I went into work today. I was tired because it had already been a full week, but today was going to be okay. I would be working with my favorite geeks, doing geek things (moving e-mail over to a new domain, swapping the firewall out--fun stuff like that.)
I knew that there would be a few problems (and there were) but instead of it being just me and a consultant on the phone I had a few allies. This meant that when I remembered we had to change a setting on all the computers (or when in the course of doing stuff we discovered we needed to change a setting on all the computers) I would only have to change settings on *half* the computers-because someone else would deal with the other half.
More than that though, I had someone to eat lunch with, someone to laugh with when things went wrong and someone to prove (to myself at least) that when things went wrong it wasn't all my fault. 70 percent of IT projects fail--according to my IT project management textbook. It also meant that when things didn't go according to plan there was someone with a stronger personality than I have to tell the consultant working off site that "I'll take care of it tomorrow" is not okay all the time.
So even though it was a working Saturday it was going to be a good working Saturday. No Boss-just the geek squad doing geek things and snarking about it.
I mentioned how empty the streets looked-since it was Saturday. "Oh there's going to be a protest about Libya later in the day." one of my colleagues responded.
"What kind of protest? Against Khadaffi? Against Obama? Pro Khadaffi?" He didn't know. We went back to watching the consultant who was remotely connected to the computer we were working on attempt and fail (repeatedly) to sync up Outlook with the new Exchange environment. We offered each other MST3K commentary on how he was doing.
The consultant sorted out what needed to be done and told us about it. Meanwhile another colleague of mine was working in the server room on our domain controller (which is unwell-to put it mildly.) I went in to talk to him and noticed a cockroach the size of my thumb on the floor. In many ways I count myself as a tough girl. Dealing with giant bugs isn't one of them. I screamed and flailed. My colleague in the server room asked for a glass and paper. I provided the glass and two kinds of paper--a wad of paper towels for squashing and a sheet of 90# office paper to slip under the glass. He took the latter, slid it under the glass and handed the glass to me to dispose of the animal. Hmm, I may scream like a girl when I see giant insects but neither of the nerd boys in the room felt like helping me dispose of the creature*. I took it to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
Then we went to lunch and got burritos. We told the remote consultant we'd call him after lunch and watched a video review of a new smart phone while we ate. After lunch I checked facebook. Ted Rall had posted that the US was invading Libya. I walked back to the conference room where my lunch-buddy was and said "I know what the protests are about now." Apparently so did he--since he was reading CNN at the time. "Has the whole world gone mad?" I asked "Maybe?" he answered. It's not polite to discuss politics with coworkers so we didn't say more about it--besides we had 16 user accounts to sync with the new Exchange server, make sure passwords were properly set and share calendars, etc.
As I wandered around doing stuff this afternoon I wondered WTF? What if this is the start of WWIIII? Although I'm a news junkie, I've been very busy lately and there's been an awful lot of news to choose from (Japan, Wisconsin, Fidelity sending more jobs out of state, another piece of the Big Dig falling down, etc.) But this seems like it came out of the blue. I can honestly state that I don't have enough information to know if this is a good idea or not. My inclination is to think it's not.
For starters we've got two wars already-who are they going to get to fight in this one? For another thing most of the people who've been advocating this are people whose opinions I distrust. This doesn't mean it's wrong. But it seems awfully sudden to me.
So I've spent the day in WTF? mode while trying to do my job. I mean on a Saturday while trying to d something big I expect a couple of trip ups--"Oops we have to reset the VPN" "Oops I forgot to export the pst file before moving over to the new server" "Oops I gave you the wrong login info" "Oops I need to call the guy in New Jersey because the server didn't reboot properly" even "Oops there's a cockroach the size of my thumb in the server room" isn't out of the range of expected things that could happen. But "Oops we've invaded Libya?" That is entirely out of scope.
That's how my day went.
*not a slight on either of their characters-just an observation
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
In Which We are Much Calmer
A few weeks ago I tried to chew through three chapters of Statistics in one weekend. I had two chapters legitimately assigned to me and I was trying to make my way through the third since I had to attend a conference the next weekend. It didn't go well and I spent the all the time between then and last night that wasn't already spoken for (which wasn't much) freaking out about Statistics.
