Language is an issue in teaching and learning statistics. There are many words that have meanings in statistics, different from their everyday meaning, and even with multiple meanings within the study of statistics. Examples of troublesome words are: error, correlation, … Continue reading →
Language is an issue in teaching and learning statistics. There are many words that have meanings in statistics, different from their everyday meaning, and even with multiple meanings within the study of statistics. Examples of troublesome words are: error, correlation, … Continue reading →
Some more help (preaching?) for students of statistics Last week I outlined the first five principles to help people to learn and study statistics. They focussed on how you need to practise in order to be good at statistics and … Continue reading →
To students of statistics Most of my posts are directed at teachers and how to teach statistics. The blog this week and next is devoted to students. I present principles that will help you to learn statistics. I’m turning them … Continue reading →
Khan academy probability videos and exercises aren’t good either Dear Mr Khan You have created an amazing resource that thousands of people all over the world get a lot of help from. Well done. Some of your materials are not … Continue reading →
Statistics is not really elegant or even fun in the way that a mathematics puzzle can be. But statistics is necessary, and enormously rewarding. I like to think that we use statistical methods and principles to extract truth from data. … Continue reading →
We don’t like to think we are wrong One of the key ideas in statistics is that sometimes we will be wrong. When we report a 95% confidence interval, we will be wrong 5% of the time. Or in other … Continue reading →
The problem with probability is that it doesn’t really exist. Certainly it never exists in the past. Probability is an invention we use to communicate our thoughts about how likely something is to happen. We have collectively agreed that 1 … Continue reading →
I do my own video-editing using a very versatile and complex program called Adobe Premiere Pro. I have had no formal training, and get help by ringing my son, who taught me all I know and can usually rescue me … Continue reading →
The median suffers from poor marketing. All my time at school the “average” was always calculated as the arithmetic mean, by adding up all the scores and then dividing by the number of scores. When we were taught about the … Continue reading →
