Bad experiences with your Statistics courses?

[waxing_academic]

Hi everyone,

Most of us will have to complete required Statistics courses for our programs. So, I'm wondering what everyone else's experiences have been like, especially for grad students in the social sciences.

Mine was a frustrating, all-consuming, anxiety-provoking, mentally abusive, and somewhat traumatic experience. We were constantly made to feel like we weren't good enough and weren't putting in enough effort, even though we all put at least 30 hrs/week into that course alone. I was one of the 9 of 14 in my cohort that passed the first semester and made it to the second. The other 5 will have to repeat it, and I'm told by upper year students that more of us will inevitably fail the second semester. I'm pretty pissed about the way we were all treated, both by the professor and by the department who enabled the bad behavior, and am not happy about the prospect of repeating this sequence. I was told by someone from another Research I university that this isn't typical. I was hoping to find that out. There are some guiding questions below, but don't feel like you have to answer all of them.

Questions:

*How many and what statistics courses do you have to take?

*Is/Was your stats professor a sadist?

*How much emphasis does your department put on quantitative methods?

*Is there any extra assistance offered by your program, like a summer course?

*Do students ever or often have to repeat the course?

*Did your cohort work together, or was it every grad for himself/herself?

*How many hours per week do/did you spend on stats work?

*What emotions did you experience while taking statistics?

*Did you want to use quantitative methods before the course? Do you want to after the course?

*Any advice from those who survived to those who are going through it?

*Any other comments/questions/advice?

Thanks!

waxing_academic

[liszt85]

*How many and what statistics courses do you have to take?

3 required in the first year. Basic stats (regression, stemplots and what not), ANOVA, and one more (not quite sure of what it is

*Is/Was your stats professor a sadist?

Not really

*How much emphasis does your department put on quantitative methods?

A lot

*Is there any extra assistance offered by your program, like a summer course?

No

*Do students ever or often have to repeat the course?

No

*Did your cohort work together, or was it every grad for himself/herself?

independent work

*How many hours per week do/did you spend on stats work?

15hours

*What emotions did you experience while taking statistics?

same as yours but toned down.

*Did you want to use quantitative methods before the course? Do you want to after the course?

Yes and yes.

[2400]

Questions:

*How many and what statistics courses do you have to take? Two

*Is/Was your stats professor a sadist? No..but he is incredibly difficult to understand...doesn't explain things clearly and doesn't explain things so someone with little knowledge of statistics would understand.

*How much emphasis does your department put on quantitative methods? There is an emphasis on quantitative methods.

*Is there any extra assistance offered by your program, like a summer course? There are additional classes we can take.

*Do students ever or often have to repeat the course? Not that I know of.

*Did your cohort work together, or was it every grad for himself/herself? Yes! Otherwise I would not have passed the last class.

*How many hours per week do/did you spend on stats work? 5-10?

*What emotions did you experience while taking statistics? Makes my brain hurt

*Did you want to use quantitative methods before the course? Do you want to after the course? No and maybe.

Edited February 7, 2010 by 2400

[socialpsych]

Personally, my experience with stats has been somewhat different from many of you. We have 2 required courses in my program and I actually enjoyed them both (for the most part). They were time consuming, but not soul-sucking by any means. The prof teaching the course was super nice and committed to helping us understand the material, and to my taste he explained things very clearly, though I think some other students felt differently...still, as far as I know everyone passed. And the TAs were certainly willing to put in the time to get everyone to understand the material. I think of data analysis as my favorite part of the research pipeline (I probably did before I took the classes, but even more so now) and I want to take more advanced stats.

All that said, other students in my program and related programs that use the same stats courses do sometimes complain about the courses and report experiences more like "[made] my brain hurt." I think the prof's lecturing style may have been more effective for people like me who felt fairly confident of basic stats and comfortable dealing with numbers, than for others whose basic stats knowledge may have been less (or more rusty). To clarify, I don't think I'm someone who would enjoy and do well in stats in any case; the class was actually taught well, it's just that it was optimized for people who already knew some stats.

I also don't mean to say that anyone who found stats difficult didn't have a good foundation to begin with. I'm sure there are a lot of grad stats classes that are just inherently frustrating and awful. But, no, it's not a universal experience.

