can you believe this crap?! from the papers of diana freeburg

worlds most fascinating college graduate

Monday, April 10, 2006

Dear Diary,
I have spent the last fourish hours slogging through statistics homework, pretending that I understand. It hasn't gone well. I hate not understanding stuff. It's like, if someone went to all the trouble of inventing this crazy formula so I can understand if a multiple variable study has statistical significance, it's the least I can do to understand it. I often get this nagging feeling that the world was created by people a helluva lot smarter than me. Take the space needle for instance, I NEVER could have built that. I definitely couldn't have figured out how to invent telephones or airplanes. I guess all of these things took some baby steps.
When I was about 13, I remember putting on a bandaid and thinking, "so this beige bandaid is great for me, but what about darker skinned people? They should get their own bandaids too, like, in different colors." THEN- years later, what do I see on tv? brown and light brown bandaids. I just have to say, I thought of that first. I just didn't have the resources to put my vision into action. Good thing I have a website so I can gripe about this.
Love,
Diana

2 Comments:

At 10:50 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pooka,
Statistics are about whole bunches of numbers and how they vary "as a group" from a real or theoretical target: you "test" the variability. Don't worry, you are plenty smart. The best way to learn anything is to teach it to someone else. In my first grad class in Stats (after 2 tough ones in undergrad) I got a D on my first test... along with a nice guy from Israel. Right there I decided we would get better together... I ended up teaching him stats - and in the process really mastered it for myself. So - Uncle Tom says, "Go help someone else who really doesn't get it... you will do great."
G'night, I can't do college kid hours anymore. But thank you so much for the wonderful blogs!

 
At 9:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So I want to know who in this family of ours taught graduate level statistics to a guy from Israel. Allie Allie Oxen free!

Pooka, are you packed for braaazzzilllll yet? Will you send me a postcard?
Love you.
-Anon #2

 

Post a Comment

<< Home