Why were they making me try to understand all this math? I understand that as a business school student I should know something about statistics, but I didn't see how this Greek alphabet soup* they were throwing at me was going to help me understand anything useful.
Now I'm not dumb and I'm no longer a flaky undergrad who spends the afternoon reading Dykes to Watch Out For instead of doing her homework. However, if I find the subject matter I'm supposed to be reading impenetrable I have a really hard time staying focused. In addition I was feeling like I needed to do all the problems NOW! last week end or dire consequences would ensue.
But the biggest problem I was having is that I *can't* learn math by reading about it. I learn math by doing it. In order to do it, I have to understand it well enough to give it a shot and if my only tool for understanding "how to do it" is a textbook I'm going to have a few problems. I'd been aware of this before, but it didn't really become a fuse-melter until I tried to do 3 chapters of work in two days (and oh by the way the exam's next Monday.)
Last Sunday I was sitting in Gulu Gulu in Salem (a cafe where some of us go to get work done--having a study buddy keeps you honest even if your study buddy is doing something completely different than what you're doing) and I expressed my frustration to my study buddy.
"Take some time off."
"I can't-I'm out at a conference half the week already."
"Call that woman who tutors statistics."
"Unless she's free this very minute I'm SOL."
So I panicked, when I had time to think about Statistics at all. How was I going to get through this week's chapter *and* relearn the first 5 chapters before Monday the 7th? But then I finally got to talk to someone who knew something about statistics-in this case my dad. I had been reticent to ask Dad for help, even though he's taught statistics. For starters I'm 35 years old. I've kinda gotten out of the habit of asking my parents for help on my homework. The last time I asked him for help on Statistics I was in 9th grade. I'd ask him a question and he would answer it, but he'd give me the answer that one of his graduate-level psychology students could use and I was doing Fisher Price statistics. So he was less than helpful. However when he called to help me with Statistics this time things worked out much better than they had when I was a freshman in high school.
"Hi Dad, I hate Statistics."
"Well then they're teaching it wrong. Gimme a question to answer-gimme a hard one."
So I gave him the question I had spent 8 hours over the course of several days trying to understand. It was question number one on how to use Z scores on a normal distribution."
"Um, that's not a hard one, Cantabridgienne. That's as basic as it gets. If you're having trouble understanding that.."
"Yeah, I know I gots a learning disability I'm really, really bad at math."
"Well but if you can't get that concept.."
"Oh i get it *now*." If you spend 8 hours trying to learn how to do something, by the time you've figured it out you understand it well and are not likely to forget how to do it.
"Gimme another hard one."
"Okay what's a binomial distribution?" This was a concept that I had failed to grasp because it involved as many Pis as a bake sale.
"Oh that's where you have a coin and you want to know what the probability of getting 4 heads is if you toss it four times."
"Oh that? I know how to do that." (The probability of getting heads is always 1/2. To know what the probability of getting four heads you just take (1/2)^4. I bet even my poet friends know that.)
"Okay gimme another hard one."
"What about Poisson distributions."
silence for a few seconds. "Why are they teaching you *that*?"
Talking with Dad helped. For one thing, getting to discuss these concepts with someone who knew something about Statistics proved to me that I wasn't as hopeless as I'd thought I was (no matter how frustrated I'd been over the past week.) It also validated, to me anyways, that my inability to understand the material presented might have something to do with the textbook instead of it all being down to me being a bit dyscalculative. And it reaffirmed that having a tutor-someone with whom I could discuss these things and ask for help-would go a long way to alleviating my distress.
It was too late to engage one before this exam, but I have started the tutor engagement process.
