My wife is a teacher and has enrolled in a Masters in Public Administration program with the hopes that she will have the option to go into school Administration in the future. I have been encouraging her to do this, and she’s been very willing.
Now, she has found that she has to take Statistics, and she’s wanting to switch to another program due to serious math phobia rooted in terrible high school and college math and logic pains. She attributes much of her math troubles to dyslexia, and says, “I just can’t do it.”
I don’t want her change her Masters degree just to avoid one class. She needs an MPA to qualify for Admin jobs.
BTW, it’s a “crash course” for 1 month, not a whole semester or quarter.
Should I try to convince her to stick with it or get a tutor or something, or should I just drop it? I would like to see her just get a minimum passing grade and move on.
For those who have suffered through Statistics, what can I tell her that may encourage her to just stick with it? Is Statistics as an adult all that bad compared to a high school student who had severe math troubles?
I teach statistics at the Master’s level, and think she should talk with the prof before dropping out… many “modern” or “advanced” statistics courses are now taught on the computer, so there is little “hand’s on” math involved.
Tough call, but I think it is best to try and drop out if it isn’t going to work out, rather than simply dropping out to prevent failure.
I don’t know, I’ve taken a lot of math and statistics ranks up there with Calculus as “The most horribly taught” segment.
I’d recommend getting a good stat book (ask a professor to recommend a non-textbook intro to stat book) and see if she can figure it out herself. My applied statistics classes had me so busy doing mindless busywork and stupid examples in class I didn’t even have time to learn anything.
She should see if there is a way to take the course over a normal semester, so it won’t be quite as daunting. My gut says stick with it, but she’s the one who has to do the homework.
By the way, the “fear of statistics” made me think you could reduce her to a quivering mass by saying “In 2003, 1.7% of the beef produced North America came from Manitoba.”
I hated in high school but got through it and way dismayed to have to take Statistics when I got to college. It is the easiest math I’ve ever taken. I got a B. It makes more sense to me than some other kinds of math do. It’s not a big deal.
I was a “C” student all the way through math in high school and the required college courses. I begged my major advisor to exempt me from Behavioral Statistics, because I didn’t want to ruin my 4.0 in my major field. I was horribly depressed when he refused.
I learned more math in that one class than I had learned in my entire life, because it wasn’t just presented as something to learn, but as something to use.
I am also dyslexic. I didn’t know I was dyslexic until I was in grad school.
If she can calm herself down enough to approach the subject with an open mind, it may work wonders for her - both in learning, and in realizing that dyslexia is something that may slow her down, but cannot prevent her from learning anything she decides she wants/needs to learn.
I agree with the "try it (with the aforementioned open mind - not set that "I can’t learn this) and drop it if it is too much to handle.
Statistics doesn’t really teach math - IMO it teaches you how to USE math.
I am awful at math - like, the only reason I didn’t flunk Algebra II in high school is my (very understanding) teacher ignored the fact that I blatantly cheated all year. I did flunk the final. Geometry was a piece of cake. Didn’t take any math beyond that.
I took psych stats in college (basically just the bell curve & standard deviations, plus a few experiment-related formulae) - loved it. It helped that the grad student TA was cute, I went to all the extra sessions offered (not that your wife should be checking out the TA or anything).
I’ve taken several stats classes at the undergraduate and graduate level. And I had big time problems with math in high school, so I was a little worried going in. But I did well.
I think it’s because statistics really isn’t about mathematics. One uses arithmetic to complete the formulas as one would follow directions in a recipe. The main thing was the INTERPRETATION of the answers. That can get complicated, but it’s not math.
I got into some fancy stuff for my Master’s thesis too. Had to use an analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) because my testing groups came out unequal in pretest. Can’t say I absorbed the concepts completely, but I knew it well enough to defend my thesis with no trouble.
I’d suggest she stick with it. There’s a big difference between math and arithmetic.
I think she should talk to the professor first and find out how sympathetic/flexible the professor is willing to be. I took a “statistics” course as part of my Masters of Science in Information Science and it was incredibly easy and the professor bent over backwards to be accommodating to those who hadn’t taken a math course in my lifetime because of fear of math.
Important notes:
I was 30 at the time. I had some classmates who were 50+, some who were younger than I and many more who were in between.
My perception that the course was incredibly easy may come from the fact that I had taken more difficult math courses in the past.
The professor bent over backwards not to be scary because of her own bad experiences with unkind professors.
