There is an old saying, "Too soon old and too late smart!"
It is often easy to see where we went awry in our past, and the older we are the longer our past, and the more opportunities to make mistakes. I had a long and very blessed work career in Higher Education. The last 10 years or so of my career, I taught a course called, Measurement and Evaluation. That course starts off with an introduction to very basic statistics.
I was chatting a year or so ago with a very young prof who was also teaching that class. He remarked to me that he was going to give up teaching most of the stuff in the textbook and instead teach ONLY a popular statistical analysis package. Now understand, that this course, at his university, was taught ONLY to undergraduates!
Why does that matter?
Because only 3 grads out of 10 will EVER in their lives USE that statistical package. Do YOU use statistical packages?
When the young fellow said that, I thought to myself, WHO will ever use this information? What good will it be to them over their lifetime? I knew the answer was very small, though I wasn't sure how small.
Then, it dawned on me. I had insisted that MY students, in the stats part of the course, learn a stats procedure called the Bland-Altman analysis. If you can perform a Bland-Altman, and explain the basics you know a LOT of useful statistics!! I had made knowledge of the B-A essential to my course- making the same mistake as the young guy. WHO of you, dear readers, have ever used a Bland-Altman analysis?
That old saying, "Too soon old and too late smart!" caught ME!! But now that I am smarter, I am retired- which is why I share this key lesson with you!
It is often easy to see where we went awry in our past, and the older we are the longer our past, and the more opportunities to make mistakes. I had a long and very blessed work career in Higher Education. The last 10 years or so of my career, I taught a course called, Measurement and Evaluation. That course starts off with an introduction to very basic statistics.
I was chatting a year or so ago with a very young prof who was also teaching that class. He remarked to me that he was going to give up teaching most of the stuff in the textbook and instead teach ONLY a popular statistical analysis package. Now understand, that this course, at his university, was taught ONLY to undergraduates!
Why does that matter?
Because only 3 grads out of 10 will EVER in their lives USE that statistical package. Do YOU use statistical packages?
When the young fellow said that, I thought to myself, WHO will ever use this information? What good will it be to them over their lifetime? I knew the answer was very small, though I wasn't sure how small.
Then, it dawned on me. I had insisted that MY students, in the stats part of the course, learn a stats procedure called the Bland-Altman analysis. If you can perform a Bland-Altman, and explain the basics you know a LOT of useful statistics!! I had made knowledge of the B-A essential to my course- making the same mistake as the young guy. WHO of you, dear readers, have ever used a Bland-Altman analysis?
That old saying, "Too soon old and too late smart!" caught ME!! But now that I am smarter, I am retired- which is why I share this key lesson with you!
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