In fact, after one conversation with Dad in which he clarified one concept to me and (inadvertently) showed me that I *did* in fact understand another concept I had no problem studying for the exam I took today. The problem sets that had taken me all day to go through the first time around took me maybe an hour, or an hour and a half apiece to finish on the second try (even the ones that had made me yowl like car-adverse cat on the way to the vet.) Once I gained some confidence and stopped being in learned-failure mode it all wasn't that bad. For starters, now that I was no longer panicking (I need to understand this right now because I have no time the rest of the week to work on this problem set) I noticed that while the textbook did present all sorts of nasty formulas involving e square roots I never had to do any actual math more complicated than A*B+C!/X*Y. Anything more complicated than that and Excel would do all the heavy lifting for me. While this is not a perfect solution (knowing how to use EXPONDIST doesn't mean you understand exponential distributions) it made me less panic-prone.
This experience reminded me of a few things I aught to know about myself by now.
1) Math is one of those things I learn by doing--reading about it doesn't help. There are other things I learn by doing that I can learn with a textbook (how to do cool things in Excel or Access) math isn't one of them. I need human help.
2) If at first I don't succeed I panic. This has been a constant theme in my graduate school career.
In general,if I can say such a thing I'm actually pretty comfortable operating in panic mode. I provide tech support to a small company. A good deal of that involves being crisis mode. I thought I was just going to run a couple of reports today, but no suddenly I need to upgrade the software on five different computers and when I'm done with that I need to call Comcast and yell at them about their failure at upgrading our service and when I'm done with that I need to talk to the Compliance Officer/The Bookkeeper/The IT vendor. So I'm used to panicking. It's normal for me.
However I'm experiencing problems because of my propensity to panic. Last December I was sure that I'd flailed Accounting. I got a B. Here I was sure that I was going to have to drop Statistics and re-take it (with proactive appointments scheduled with a tutor) and I got a B/B+ on the exam I took today.
I think some of this is a case of(to quote American Gods) "The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment?"(Shadow, American Gods Neil Gaiman 2001)
I don't mind panicking a bit if it gets me to study. What I *do* mind is having my perception of reality be entirely out of whack with actual reality. I like to think that I have a good grip on reality. But if my outlook on reality is that of Marvin the Depressed Android all the time I'm going to have problems progressing in my business life and my personal life.
Furthermore I have come to the conclusion that my tendency to panic is not entirely a result of my work environment. I just happen to work in a place (tech support in a small business) where the ability to work well while panicking is a good skill to have.
So to sum up. I am not failing Statistics. I am working on engaging a tutor and I really do need to do something about my propensity to panic. Other people might find it weird.
*Mmmm. Greek Alphabet Soup--garnished with feta and baby spinach.
Why were they making me try to understand all this math? I understand that as a business school student I should know something about statistics, but I didn't see how this Greek alphabet soup* they were throwing at me was going to help me understand anything useful.
Now I'm not dumb and I'm no longer a flaky undergrad who spends the afternoon reading Dykes to Watch Out For instead of doing her homework. However, if I find the subject matter I'm supposed to be reading impenetrable I have a really hard time staying focused. In addition I was feeling like I needed to do all the problems NOW! last week end or dire consequences would ensue.
But the biggest problem I was having is that I *can't* learn math by reading about it. I learn math by doing it. In order to do it, I have to understand it well enough to give it a shot and if my only tool for understanding "how to do it" is a textbook I'm going to have a few problems. I'd been aware of this before, but it didn't really become a fuse-melter until I tried to do 3 chapters of work in two days (and oh by the way the exam's next Monday.)
Last Sunday I was sitting in Gulu Gulu in Salem (a cafe where some of us go to get work done--having a study buddy keeps you honest even if your study buddy is doing something completely different than what you're doing) and I expressed my frustration to my study buddy.
"Take some time off."
"I can't-I'm out at a conference half the week already."
"Call that woman who tutors statistics."
"Unless she's free this very minute I'm SOL."
So I panicked, when I had time to think about Statistics at all. How was I going to get through this week's chapter *and* relearn the first 5 chapters before Monday the 7th? But then I finally got to talk to someone who knew something about statistics-in this case my dad. I had been reticent to ask Dad for help, even though he's taught statistics. For starters I'm 35 years old. I've kinda gotten out of the habit of asking my parents for help on my homework. The last time I asked him for help on Statistics I was in 9th grade. I'd ask him a question and he would answer it, but he'd give me the answer that one of his graduate-level psychology students could use and I was doing Fisher Price statistics. So he was less than helpful. However when he called to help me with Statistics this time things worked out much better than they had when I was a freshman in high school.
