The last class I needed to graduate from college was Statistics. I wasn’t avoiding it, but I wasn’t excited about it either.
Statistics classes were taught out of a couple different departments, but “Math Stats” was the required option. There was definitely a hierarchy. It would be unacceptable for a Computer Science major to slack off in a statistics class taught out of the Business School or Psychology Department. Those were derisively referred to as “Statistics for Poets.”
This dynamic was reinforced the first day of class. We would be learning “real statistics” and by the end of the semester we would “really understand” the subject.
I’m not sure that either statement was true.
The focus was on theoretical and mathematical foundations. We mostly derived formulas and proved theorems. Applying those formulas and theorems was secondary. It was my least favorite class. Nevertheless, I plodded through, checked the box, and graduated.
Three years later, I was helping my then girlfriend (later fiancée, later wife) study for her Ph.D. qualifying exam. She was in the College of Education and one of the subject areas on the exam, as luck would have it, was Statistics. She had taken Psych Stats, and I was pretty confident that I would be able to help.
Ha!
It was clear almost immediately that I had no idea about anything. None of it looked familiar. Maybe I could still derive some of the formulas, but that wasn’t important. The focus was on applying statistical functions to research data. I helped, I suppose, but only because I used her own notes to quiz her.
She created and analyzed datasets using SAS on the school mainframe and SPSS on a Macintosh Plus. She knew which function to apply in which situation and how to interpret the results. She could even recognize when a technique was being misused and the results misrepresented. She had a much better knowledge of Statistics, both practical and general, than I had. By far. It was an important lesson.
She didn’t need to know the mathematical derivations any more than I need to know how an automatic transmission works to drive a car.
I tell this story often when talking with college students, especially Computer Science majors. Yes, it’s useful to know how to derive equations and prove theorems. Yes, it’s useful to know predicate calculus and third-order logic. It’s about learning how to think and how to solve problems logically.
And that was really what I was learning. Not Statistics. So, I suppose in that respect the class was useful for me.
Maybe you’ll find yourself having to take Math Stats to fulfill a graduation requirement. But if you can, take an applied Statistics class from the Business School or Psychology Department instead or in addition. Yes, Statistics for Poets. Make that knowledge functional.
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