Quite Devious
I come pretty late in life to quite a few things, and this is definitely one of them. Until today, the formula above may have spoken volumes to many of you, but it meant absolutely nothing to me. For the uninitiated, that’s the formula, of course, for calculating standard deviation in statistics.
We’ve come to the stage in our Research Methods course where things start to get quantitative, where calculators and SPSS packages are in order, and where terms such as variance, central tendency and multivariate analysis are brandished about with gleeful abandon. And this is where you begin to hear the collective groans around the lecture theatre as well.
I have absolutely no background in statistics. I remember sitting for an civil service entrance test some time back, and among the questions posed was one on probability. And I recall thinking to myself – "Well, this is nice. It’s not as though I had forgotten how to calculate probability. I’ve never even learnt the damm thing before…" Go make a guess as to whether I got the job.
And here I am now. It’s going to be a challenge. But quantitative statistics hold much promise, and are sure to come in useful in future. At least that’s how I feel at this moment. But wait. Lying ahead are concepts such as regression analysis, inferential statistics, multinomial logit, and more wild and wonderful formulas. Let’s see how I feel in a few weeks time.
We’ve come to the stage in our Research Methods course where things start to get quantitative, where calculators and SPSS packages are in order, and where terms such as variance, central tendency and multivariate analysis are brandished about with gleeful abandon. And this is where you begin to hear the collective groans around the lecture theatre as well.
I have absolutely no background in statistics. I remember sitting for an civil service entrance test some time back, and among the questions posed was one on probability. And I recall thinking to myself – "Well, this is nice. It’s not as though I had forgotten how to calculate probability. I’ve never even learnt the damm thing before…" Go make a guess as to whether I got the job.
And here I am now. It’s going to be a challenge. But quantitative statistics hold much promise, and are sure to come in useful in future. At least that’s how I feel at this moment. But wait. Lying ahead are concepts such as regression analysis, inferential statistics, multinomial logit, and more wild and wonderful formulas. Let’s see how I feel in a few weeks time.
3 Comments:
I feel your pain! You'll see... be positive... you might end up enjoying it... I found some pretty insightful books! Try statistic for Dummies - no offence, but it worked for me! Not only that... it makes me giggle whenever I opened it up! I think to myself... how much fun it is to get into a so called 'prestigious' school and walk around with a book like that! A.
Sometimes referred to as Volatility.
Hang in there bro. If someone like me with Arts and Humanities background can pass Quantitative Methods in Finance, Financial Econometrics and now doing Risk Management and Financial Engineering - SO CAN YOU.
I managed to sort out my exam (just). You can do it too. DH
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