Please, somebody help me. I have just lost the will to live! I've spent 4hrs tonight, studying and completing the MST121 block unit entitled, Chance.
What a load of old tosh. I have never been so bored. I actually nodded off in the middle of reading it. I just can't get excited about stats and the tired way that most books seem to treat the subject. I would like to have seen much more emphasis on applications in maths and science, rather than examples of parlour tricks, gamblers and rolling x amount of dice.
There is one good outcome of all this, though. I was able to sit and complete all of the CMA questions, whilst doing my first reading of the unit material. That means, I don't have to go back to it any time soon.
Tomorrow, I'm moving onto 'Modelling variation', which I hope is more interesting.
Note to self: don't get drunk one night, and register for an O.U stats course - the hangover would be just too much to bare...
The stats portion of MST121 sent me to sleep, too. You are not alone.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, you won't meet it again in MS221.
Glad to see you're enjoying the course otherwise. :-)
Snap! Me too. In fact, I didn't even bother studying that block. By that point, I was in my MS221 overlap, and had much more interesting stuff to get on with, so I just went for the assessment. Sod's law I got my best mark in the course on it.
ReplyDeleteCertainly not the best way to inspire people towards statistics and probability.
Neil H
Unfortunately they didn't really bring out the significance of Hypothesis testing which turns statistics into a science not just a means of analysing data.
ReplyDeleteHypothesis testing when applied to social science problems and medical science has been really useful in countering the claims of charlatans such as those who claim homeopathy or other 'alternative' medicines is effective or the needless scare introduced by the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh have successfully challenged such people on the basis of statistical tests and it is an effective tool in countering superstition or fake causal claims.
So statistics is useful and I believe anyone who has an influence on social policy such as politicians should learn about hypothesis testing.