The end of stats

With Monday's lecture, second-year statistics came to an end. Getting all emotional over a module is probably a bit silly, but thankfully I'm not the only one!

While I did 'decide to enjoy' this module at the beginning of term, I still had doubts: all my life I've been told I suck at maths - might this module reduce me to a blubbering wreck on the floor of the MASH office? It turns out those fears were unfounded after all. A mixture of good course structure, amusing lecturers, and interesting material got me through the module relatively unscathed. I hereby present to you a list of life-savers:

Weekly practicals

Therein lies the essence of 231. Since statistical analysis is a skill, you can only go so far by learning the theory. In fact, I learnt more in practicals than I did in lectures and reading put together!

Weekly feedback

Not only did we get instant feedback in practicals, we also got weekly reports of common mistakes from the kindly module team.

Seminars

These were meant to be group discussions of relevant cases, i.e. 'stats in real life', but...*ahem* some things never work out as planned;) Instead of debating the finer points of household transitions, we ended up patching every hole that ever existed in the fabric of our statistical knowledge. The module team have been tremendously good sports about it though, and never once lost their minds even when sorely tempted to do so. Now that's devotion!


All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I'm sad to see the end of geography stats modules, but then again there'll be plenty of room for stats mischief in my dissertation. But that's a whole other can of worms...