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oof they are going to hate me
I just spoke with the head of my department. I’ve been complaining a good bit to a colleague about the abysmal knowledge our kids have of statistics despite having just taken a stats class in the fall. Even the really mathematically sharp ones were absolutely confused about T-tests and had never heard of ANOVAs and so forth, as I discovered while teaching (quantitative) research methods this semester. So I’ve been needing to add in a lot of “explain this statistic” in the methods class and banging my head against the wall. They had never used a stats package like SPSS either before and so in their recitations that was the main focus –simply teaching them how to set up a data file and so forth. So where did my moaning get me?
I’m going to be teaching the stats course next year and following it up with the research methods. “The kids are going to HATE me,” I half laughed, half groaned into the phone, causing the head of my department to laugh and repeat the comment to the two of my colleagues who were sitting with him in his office. But seriously, it is true. Because, let me tell, stats and research methods are two of the most necessary but also most incredibly boring courses they will take. There simply is no way to make them “fun” or lively. I watch them go from quite interested and lively in the social psych class to nearly comatose a half hour later in the methods class, despite my trying to throw every interesting example I can come up with into it. And they are communications students. This means that something like 90% of them have a knee-jerk hatred of anything that remotely resembles math.
Oof.
My sleepy schedule is getting somewhat back to normal. I think part of the problem is being sick. I really didn’t factor that in to the equation. I’m still running a low-grade fever from the lovely kitty mauling but the good news is that the E45 seems to have made sure there will be no scars.
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(Photo by Dani Machlis)
about 2 years ago
In my first college-level science class (Biology, last year of high school) we had to learn several of those statistical tests. I enjoyed it. But then, I am most definitely a nerd.
It amazes me the differences between American and Israeli academic experiences. In the States, we’re told what we need to do, and we do it and all of the grumbling is behind the teachers’ backs. Here, it seems, Israeli students wage public fights to get out of all manner of things. I had a high school Spanish teacher who always used to say “you’re on that street corner, and you have to figure out how to get around…how are you going to communicate?” In other words, it’s your education, it’s your responsibility.
about 2 years ago
ag, its good for them. let them moan. when I had to teach a math tools for economists class I always just told them it was boring, but they would need every last bit of it. if they can’t do stats then what sort of research are they doing anyway? crybabies!
about 2 years ago
Yes, they will hate you.
Stats class was the point where I completely quit. I vowed not to choose any profession in which any resemblance of mathematics would be needed that goes beyond simple elementary school math.
Even today, many decades later, when people complain to me that law is so boring, I ask them: have you ever been in a statistics class? If not you have no idea what boredom is.
about 2 years ago
Well, maybe you could do worse with your stats course than looking at:
i. the use of stats in Palestinian casualty figures (see Don’s Mideast Musings site)
ii. the use of stats in arguments about impending environmental disaster
iii. the use of stats in famous fake scientific experiments of the past.
Offer a blogpost mention/publication of each week’s best takedown of statistics they can produce.
Then you could write a paper on the use of Schadenfreude as a pedagogic aid in the teaching of stats….
Alas, he’s no longer blogging, but we used to have a wonderful London based New Orleans blogger whose blog was called “The Daily Ablution”. His forte was taking apart the stats used in environmental scare stories in the Guardian, the Independent and other favoured reading matter of the English liberal elite. Plus he would also calculate the amounts of carbon being used by jet setting socialites and celebrities currently preaching environmentalism especially in the form of cutting out air travel…..
How could that not be interesting? Like, how much carbon did Al Gore burn up on his way to collect his million dollar prize in Israel?
Glad to hear the E45 is proving its worth.
Some suggestions for restoring your sleep patterns. 1. Set yourself a night alarm time (say 12:30 or better still, 11:30) Set a loud alarm to ring at that time. Force yourself to go to bed after it. Tell your superiors, colleagues, students and friends that you are doing this, and they will have to bear with some possible delays whilst you are repairing your sleep patterns. They’ll understand and may even support you. You could even get them to text you at the set alarm time to encourage you to go to bed. 2. Try refraining from all melachot on Shabbat– nothing religious, you understand. Just quality down time. Bet you’ll feel a whole lot better on Sunday.
about 2 years ago
If statistics is boring, you are doing it wrong.
If a statistics class feels like a mathematics class, you are also doing it wrong.
Okay, that’s only my opinion, but I’m only a professor in a statistics department with a research focus in statistics education and a Ph.D. from a mathematics department.
I’m not really sure what your syllabus is, I mean, do you need to do EDA? But my latest suggestion is to start with the Data Collection section. I used to think that was dead boring, but as I realized the importance of the experimental design (or observational study design or survey design) to what you can do or say about the results later, I’ve come to really like that section and see the need for it. I also suggest doing some simulations to get at the idea of sampling variability. Most students don’t really “get” what’s going on with the statistical tests, but if they at least have some sense of sampling variability, they might get a better feel for sampling distributions and, therefore, p-values. Oh, and you might think about having them read studies and survey results at the beginning of the semester — to do the experimental design/data collection stuff and to motivate the need for learning statistics (i.e. it’s there in the literature that you have to be able to read and contribute to).
Okay, obviously, I could go on about this for a long time but I won’t. Feel free to ask for advice or bounce ideas off me. You know I’ve also read into the psych literature and I know something about the controversies about uses of p-values vs. effect sizes.
about 2 years ago
Look, any basic type building block class has a good chance of being boring. You (the student) have to look down the road at the goal you want to achieve. If you don’t have the fundamentals, you won’t progress very far. There are way too many whiners nowadays. I’ll stop now….lol.
about 2 years ago
Agh Stats
Blah
I have a stats exam fri after that i hope never to hear the word stats again after that.
And if ever I should need stats Ill hire someone to assist me
keep your spearman scale , pearson & Spss
Ide rather have all my teeth pulled with out novacane
Ide rather swim with flesh eating fish
Live on death island (Israeli survivors)
you get my point I think
I say Blah
every one I know also says Echsa to stats(fellow students)
about 2 years ago
Jennifer, you make some very good points, and I believe that your stats class would be interesting. Wish I had had your classes for statistics!
about 2 years ago
Okay…so I took statistics in college as part of my accounting degree. And I thought it was cool.
Does this make me a total nerd? I also loved historiography…..
about 2 years ago
Heh, Jen Jen I’m going to be calling on you for advice (but not of what to assign them to read –they were assigned all kinds of interesting articles using the various methods, stats and so forth and simply never bothered to read them –or any of the other required course reading materials).
I’m afraid that most of the folks are right. I like stats. I found my stats courses to be intolerably boring and largely unintelligible and frustrating. My love for stats –doing them, talking about them, thinking about them — came about when I was a young assistant professor facing the need to do stats way beyond your basic regression and so forth (which I did not at that time clearly understand myself) and had to turn to a couple of really “stats famous” colleagues who turned out to be fantastic teachers as well. But definitely not everyone and maybe most of people, who can do stats really well can’t teach those stats well to others. [My fear of course is that I will fall into that category]
But hey, nerds unite! Stats are fun –and having Jennifer and Gila agreeing with me puts me in good company
about 2 years ago
I’m married to a professional statistician. One of the most interesting books he got me to read was the classic handbook “How to Lie With Statistics”.
Encourage those students who read English, to find that very helpful little book and read it.
Just so the students know: stats may be dull but if you don’t know how to do them properly, you won’t be able to ’see through’ all the sneaky ways they can be used to tell lies.