"Hi Dad, I hate Statistics."
"Well then they're teaching it wrong. Gimme a question to answer-gimme a hard one."
So I gave him the question I had spent 8 hours over the course of several days trying to understand. It was question number one on how to use Z scores on a normal distribution."
"Um, that's not a hard one, Cantabridgienne. That's as basic as it gets. If you're having trouble understanding that.."
"Yeah, I know I gots a learning disability I'm really, really bad at math."
"Well but if you can't get that concept.."
"Oh i get it *now*." If you spend 8 hours trying to learn how to do something, by the time you've figured it out you understand it well and are not likely to forget how to do it.
"Gimme another hard one."
"Okay what's a binomial distribution?" This was a concept that I had failed to grasp because it involved as many Pis as a bake sale.
"Oh that's where you have a coin and you want to know what the probability of getting 4 heads is if you toss it four times."
"Oh that? I know how to do that." (The probability of getting heads is always 1/2. To know what the probability of getting four heads you just take (1/2)^4. I bet even my poet friends know that.)
"Okay gimme another hard one."
"What about Poisson distributions."
silence for a few seconds. "Why are they teaching you *that*?"
Talking with Dad helped. For one thing, getting to discuss these concepts with someone who knew something about Statistics proved to me that I wasn't as hopeless as I'd thought I was (no matter how frustrated I'd been over the past week.) It also validated, to me anyways, that my inability to understand the material presented might have something to do with the textbook instead of it all being down to me being a bit dyscalculative. And it reaffirmed that having a tutor-someone with whom I could discuss these things and ask for help-would go a long way to alleviating my distress.
It was too late to engage one before this exam, but I have started the tutor engagement process.
In fact, after one conversation with Dad in which he clarified one concept to me and (inadvertently) showed me that I *did* in fact understand another concept I had no problem studying for the exam I took today. The problem sets that had taken me all day to go through the first time around took me maybe an hour, or an hour and a half apiece to finish on the second try (even the ones that had made me yowl like car-adverse cat on the way to the vet.) Once I gained some confidence and stopped being in learned-failure mode it all wasn't that bad. For starters, now that I was no longer panicking (I need to understand this right now because I have no time the rest of the week to work on this problem set) I noticed that while the textbook did present all sorts of nasty formulas involving e square roots I never had to do any actual math more complicated than A*B+C!/X*Y. Anything more complicated than that and Excel would do all the heavy lifting for me. While this is not a perfect solution (knowing how to use EXPONDIST doesn't mean you understand exponential distributions) it made me less panic-prone.
This experience reminded me of a few things I aught to know about myself by now.
1) Math is one of those things I learn by doing--reading about it doesn't help. There are other things I learn by doing that I can learn with a textbook (how to do cool things in Excel or Access) math isn't one of them. I need human help.
2) If at first I don't succeed I panic. This has been a constant theme in my graduate school career.
In general,if I can say such a thing I'm actually pretty comfortable operating in panic mode. I provide tech support to a small company. A good deal of that involves being crisis mode. I thought I was just going to run a couple of reports today, but no suddenly I need to upgrade the software on five different computers and when I'm done with that I need to call Comcast and yell at them about their failure at upgrading our service and when I'm done with that I need to talk to the Compliance Officer/The Bookkeeper/The IT vendor. So I'm used to panicking. It's normal for me.
However I'm experiencing problems because of my propensity to panic. Last December I was sure that I'd flailed Accounting. I got a B. Here I was sure that I was going to have to drop Statistics and re-take it (with proactive appointments scheduled with a tutor) and I got a B/B+ on the exam I took today.
I think some of this is a case of(to quote American Gods) "The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment?"(Shadow, American Gods Neil Gaiman 2001)
I don't mind panicking a bit if it gets me to study. What I *do* mind is having my perception of reality be entirely out of whack with actual reality. I like to think that I have a good grip on reality. But if my outlook on reality is that of Marvin the Depressed Android all the time I'm going to have problems progressing in my business life and my personal life.
