Send Help….STAT(s)!

“42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.” – Steven Wright

My statistics class…well, it sucks. I hate every second of the class itself, greatly dislike the professor and am completely baffled most of the time. Much of the content is not difficult to understand. The calculator is difficult. It’s so unbelievably complicated to use. Besides that, the apparent complete uselessness of what I’m required to learn is annoying beyond belief.

The class is almost 4 hours long, every Monday night. That is a long time to spend doing something you despise, don’t fully understand and couldn’t care less about. The professor is a rigid, socially awkward, inept teacher and openly bigoted woman. It’s the perfect vortex of hell.

This week during class we were discussing matched pairs. This is an experiment conducted using groups of similar couples. When she asked if any of us could think of examples of matched pairs I said twins. Correct. She added that husbands and wives are another example. Another student chimed in with, “or husbands and husbands”. This clearly made her extremely uncomfortable. She said, “let’s just stick with husbands and wives and not discuss anything ‘bad’”. Based on this comment alone, you could argue that all she meant was she wanted to steer clear of any controversial topics. However, several of her own comments from the week before were equally offensive and so the conclusion that she actually does believe that same-sex couples are “bad” is a reasonable assumption. While I don’t agree with her on any level, it is her opinion. But why she feels the need to repeatedly state her opinions on social issues in a stats class is beyond baffling. This is not a sociology or human sexuality class. It’s stats.

She is also humorless but does not realize it. She says things that are meant to be funny but are not. She then awkwardly attempts to chastise the class for being a “tough crowd”. And finally, the material we cover in class is presented in the form of a power point presentation but is, in fact, simply copies of pages from the textbook. We wouldn’t want her to hurt herself putting any effort into the course material. She blows through the 312 functions on the calculator that are necessary to come up with answers to the problems we go over. When she asks if everyone is ready to move on she frequently pauses for about 1/8 of a second and then moves on, or simply ignores anyone who indicates they are not ready to move on.

There are several helpful sheets we can find online to walk us through the calculator functions for any given formula, which she directed us to. However, these will not be available to us whenever we have a test. I found that out when I asked if we were on our own with the calculator during tests and she said yes. Later in class someone else asked if we could utilize our calculator instructions during tests. She launched into a defensive rant about how the majority of the students in her last class (who did not have their calculator instructions during tests) earned A’s with only 2 or 3 earning C’s and D’s and therefore she did not feel there was any reason for her to make that exception for our class. Based on the significant number of students who were in attendance during our 1st session of class but were not in attendance during our 2nd session leads me to believe that she left one very important statistic out of her little rant. How many students dropped her last class I wonder?

Later on while going over bar graphs she discussed the four types of bar graphs. She showed us (on her power point taken directly from the textbook) what each of the four types looks like. She then showed different bar graphs and asked us to tell her which type each one was. Several of us answered the first one with the same answer. She said we were wrong and told us which type it actually was. We were all confused. We indicated that the graph she was showing us did not look anything like the example for that type of graph. Her response? She launched into yet another defensive rant about how statistics are not exact and if we are looking for exact answers we should try algebra instead. I don’t know about everyone else in class but I’m not there because I want to try statistics. I’m there because it’s a required course for my major. And one of the prerequisites is algebra!

During the 4 hours of misery that is this class she graciously allows us one break. Twelve minutes. Not 10. Not 15. Twelve.

I am determined to pass this class because I need to move forward. I’m trying to look at it in much the same way I did pregnancy and childbirth. The process is hell but the end result is worth it. I wonder how many times I’ll have to repeat this mantra to myself before the end of this semester. I know one thing. I cannot wait to get my hands on the class evaluation that students are asked to fill out at the completion of each class.

Thanks for stopping by!

Related Reading:

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