Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Lat: 43° 42' 0 N, Long: 79° 34' 0 W
Posts: 2820

Right, so for those of you who didn't know, and despite the fact that none of you really care, I'm two weeks from (god willing) getting my Business Management Certificate. If had had known when I was 18 what I know now, I would have just studied business from the beginning. Anyway, my last class, unfortunately, is Stats 102. Our class average for the midterm was 52%. Nobody knows what the hell is going on, or what the prof is talking about. While particularly lost one night, I decided to forget about making sense of the babbling, and I wrote my ingenious ode to statistics.

I dedicate it to anyone who has survived first-year business statistics.

................

Twice a week at night in stats
I face burdens and pet peeves
And the talk of stems and leaves.
But what the hell is with the cats?!

Sure, they meu. Everyone knows this.
Yeah, their whiskers are near their noses.

I hate to plot the fucking box.
Left or right: it all seems skewed.
At test time, I know I'm screwed
Because I dream while Teacher talks.

Poisson probability distribution?
More like poisoned destitution.

Of central limits or of Bayes,
There are many useless theorems
And they're causing utter mayhem.
I dream the classroom is ablaze.

Deviations, derivations:
I hate these fucking calculations!

All events are sample spaces
Be they simple, compliment or joint.
But what the hell is the point
Of teaching us these study cases?!

A decision tree! Oh glory me!
(I'm faking orgasmic glee!)

The right and left and inner fence
And outlier are really strange.
I'll shoot them at the interquartile range.
The stress is making me so tense!

Multiplication, counting, and empirical rules:
Chebyshev's was particularly cruel.

I know my grades will take a dive
Since the normal probability plot
Looks more like Roshak's ink blot
And my ogive doesn't jive.

I ultimately feel rejected
When expected values end up unexpected.

I may seem mad as a hatter,
And make jokes that seem obscure
But, boys, one thing's for sure:
Sample size does matter!

C. Jaye (2007)

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Disgusting den of creepitude
Posts: 9704

If you spent as much time doing your stat homework as you did to your ode, you might be better off.

I'd give it a 47% chance, anyway.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: south afrika
Posts: 16494

handjobs go a long way

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Registered: Jul 2005
Location: different
Posts: 5069

if i had known what i know now in high school, i'd fuck the whole school dude

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Boston
Posts: 6569

I loved statistics. Not only was it interesting, but it was the easiest math class I took in college. Be thankful you do not have to take things like discrete math, advanced calculus, or even the slightly troublesome linear algebra.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Still Orygun
Posts: 10255

Multivariate calculus was my Waterloo. Polar, spherical, and cylindrical death.

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Disgusting den of creepitude
Posts: 9704

quote:

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Originally posted by ignatz mouse
Multivariate calculus was my albatross. Polar, spherical, and cylindrical death.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Still Orygun
Posts: 10255

Albatross!

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Lat: 43° 42' 0 N, Long: 79° 34' 0 W
Posts: 2820

I have been studying. It's easier to learn it from the textbook than the prof though. He makes mistakes, then has to go back and try to figure out where he went wrong which can be confusing when the last math course you took was ten years ago. He doesn't understand how to summarize very general concepts... like cumulative has an equal to or greater than sign rather than just the equal sign. It is such a ridiculously simple concept, but without mentioning it, he just makes it hard for us, imo. I'm doing fine overall though.

And I used to like calculus. I did well enough that a school wanted to pay me to study math. I just didn't like it, and didn't want to try to turn it into a career. I guess I would have graduated sooner, mind you, rather than floundering about for as long as I did.

When I find something particularly hard, I always want to learn about it until it becomes easier.

I remember hating organic chemistry. It and I didn't get along.

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