Furthermore I have come to the conclusion that my tendency to panic is not entirely a result of my work environment. I just happen to work in a place (tech support in a small business) where the ability to work well while panicking is a good skill to have.
So to sum up. I am not failing Statistics. I am working on engaging a tutor and I really do need to do something about my propensity to panic. Other people might find it weird.
*Mmmm. Greek Alphabet Soup--garnished with feta and baby spinach.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
I Like Rules
I like rules and regulations. I like regulations that keep corporations honest and keep them from screwing over the little guy. But that’s not the only reason to like rules. I don’t like rules just because I’m an INTJ or because I was exposed to Catholicism at a young age—I like them because they’re healthy—not just for puppy dogs and children but also for the financial services industry. And yes, I work for a fee-only investment advisor but I don’t think this is simply the result of me having a few too many glasses of the kool-aid.
There have been studies done that prove that the financial services industry is actually healthier when it is regulated. (Because this is a blog post and not a paper I’m going to be lazy, but I bet you could find one with the Google and 5 minutes.) I believe this and I like to think that I believe it because it’s true and it makes sense to me and not just because I wish it were true. I feel that rules and regulations offer a framework on which people can build in the way a trellis offers a supporting framework for ivy.
I spent today at a conference in Cambridge. I don’t go to many conferences for a number of reasons (they don’t have many for IT professionals in my industry for starters). So this was a bit of a treat for me. My professional niche— technology for the independent investment adviser—is both small and dorky. This conference was on technology and practice management, so it was a pleasant opportunity for me to be myself, professionally.
The real “aha” moment for me was during an afternoon session on social media. I did not plan on attending this session. I have until now intentionally avoided “social media for business” for several reasons. For starters, it’s marketing, which I avoid like the plague. For another reason, the regulations in financial services about marketing are draconian (no testimonials-so no one can recommend you on Linked In, no giving advice in your advertisements, no saying that you’re a “successful” practice) so the general impression I’ve gotten on social media for financial advisers is “Don’t.”
But at the same time, all the industry press I’ve been reading has been pro-social media. Why would all these financial industry journalists keep telling us to go forth and “fan” ourselves on facebook if they all knew there were compliance reasons why we couldn’t do so? Furthermore, if the inter-webs are really changing to the point where everything is happening on facebook, we (the investment advisory world) can’t just keep saying we don’t do that because it’s against our religion. At the very least I decided today that *I* would not be the one telling my employers no, we can’t do this thing for compliance reasons.
I had intended to attend a different afternoon session, but the idea of sitting through yet another discussion of software integration (“Folks, just so you know what an API is…”) and planning your technology decisions strategically made me want to curl up and take a nap*. So I found my boss and told him that I was going to the social media session.
I knew I had made the right decision when I saw that one of the panelists was a compliance attorney—this was not just a couple of internet fan-boys and fan-girls telling you how you need to be all Web 2.0 ‘n stuff. The panelists talked about how while there weren’t regulations in place for investment advisers yet, there was a regulation for a related industry that spelled out what the rules were likely to be. There were software offerings that would allow investment advisers to participate in social media, while adhering to industry compliance regulations.**
Hearing these things caused me to have a thought-gasm. Suddenly I could see *exactly* what I could do to help build a social media program for my employers (or for any registered investment adviser.) Once I knew that someone had given some thought to what the rules were likely to be it took me about 5 seconds to come up with a social-media marketing plan for my employers. And this is why I like rules.
Is my instant plan perfect? No—but it is a prototype that can be developed. Will they adopt my plan? Will I even get to be the person that advises them on the use of social media? Probably not. But that doesn’t chance how nice it was to have a framework that allowed me to see and understand.
*. It’s not that I don’t find the subject matter interesting; it’s just that I could give the presentation at this point in time. I know why your CRM (or “sea-arm” as one guy kept calling it) should be integrated with your Portfolio Management System, your Document Management System as well as your Financial Planning Software. I know why you should use an Account Aggregation System and Rebalancing Software. I also know the extent to which the integration that all these vendors are going on about does or does not work. (Yes, there’s integration—unfortunately it only imports fields we don’t use.) Furthermore, I also know that me knowing these things (and explaining them—sometimes while jumping up and down and waving my arms) has not lead to them being fully adopted by my employers.
