This is the remark that infuriated me:
Face it: in the grand scheme of things, your exam is not particularly important, nor is it a true measure of any student's aptitudes--particularly in statistics for aspirants to the social sciences (trust me; I know: I was horrendous in statistics in school but if I do say so myself I have blossomed into a darned good clinical psychologist).From this statement alone it can be determined that the person writing the comment was neither (well) trained in the social sciences, nor a "darned good" clinical psychologist.
I fight the idea that statistics is irrelevant every day in my classroom. Not only is statistics important for social scientists, it is an important component of any liberal arts education. Understanding and dealing with variability in measurements is fundamental, critical, essential for anyone who wishes to be a rational contributing member of society. The media bombard us with statistics each and every day, on every news broadcast, in the papers, and on billboards. "Four out of five dentists recommend!" "The risk of Type II diabetes increases!" "Lifetime risk of breast cancer!"
Without an understanding of statistics, statements about health risks, public opinion, government, public policy, effectiveness of different laundry detergents (and on and on and on) must simply be taken as fact or rejected as lies. Arriving at a real understanding of how this information may or may not influence each of us personally requires statistics. To be able to sift good information from bad information requires statistics. To be a good citizen requires statistics. "In the grand scheme of things" statistics may be one of the most important classes a student ever takes.
Let's talk about voting, the most important responsibility a citizen of a democratic society exercises. Modern (and not-so-modern) technology has provided us with an array of different voting machines. Should we worry about how secure these machines are? When should we become concerned about vote fraud? Are our voices being heard? Should we have to rely on some expert to tell us that an election was fair or should we be able to figure it out for ourselves?
Of course we have to be able to figure it out for ourselves. This is the purpose of the exit poll. The exit poll is a sample of voters taken at the polling place immediately after they have cast their ballots. The actual vote count should be similar to the figures provided by the exit poll, within some margin of error. Exit poll statistics that are widely different from the actual vote count signal election fraud. The exit polls strongly suggest that the 2004 election that returned President Bush to office was flawed. If we were citizens of the Ukraine, or Rwanda, the United Nations might have declared our election results invalid and sent in observers to insure a fair election. Where is the outrage in our country? No outrage here: we are so poorly trained as consumers of information that we would prefer to watch NBC's Medium than the election returns.
On to the psychologists. When I teach graduate students the clinical psychology students are especially well-aware that statistics is a key component of their discipline. Not only do they need to understand statistical methods to conduct their research, but even those who do not intend to pursue a research career appreciate that without a good understanding of statistics they will be unable to read and understand the literature in their field. How would you like to go to a doctor who is so poorly trained that she must rely on drug companies or newspapers to tell her what drugs are more or less effective in treating a disease? The "darned good clinical psychologists" know statistics well and use it to make themselves better therapists.
I appreciate that not many people need to know how to do an analysis of variance, but I insist that everyone needs to know what a standard (margin of) error is and how a margin of error constrains the claims someone can make about their data. To say that statistics is "not particularly important" reflects a gross misunderstanding about how information is marketed and consumed in our society and a terrible misconception of the work of social scientists.
30 comments:
Hear, hear! Couldn't agree more.
Keep fighting the good fight...
Sing it!
Yes, as an *actual* licensed clinical psychologist, rather than a trolling graduate student in English, it would be impossible for me to perform any of my job duties effectively and ethically without a fairly thorough background in statistics. When I was an undergrad, I did not always see the upside of taking such a "hard" series, which interfered with my nightly experiments in neuronal death by ETOH injestion. I, clearly, was an idiot. I am less of an idiot now. Let's hope that trolling grad student in English follows the same trajectory. More power to you, AP.
Pretending to be a practicing clinical psychologist?
How impossibly lame.
Half the time I post to blogs, I pretend to be James Buchanan, fifteenth President of the United States. Lemme tellya, people respect the opinions of a former president, even a dead one.
If you're going to fib, for God's sake, make it good.
Violinguist, I fail to see how your remark, which I quoted in its entirety, has been misrepresented. You say an awful lot in your comments, and I understand that in addition to saying that statistics was irrelevant, you also complained about the world-wide, ancient practice of testing to evaluate knowledge.
You said what you said, and it reflects an unfortunately pervasive point of view about statistics and the social sciences that I have struggled against my entire professional life. The fact that you said other things too does not change its meaning.
Amen, Angry Professor! I teach Psychological Statistics, and as we all know, statistical knowledge is so important for everything you do in life.
Your false claim to experience and expertise were cheap and illegitimate tricks to push forward your argument, to add unearned merit to your statements.
Later retraction does not change the action. The misdeed still hangs foul in the air, like a belch in a space station. Confession mitigates the act, but not completely.
What can I say, false claims of authority irritate me beyond measure. Thus, I felt the situation merited some ribbing.
I think that this quotation from a comment by carroll, violinguist really is just so apropos:
"After the first quarter one of my professors lauded me as an outstanding literature student, but opined that my critical writing was not up to par."