[waxing_academic]

Thanks for the responses, all. It doesn't sound like any of you had courses that required the 30 hours a week that we were required to spend. I'm glad that others' experiences in general have been more positive. It does make me wonder about our department's treatment of grad students. Why would they subject us to this when other programs manage to teach their students stats without demoralizing them?

I guess some departments still allow the abuse-grad-students-to-train-them model.

[liszt85]

I did have my share of brain frying though.. I'm on a TA appointment. I assist 4 courses every quarter. That's a HUGE workload (though its only grading). I also did 3 courses last quarter, one of which was a 5 credit one. It required at least 20-25 hrs of work per week..so I had to spend most of my time on it, and the prof kept giving crazy research questions as assignments. They were all so open ended, I also thought he had favorite students in the class..he would accept anything they said whereas my ideas were not accepted as cordially (they were from his own department, I was from another..and I was coming from the pure sciences and he'd known that from the introductions he sought at the beginning of the quarter. I somehow got the vibes that he didn't really think someone from the pure science background could do this course/subject well).

So yea, we all have our tough phases in grad school and its almost always in the first year that we tend to be bogged down by it. We'll learn how to circumvent all of it soon. People here complain about stats too but I don't see why they should. Granted that its dry and boring but its one of the most useful tools a behavioral sciences researcher should have!

[pea-jay]

*How many and what statistics courses do you have to take?

Just one (with my old Urban Planning program)

*Is/Was your stats professor a sadist?

No, just aloof

*How much emphasis does your department put on quantitative methods?

Not too much

*Did your cohort work together, or was it every grad for himself/herself?

100% independent study

*How many hours per week do/did you spend on stats work?

At least 20, if not more. I can do math but it takes me 4X the time to really "get it"

*What emotions did you experience while taking statistics?

Happiness and joy. Im not kidding. I got what was being taught, got all A's on everything and caught a statistical trend on a raw dataset assignment that even the prof missed.

*Did you want to use quantitative methods before the course? Do you want to after the course?

No. Yes.

*Any advice from those who survived to those who are going through it?

Dont fear it but if you do, just over do it (on practice work)

(Missing questions means I have no comment or dont know)

[varekai1018]

*How many and what statistics courses do you have to take?

One (biostatistics) at the MPH level, will probably have to take a higher level if I continue to DrPH

*Is/Was your stats professor a sadist?

Not at all - she was actually quite understanding with the class, though not an effective instructor.

*How much emphasis does your department put on quantitative methods?

It seems to depend on the program for public health - the instructors in my MPH program focused predominantly on quantitative research, but it's a mix of qual/quant where I'm applying for my DrPH

*Is there any extra assistance offered by your program, like a summer course?

None. I found this to be frustrating, as I came into the program with a BA in English, and even *asked* if I could audit an undergrad stats course prior to the required course, just to get me caught up to my peers (many MPHers have a more science/social science background). Nobody seemed to know of any tutors, either, though I probably could have done some additional investigative work to locate someone in another department/college at the university.

*Do students ever or often have to repeat the course?

Not that I'm aware of

*Did your cohort work together, or was it every grad for himself/herself?

It was a mix - a lot of us went through labs together, but we all had to put in our share of work.

*How many hours per week do/did you spend on stats work?

At least 15-20.

*What emotions did you experience while taking statistics?

Frustration and anxiety - some excitement AFTER the course when I used the knowledge/SPSS for my thesis research.

*Did you want to use quantitative methods before the course? Do you want to after the course?

No. Probably not (I come from such a qualitative background), though I see the value in mixed-methods research.

*Any advice from those who survived to those who are going through it?

Just remember that this course doesn't define your ability in your discipline. For me, some of the most intriguing research is interdisciplinary and uses a variety of skill sets - i.e. when you're in your field, you can always call on a statistician to help with the quantitative aspects (while it is helpful to know what can be done using quantitative methods, it doesn't mean that you have to be the one using these methods...collaborate, collaborate, collaborate).

[appmatharmy]

Interesting. I'm a math major so take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish.

Stats can be made hard, but I think it's mostly to do with the attitude toward the subject. Most of the knowledge we get from experimentation and studies requires the ability to form valid conclusions from data sets. If this is a terribly difficult chore, then I would take a hard look at future prospects of contributing new knowledge to your field. But at the same time, if you have the creativity to devise effective experiments, and collect some good data sets, a math guy like me would be glad to have you outsource the data analysis.