Aleks Intro to Stats... Is it UL at Excelsior????

[cookderosa]

Stats is not hard. It just takes time to absorb the concepts. It is totally unlike any course wherein all you have to do is cram/memorize facts and regurgitate them for credit. Just because you can breeze through some courses because of some past experience and/or talent is no reason to believe that you should be able to master stats just as easily. Now, I will have to admit that I believe that math teachers make the subject much harder than it is because they have a talent for mathematical symbology that is different from most folks. The stumbling block for almost all regular people are the concepts and formulae regarding conditional probability. Well, it was 50 years after John Snow demolished the Humor theory of medicine using just descriptive stats before inferential probability was added to the subject. So why anyone can believe that they should "get it" in 8 hours our less is rather mind boggling to me. But truth be told, you do not need the mathematician's jargon to master inferential stats. Try this: Statistical Reasoning | Open Learning Initiative Yes, this course will take 80 hours to get through it, but that is still half the time of an in-seat course not including travel time. Stop fighting the fact that each concept takes some pondering thought time and just do it. Good luck.

+1
You have to allow time to develop intuition. Like growing tomatoes. Besides fertilizer, water and good weather, there is still a fundamental clock that follows. I can tell you with certainty I didn't log enough math hours as a kid. My oldest didn't either, but I've caught that and have corrected it with my youngers.