**The biggies I mentioned above-no testimonials, no investment advice, but the “books and records” portion of the regulation requires that you save all your advertising—so if you have a twitter feed you must archive every tweet.
There have been studies done that prove that the financial services industry is actually healthier when it is regulated. (Because this is a blog post and not a paper I’m going to be lazy, but I bet you could find one with the Google and 5 minutes.) I believe this and I like to think that I believe it because it’s true and it makes sense to me and not just because I wish it were true. I feel that rules and regulations offer a framework on which people can build in the way a trellis offers a supporting framework for ivy.
I spent today at a conference in Cambridge. I don’t go to many conferences for a number of reasons (they don’t have many for IT professionals in my industry for starters). So this was a bit of a treat for me. My professional niche— technology for the independent investment adviser—is both small and dorky. This conference was on technology and practice management, so it was a pleasant opportunity for me to be myself, professionally.
The real “aha” moment for me was during an afternoon session on social media. I did not plan on attending this session. I have until now intentionally avoided “social media for business” for several reasons. For starters, it’s marketing, which I avoid like the plague. For another reason, the regulations in financial services about marketing are draconian (no testimonials-so no one can recommend you on Linked In, no giving advice in your advertisements, no saying that you’re a “successful” practice) so the general impression I’ve gotten on social media for financial advisers is “Don’t.”
But at the same time, all the industry press I’ve been reading has been pro-social media. Why would all these financial industry journalists keep telling us to go forth and “fan” ourselves on facebook if they all knew there were compliance reasons why we couldn’t do so? Furthermore, if the inter-webs are really changing to the point where everything is happening on facebook, we (the investment advisory world) can’t just keep saying we don’t do that because it’s against our religion. At the very least I decided today that *I* would not be the one telling my employers no, we can’t do this thing for compliance reasons.
I had intended to attend a different afternoon session, but the idea of sitting through yet another discussion of software integration (“Folks, just so you know what an API is…”) and planning your technology decisions strategically made me want to curl up and take a nap*. So I found my boss and told him that I was going to the social media session.
I knew I had made the right decision when I saw that one of the panelists was a compliance attorney—this was not just a couple of internet fan-boys and fan-girls telling you how you need to be all Web 2.0 ‘n stuff. The panelists talked about how while there weren’t regulations in place for investment advisers yet, there was a regulation for a related industry that spelled out what the rules were likely to be. There were software offerings that would allow investment advisers to participate in social media, while adhering to industry compliance regulations.**
Hearing these things caused me to have a thought-gasm. Suddenly I could see *exactly* what I could do to help build a social media program for my employers (or for any registered investment adviser.) Once I knew that someone had given some thought to what the rules were likely to be it took me about 5 seconds to come up with a social-media marketing plan for my employers. And this is why I like rules.
Is my instant plan perfect? No—but it is a prototype that can be developed. Will they adopt my plan? Will I even get to be the person that advises them on the use of social media? Probably not. But that doesn’t chance how nice it was to have a framework that allowed me to see and understand.
*. It’s not that I don’t find the subject matter interesting; it’s just that I could give the presentation at this point in time. I know why your CRM (or “sea-arm” as one guy kept calling it) should be integrated with your Portfolio Management System, your Document Management System as well as your Financial Planning Software. I know why you should use an Account Aggregation System and Rebalancing Software. I also know the extent to which the integration that all these vendors are going on about does or does not work. (Yes, there’s integration—unfortunately it only imports fields we don’t use.) Furthermore, I also know that me knowing these things (and explaining them—sometimes while jumping up and down and waving my arms) has not lead to them being fully adopted by my employers.
