Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Just one theorem...

Maria Farrel laments that learning statistics does require mathematical skill, contrary to what instructors might think. However, the really interesting quote comes from a commenter at Kevin Drum's place:
if you understand the central limits theorm, then stats is (are?) relatively easy to understand. the problem is to get an instructor who understands and can teach the central limits theorm. i had one when i was getting my master's degree at a southern state directional university. the stats prof at the national university where i got my ph.d. was so impressed that i understood the SLT that he exempted me from 2 semesters of graduate statistics, and that hasn't hurt me in the least in my profession.
2 semesters for knowing the CLT ? I wonder if proving an NP-hardness result in the right direction warrants exemption from an algorithms class :)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Disqus for The Geomblog