Friday, March 12, 2010

Catered Tutoring

One of the reasons I hate stats so much is the fact that I don't understand - not even an iota - of what is going on. But William offered to help and he's been tutoring me for... about a year. On and off. More off than on really, because that is how often I work on stats........

That's besides the point.

The real point is that when William explains things to me, I almost understand. Which I think is monumental progress. I think this comprehension comes from two things. The first being: William also hates stats. Or, at least he says that he does. (I am convinced that no one - NO ONE - hates stats more than I do. And even if he does hate it, he still at least gets it, which probably makes it worse.) And, he's a mathematics major; which means, while he understands what I have to know for my stats class, he teaches it completely differently. He knows why we have to do things. He explains what is actually happening when they are talking about standard deviations and y-hats and all those awful...

The second reason William is such a good tutor is that he caters to you as the student. He draws his examples from things that you might consider interesting. So instead of learning about medical studies that I have a hard enough time understanding without the littered stats information, I am learning more about the probability of someone enjoying being pushed up against the wall and kissed.

That's right: William uses that as an example to teach me stats. And it almost works. I actually was thinking about emailing my teacher and asking for extra credit (or if I were really ambitious I would ask if I could replace my final) by doing an actual statistical study and analyzing the data and applying all the concepts I'm supposed to know by the end of the class. Mostly because I thought it would be interesting.

For those of you trying to keep up with my status on the blasted class: I haven't taken test 2 yet. But...I'm just about ready to. I said that two weeks ago when I ordered the test, but I had a few quizzes I had to finish first. Those are done now...so I just need to make sure I know the material. If I get a D.... well, I don't have the time necessary to recover from a D. So we'll just have to get a C or better. William?

1 comment:

  1. You have a surprisingly few number of posts under the label torture for having been taking Stats for so long. And oddly enough, it seems that you only consider Stats to be torture 71% of the time. Just thought I'd point that out.

    ReplyDelete

Search This Blog

Related Stories

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...