**The biggies I mentioned above-no testimonials, no investment advice, but the “books and records” portion of the regulation requires that you save all your advertising—so if you have a twitter feed you must archive every tweet.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Math is Hell
I tried to chew through three chapters of Statistics this weekend. Two were due last night-I finished 1.5 of them over the course of 8 hours. The third is due next Saturday, but I've got to be at a conference in Cambridge next Saturday, so I thought I'd do the homework today. Alas no.
Statistics can't be that hard to learn (I tell myself) Biology majors Psychology majors and Business majors have to learn it. My Dad used to teach it and he is not particularly mathematically savvy. He knows Stats because he's a retired psychologist but the only math I've ever seen him use is trigonometry when he was building something.
My last stats post was me whining about them not making us do the math. This post is about them presenting the math, without explanation.
The first chapter I had to chew through was about probability, but it was really about logic. X and Y or X or Y. Given X how many Y? That was easy for me. I've spent the past several years screwing around with Excel, Access and SQL and writing reports that would tell my employer how many of his clients were lawyers with cats.
The second chapter was on binomial sequences. I still don't get that. The third chapter is on math in normal distributions. And they've been messing with my already defined Greek letters.
Sigma to me, always means "Sum" (that--according to my high school calculus teacher--is why the integral sign looks like an S that has been in Mr. Wonka's taffy puller.) But lower cased sigma, apparently means standard distribution. I can live with that--I've had a few glasses of Six Sigma coolaid. But then, mu doesn't mean "micro" (it means mean) and pi doesn't mean 3.14159 it means probability. Oh, sorry--it means 3.14159 in one equasion but not all the time. And they threw e in there-just for fun. And they threw a lambda in.
I get the concept of choosing a Greek letter to mean something--think of it as mapping a logical drive and setting a login script that maps all the drives the same for all the PCs in the environment. Everybody knows that Pi= 3.14159. Everybody (and every computer) knows that your Q drive is where they should store Morningstar reports (or or timesheets or pictures of their cats.) That's the point of defining something-so that everyone knows what to do with it.
By redefining the Greek letters that already had definitions in my brain my Statistics text has made it even harder to learn whatever they're trying to teach me. I'm sure the Powers that be (for Statistics) had a very good reason for redefining my already mapped Greek letters but what next? Does Delta no longer mean change? Are they going to tell me that F<>=MA?
I look at the equtions and even the work-through of the equations and I feel like a dyslexic person must feel when asked to deal with Anna Karenina. I can handle math-but not without a human instructor or some helpful narritive to explain it all.
Or, in Math I am like some kid from a villiage in midieval europe who learned a few precepts about religion from the villiage priest. I hold fast to the few things I know and they do not jibe well with what I am expected to learn.
I am afraid. And no,it doesn't help that it snowed more today.
Statistics can't be that hard to learn (I tell myself) Biology majors Psychology majors and Business majors have to learn it. My Dad used to teach it and he is not particularly mathematically savvy. He knows Stats because he's a retired psychologist but the only math I've ever seen him use is trigonometry when he was building something.
My last stats post was me whining about them not making us do the math. This post is about them presenting the math, without explanation.
The first chapter I had to chew through was about probability, but it was really about logic. X and Y or X or Y. Given X how many Y? That was easy for me. I've spent the past several years screwing around with Excel, Access and SQL and writing reports that would tell my employer how many of his clients were lawyers with cats.
The second chapter was on binomial sequences. I still don't get that. The third chapter is on math in normal distributions. And they've been messing with my already defined Greek letters.
Sigma to me, always means "Sum" (that--according to my high school calculus teacher--is why the integral sign looks like an S that has been in Mr. Wonka's taffy puller.) But lower cased sigma, apparently means standard distribution. I can live with that--I've had a few glasses of Six Sigma coolaid. But then, mu doesn't mean "micro" (it means mean) and pi doesn't mean 3.14159 it means probability. Oh, sorry--it means 3.14159 in one equasion but not all the time. And they threw e in there-just for fun. And they threw a lambda in.
I get the concept of choosing a Greek letter to mean something--think of it as mapping a logical drive and setting a login script that maps all the drives the same for all the PCs in the environment. Everybody knows that Pi= 3.14159. Everybody (and every computer) knows that your Q drive is where they should store Morningstar reports (or or timesheets or pictures of their cats.) That's the point of defining something-so that everyone knows what to do with it.
