This is from Probability Rule #2, where “ands” become “times.” This is from Chapter 2.

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/books/

Lord knows something has to be done to drain the ignorance swamp. And caning students has been outlawed, leaving few other choices.

Why do you think it’s mostly prospective scientists who are taking statistics classes? Most business and Poly-sci students have to take at least a survey course. This sounds like an idea approach for most of these folks.

The plethora of multivariate nonsense stats in the enviro sciences with eigen vectors, canonical correlations, community similarities, etc. are complete and utter bogosity. Yet that crap fills journals that fill libraries.

Which is why most enviro sciences have not advanced much beyond Medieval superstition. We are drowning in ignorance.

You seem to me to be on the right track. It’s certainly what this old fart needs

MikeD, I sympathise. I come across scientists all the time who don’t understand the difference between scientific law and scientific theory. That’s pretty basic stuff. There’s an awful lot of assumption goes on in science classes as Feynman pointed out often enough.

The problem is, you can make the students work hard and many can kind sorta recall how to hand calculate something, but they cannot remember what it means.

The immense effort of memorizing that this statistic is divided by n, the other by the square root of n-1, etc., etc. can not make you remember that your goal in the first place was not to say something about some mysterious statistic, but about some real observable thing.

It is a good point to not assume students are as dumb as most professors think they are. I have been told routinely that students will not be able to (a) understand modern statistics (even though it is more intuitive to them than frequentism), and (b) they cannot type commands into a computer. I ignore both of these warnings and the students do fine.

Anyway, the first 7 chapters of the book are just groundwork, necessary material to understand what probability and statistics are really doing.

Okay. But we call this aiming low, or reduced expectations.

If a scientist-in-training, someone who will be using complex statistical methods, gets a “D” in regular statistics, should we still give them a science diploma?

Answer: it happens all the time!!!!

At its very heart, statistics is the Scientific Method. Logical inference. Using measurements, which are generally numbers. I sympathize with those who cannot speak Algebra, but does that mean we should hire them to fill slots in Science Dept., and accept their scientific pronouncements?

This is a real world problem. As a consulting statistician I deal every day with high level Ph.D. science project leaders who cannot tie their own shoes, statistically speaking. And their “science” output is a pile of stinking ******. Yet they get the big bucks, and what’s worse, their putrid abortions of science become Law!

There may be virtues to making it easy, but there are also drawbacks. Do you want to undergo surgery when your doc is a quack? Do you wish to have your economy ruined, freedoms curtailed, future destroyed, because the “scientists” in charge have no idea what the Scientific Method is, and are just power-tripping PC dream-it-ups while staring at a brick wall?

Answer: it happens all the time!!!!

So I have mixed emotions. Don’t underestimate your students. And if 9 out of 10 can’t hack it, maybe be thankful for No. 10. Don’t blame yourself for the General Decline of Intelligence. Instead preserve and nurture what you can when the opportunity arises.

All of which is not a criticism of the Book, which is coming along nicely. I do sense some desperation, though, involving the desire to teach and convey Knowledge. Which is not a bad thing. I feel the same way.