Quite an accurate self-referential commentary on his style of argument.
Yes, Becky. Yes, yes, yes.
All I'm sayin' is that if only I had been a better student of statistics as a graduate student, my life would be a million times easier now. No reflection on my teachers, mind you. I'm just slow to grasp that kind of material.
So yes, sing it, AP.
The "James Buchanan" bit was a gag. Claiming to be a man who's been dead since 1868 struck me as such an obviously ridiculous idea that claiming I used the identity on other folks' blogs would have to be taken as a joke.
Ah, well.
Perhaps I should have used Millard Fillmore.
Violinguist, an attack on your ideas is not a personal insult. As a student of English, you know well that words have specific meanings, and when you string them together in certain ways they express certain ideas. I dislike at least one of your ideas. I dislike the way you strung your words together. I do not know who you are. How could I possibly attack you personally?
You have issues, dear. One of them seems to be an inability to accept honest criticism.
Thank you, AP. I kept banging up against this wall in library school a couple of years ago. "But we're just going to be librarians!" Maybe so, but you will still need to do community analysis and prepare reports.
All educated citizens should learn to cut through the flim-flam!
What gets me is that Violinguist keeps coming back and coming back and coming back. Why does he think that being even more obnoxious is going to make us think that his earlier obnoxiousness is not what it was?
Violinguist, this is AP's blog. If you feel offended by her disagreement with you, get your own blog and spout off there.
AP, please feel free to tell me I'm out of bounds on this one.
No, Liz, thanks. You're right on. I think s/he has left; I didn't respond again because I didn't want to continue to feed the troll.
I have faced this sort of situation once before, surprisingly enough, with an English major. I pointed out that what he had written meant A, and he persisted in arguing that no, in fact, he meant B. After arguing pointlessly about it for 30 minutes, I finally asked him how I was expected to know he meant B if he wrote A, and at least he was gracious enough to concede that it would have been difficult for me.
"It was a dark and stormy night" does not lead the reader to imagine a bright sunny morning. Is this some sort of reverse deconstruction that, not being a student of the humanities, I can't possibly understand?
And calling "personal insult" on the quite cogent observation that s/he acknowledged him/herself the lack of clarity in his/her own writing just blew me away.
For what it's worth, CV's posts constituted a little more than half of the first thread, and a little less than half of this thread. (OK, I was procrastinating.) If that's not thread-jacking, I don't know what is.
Liz, CV does have his/her own blog (mentioned in the first thread). So, yeah, a quick comment here that more depth is posted over there would have been appropriate.
I'm reminded of the whole Helaine Olen/nanny conflict: "Why can't your blog be all about MEEEEEEE?"
CV provided an enormous ammount of fodder, and AP chose to comment on something that she wanted to comment on. I'm dumbfounded that CV would think he/she maintains any controll over which parts of his/her comments are open for debate. All together now: "Is this what they're teaching in English these days?"
Um, no. It's not what they are teaching in English these days--but the kind of resistance that CV displays (to rethinking her own ideas, to acknowledging the importance of what is SAID instead of what is MEANT, and in responding to everything as a "personal attack" (and thus outside the bounds of argumentation)) is certainly present there...
Is this some sort of reverse deconstruction . . .
I think you hit the nail on the head. Back when I was exposed to English scholarship (10-15 years ago) we read a lot of the French Theororists and talked about the "death of the author" and how the written word had some kind of infinite fluidity in the hands of a reader. Practically, I think this was a way to breathe new life into some otherwise quite mouldy books: people didn't have to worry about debating what Melville meant anymore. It did have the unfortunate side effect of convincing some people that strings of words don't have any inherent or specific meaning, only what the reader assigns to them.
But as you point out, this recent experience is exactly the opposite. The author, rather than being "dead" as far as textual interperetation goes, is actively reinterpreting his/her own text, while denying anyone else the right to do so!
I never had statistics, though I've picked up a fair bit through association with social scientists and reading carefully both social science and journalism. I had to, in order to do what I wanted to do, and I still don't know enough to do some of what I want to do. I always advise students to do stats for their math requirement, and my explanation sounds a lot like yours.
I am an occasional reader of your blog. I wanted to comment on this particular entry... I am in the field of chemistry and constantly get bombarded with similarly inaccurate measures of the importance of my subject of study. I applaud your well constructed argument for statistics. I certainly wish I had learned more in my statistics class - that would have helped me indefinitely in graduate school. Wish I had known that as an ignorant undergrad! Keep up the good fight! :)
Better late than never reading this post. Amen, Angry Professor. As a social scientist who teaches the required research methods course in our department, I fight constantly against the "stats are meaningless" and "stats are BS" attitudes. Unfortunately, sometimes it is even with colleagues. You make a great point here.
Go, Angry Professor! I teach life science and am active in a biology teachers' association. Much of the evolution/intelligent design "controvery" comes from people who do not know how statistics underlies research and how research defines science. If we COULD get ALL undergraduates to not only "take" statistics but develop a working understanding, we would have a much more literate society on many levels.
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