stats without access to computers? The only thing that stayed with me for a long time, is that I don’t like stats. I think think a lot of people have similar experiences and then avoid statistics or decide that they can be avoided. Also, I think a lot of people decide that if they are not good at math, they will have the same experience with statistics. I think there is some overlap with skill sets but that stats are a separate discipline and can be learned without high, high level math skills.

These are also my thoughts about what can we do as a class (or individuals) to appreciate statistics more fully. I think as students we can spend as much time as possible with the Success at Statistics workbook. I think it provides a good step by step approach with lots of examples and illustrations. I love that the book uses a little humor to make the subject more palatable. As a class, I think we can work hard to be prepared for class so that we can all share what we know and not get bogged down in material that we can pick up from the book. I think class time is great for examples and for explaining more complex concepts. I learn the concepts the best by using easy to relate to examples.

Finally, I answer the question, what is purpose of statistics Statistics help us understand the world. Now more than ever we are either reading articles or listening to news filled with statistics related to the Covid-19 pandemic. I think it’s important to reflect back on what we learned on the first day of class about how to evaluate research and stats. I think we should be able to trust our political leaders to repeat only facts and rely on sound research when deciding what to share with the public, but I know this is not the case. Statistics are helping me make sense of what is going on in the world right now. Another important purpose of statistics is of course related to research. Stats help us tell a story and build a case for our hypotheses.