While your friend may have had worse math fears/experiences than some of her classmates, I bet that people looking to get MPAs are not all that different than people aiming for MSIS (or MLS) degrees. Some of my classmates formed study groups. If she has friends in the program, she should see if any of them are taking the class with her and have math fears and are willing to work together. (Important note: they should try to have someone in the group who is relatively confident/capable so that someone can confirm that they are on the right track, rather than just providing a feedback loop of "Math is scary " “math is hard” “Did I do this right?” “I can’t tell–It isn’t the answer I got, but math is scary”)
Finally, If all else fails–think about what the consequences of taking the course are and failing miserably, versus not trying the course at all. Yes, she’d be out some money and know she couldn’t do the math. On the other hand, she might not fail, and some would say that it is better to try and fail than not to try (advice I *don’t * live by, sad to say).
Another idea occurs to me: perhaps she could talk to the professor about taking some kind of math course which would help her build confidence, or a tutor or something. I’ll admit it: most of my preceeding advice is based on the assumption that she has more of a fear of math than she does any real learning disability. This may not be a good assumption. Or it may be more phobia than disability, but still way off the normal curve of math fearing behavior that I saw in my classmates. At any rate, I’m a little nervous now that I’ve typed this enormous post that she has a real problem which I’m brushing off as normal nerves, and not taking seriously. Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe not, but I felt a need to insert this disclaimer of sorts.
Regardless of my disclaimer in point 6, I still think that the first step is for your friend, perhaps with someone there to hold her hand (metaphorically) is to find out more about the professor and talk to the professor and explain “I want a Master’s of Public Administration, but I’m so scared of statistics that I’d almost rather drop out than take this course. Can you help?” The professor is likely to react in one of two ways, either of which helps make your friends immediate decision making process easier. Way A(which I think is more likely, but maybe that’s just because of my wonderful experience with my professor) is to be sympathetic, promise hand holding in math, and assure her she’s not alone. Way B is to tell her that if she’s that scared of statistics she should drop out and quit wasting everyone’s time. In that case, the friend shouldn’t take that math course–but may want to look around and find out if another math course, taught by someone else, perhaps at a different school, could be substituted.
If this degree is really important to your friend, she shouldn’t let a scary math course stop her–at least not without trying to find a solution to the problem.
At many schools, e.g. my old college, there are two “tracks” for Statistics. The regular track for Math and State major types. Then the easy one for “normal people”. The latter is specifically geared for people with Math phobia and other problems.
To the OP: Please let her know that there are courses just for her!
(One day I was helping out with registration mannnny years ago and a stunningly beautiful woman asked me which Stat course to take. I directed her to the easy track. She is still stunningly beautiful! Sometimes being a geek has its advantages.)
So when you say she is stunningly beautiful, and follow with being a geek has it’s advantages, are you implying that you still know her? Perhaps married to her?
I wouls also suggest that your wife see what types of assistance are available to students with disabilities at her school. Schools are required to make reasoanable accomodations to students with learning disabilities and this could make the difference between struggling through the class and sailing through.
And before you get her that, dig up a copy of Darrel Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics. It is a fun read that introduces several concepts (with no serious math) so that the whole subject is less overwhelming.
If it’s a one-month crash course–and a course geared toward typically math-phobic education majors–she will be introduced to the most basic concepts of statistics. The instructor will teach it from an intuitive approach, rather than one that is mathematically rigorous. Translation: It should be a cinch. She won’t have to use algebra, trigonometry, calculus, etc.
To allay her concerns, she should definitely talk to the instructor. If she’s really phobic, I’d buy/borrow an instructional video and let her review it before the course starts. She will soon see how simple elementary statistics really are.
Might also want to arrange for a math grad student to tutor her, as needed. A tutor can provide non-threatening, non-judging help.
In short, if everyone provides plenty of reassurance and safety nets, she will feel comfortable enough to do well in the course.
I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said already, but I am one more person who was never good at math and who had heard many horror stories about Statistics being the worst class ever…and when I took statistics in my MBA program I enjoyed it and found it really wasn’t a “math” class.
I would encourage your wife-friend to go ahead and take it.
I once had a serious math phobia but I was a psychology/neuroscience major and was forced to take statistics as part of the program. People told me that it wasn’t real math even though we used a math textbook and we had a professor with a joint chair in the math department.
I worked very hard and started switching my sights from just passing to making a good grade. It became one of my favorite classes and I eventually earned the 2nd highest grade out of 50 in the class.
I was still convinced that I hadn’t done real math. I went to graduate school at an Ivy League institution. They made us take statistics as part of the program. Other graduate students such as those in biochemistry were in the same class. “Oh hell”, I thought, “They are going to see that I don’t really know math”. I ended up doing great I was tutoring graduate students from the more analytical fields by the end.
The next semester, they were looking for someone good to TA and tutor for the undergraduate stats class that students were afraid of. They picked me and I spent many hours showing students that they could not only do it, but be good at it.
True story (I have always wondered what would have happened if I had taken calculus).
