I'm told there's an intellectual hierarchy in the world of numbers. The pure mathematicians are at the top, then the applied mathematicians, then the statisticians, and finally the applied statisticians are at the bottom. This isn't exactly good news given that i'm considering a career in the bottom category. I began to wonder where this order may have come from. If my own stat classes are any indication, i think i have an idea. It's odd how stat teachers go out of their way to hide so much of the math in statistics. Almost everything we do involves remembering some pre-derived formula. The only thinking involved is picking which formula to use. In the directions to my last home work assignment, i was instructed to "not use common sense" and put everything in one of the given formula. This is so bizarre to me because you think you would want to encourage an intuitive understanding of the material we are covering. Things should make sense to us and we should be able to come up with a formula when we need it instead of just memorizing one. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of beautiful mathematics in stats, but it is all hidden so as to not scare stats students away.
Posted by Matthew at October 17, 2006 02:13 PM