Intro to Statistics

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: xSeongminx
Econ isn't going to help you with Stats. They are completely different subjects.

Statistics is very quite forward, with no hidden tricks. Just understand the concepts which are similar in all problems and you'll do fine.

A background in Econometrics would help him. However, if he did have this background, he wouldn't be taking an Intro to Stats course in the first place.

 

[txrandom]

Lots of statistics is derived from calculus, so you may need to use integration, differentiation, and all that. Most likely depends on the university and the "section" of intro to stats.

 

[xSeongminx]

Originally posted by: Minjin
My intro to stats was completely centered around pressing buttons on the TI 83/84. So I'd say that these courses can run the gambit from ridiculously easy to very hard.

Very true. I'm surprised that alot of the people with millions of posts under their avatar found the time to major in competitive departments, while posting hundreds of threads on Anandtech 🙂.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: txrandom
Lots of statistics is derived from calculus, so you may need to use integration, differentiation, and all that. Most likely depends on the university and the "section" of intro to stats.

I believe there were several "Intro Stats" classes at my university. Many departments had their own statistics classes (Like "Sociology Statistics" or "Economic Statistics") while there was your basic Stat 100 and also a Stat 400 Intro Statistics which was calculus intensive and required Calc II to take.

 

[sdifox]

I had to be careful in stats 101 since a lot of people were doing really well so we got a giant bell down. I was doing 90 going into final and scraped passed the course with a 70... and the final was only 30%!

 

[HN]

I don't know if Stats itself is easy, but I do know that my intro Stats class was so damn easy to pass because of the testing procedure:

1. you can take each test twice and take the better of the two scores.
2. When finals came around, and you were satisfied with your grade, then take that grade without the final
3. If you take the final and it helps your grade, then take the new grade.
4. If you take the final and it hurts your grade, then take your before-final grade.

 

[brandonbull]

Originally posted by: Parasitic

Originally posted by: Agentbolt

Brush up on your integrals, however.

Integrals? In INTRO stats? I seriously doubt it. Intro stats is going to stay far away from that kind of thing and focus more on best fit lines and standard deviations and such.

It depends on the school. At Berkeley we have THREE introductory to statistics courses, all are treated as equivalent.

I'm an engineer, and I took the intro for engineers. We had to work with integrals.
My friend a bio major took the business major one and he didnt have to do a thing.

That's more of a probability course. Triple integrals and differential equations.

 

[alkemyst]

5 courses at a time is probably more of the problem.

9-12hours is normal...add that 4th-5th class the workload vs time goes way up...add a 6th class like-wise.

It's really in your best interest to take your time in college and not blow through and miss the experience as well as earn a better GPA. I would say 90% of college (and school in general) is the stuff you see/do outside of the classroom.

 

[CellarDoor]

The material itself is very easy. The mistake most people make is not practicing because it looks so easy. Make sure you do practice problems and the homework and you should be fine.

 

[Farang]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
5 courses at a time is probably more of the problem.

9-12hours is normal...add that 4th-5th class the workload vs time goes way up...add a 6th class like-wise.

It's really in your best interest to take your time in college and not blow through and miss the experience as well as earn a better GPA. I would say 90% of college (and school in general) is the stuff you see/do outside of the classroom.

I'm not sure if you're on a quarter system or what, but here we do semesters and 5 classes is standard. I'd also assume you are some sort of science major, because most days I don't have any homework and the only time I've started to feel stressed was the past couple of weeks when all of my term papers happen to be due (poli sci major).

This is with 4 classes.. I could definitely have handled a 5th this semester. And I've already taken my time.. I took the last couple of quarters off to travel around the world and next month I'm going back to Thailand to "study" until April 08 😛

 

[SLCentral]

Hm, I'm in AP Stat right now in HS (not sure how it would compare to Intro to Stat, but I'd imagine they're similar), and it's a breeze. This is coming from someone who is WEAK in math.

 

[Circlenaut]

Oh god, I'm taking Stats 2 right now and it's a joke. Everything is open book/open notebook and my trusty Ti-84-plus does ALL of the work for me. Confidence intervals, Hypothesis tests, Regression, multiple correlation. I love it!

 

[2Xtreme21]

I skipped intro to stats and went right into a thousand level (applied) stats course-- I have a 97.5%. Got a 100% on both of the tests so far. I guess it helps that the professor wrote the book and he's amazingly good at teaching, but really, even with a good deal of calc in it, it's easy.

I was talking to someone who's not doing too hot in the class, and her problem is that she's trying to get by just memorizing the formulas. If you don't understand the concepts you won't be able to do well just picking formulas and hoping they work. I guess that's the same for any math class though.

 

[b0mbrman]

It's all analytical, so if you're good in that regard, you'll be good in the class.

Then again, I'm not just normal smart; I'm change-the-world smart

 

[toolboxolio]

1) TI-89
2) profit