By redefining the Greek letters that already had definitions in my brain my Statistics text has made it even harder to learn whatever they're trying to teach me. I'm sure the Powers that be (for Statistics) had a very good reason for redefining my already mapped Greek letters but what next? Does Delta no longer mean change? Are they going to tell me that F<>=MA?
I look at the equtions and even the work-through of the equations and I feel like a dyslexic person must feel when asked to deal with Anna Karenina. I can handle math-but not without a human instructor or some helpful narritive to explain it all.
Or, in Math I am like some kid from a villiage in midieval europe who learned a few precepts about religion from the villiage priest. I hold fast to the few things I know and they do not jibe well with what I am expected to learn.
I am afraid. And no,it doesn't help that it snowed more today.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Shoes
And now for something completely different. This will be a rather girlie post in which I attempt to explain my fascination/obsession with shoes.
“Hi, my name is Cantabridgienne and I have a shoe problem.” The problem is that there are all these sets of shoes out there and I can’t possibly own them all. I was surprised to discover I had a lust for shoes. I mean, I am not unacquainted with obsessions, and there are many things I covet—but I don’t covet them the way I covet shoes (all the shoes!) For example, of course I want a new Mac, but I only need one Mac (and maybe an iPad.) I don’t need an Air and a MacBook Pro and something from Dell to run Windows 7 on and a server to try out Windows new server environment….well actually now that I mention it.. Anyways, the point is whatever I would want in terms of hardware I wouldn’t need a Mac, a Dell, an Acer and something from HP. That’s not how it works with shoes.
I realize that many women have similar problems with shoes. However, I am not like other women in this. My obsession with shoes is a bit like a fairy curse—I love items that are expensive, but of no practical use for me.
I’m tall and clumsy and so high heels are entirely out of the question. Furthermore, although I love beautiful ballet flats (green leather! leopard print! shiny buckles!) but I don’t really have much use for them. My work dress tends to vary between plain and frumpy. Ballet flats with glitter on the toes look ridiculous when paired with khakis and a polo shirt. My social life is conducted entirely in jeans, so the sparkly-toed thingies would not be much use to me there. Also, I don’t have a car and so I need to be able to run for the T or walk a mile or two on occasion.
As a practical matter looking at the shoes I can actually wear on occasion the scope is pretty narrow. By the time you’ve ruled out shoes that don’t look weird with business casual attire and shoes that are no good for walking, you’re left with “sensible shoes” most of which are not particularly attractive. The matter is not yet entirely hopeless—Keen makes a lot of shoes that are pretty enough to wear for a business school presentation and practical enough to allow one to run for the Red Line after class (even if it is snowing) but one cannot just wear Keens. Keen doesn’t make shiny tortoise shell flats.
In addition to all these complications, I really don’t like wearing shoes. My feet prefer Birkenstock sandals. By the time it’s warm enough to wear most of what is on offer for women’s footgear outside of the house it’s also warm enough to wear sandals or flip flops (if you don’t mind a few funny looks).
So where does this leave me? Well better than the usual person afflicted with a fairy joke—at least I am not a queen in love with a weaver with the head of a donkey. I started thinking about this post—an explanation of my love of shoes—while out and about today. My statistics professor afflicted us with two chapters to read and do problems in this week and so I’d been doing Stats all day. I was bitching to myself that the “study break treat” I had to offer myself this afternoon was an opportunity to go pick up my dry cleaning. But to get to the dry cleaners I had to pass Mint, which has a lovely selection of shoes. To cheer myself up I went in and looked at the variety of beautiful, impractical footwear on offer. Yes they still had the lovely lime green ballet flats with the gold buckle. No, I still wasn’t going to buy them because they’re impractical and cost $110 (used!) Ooh! Brown suede driving moccasins. Beautiful, but I’ve already got the brown-hued-shoes thing covered in both the casual and the fancy areas. I didn’t buy anything, but it did cheer me up.
As I mentioned above I was surprised to discover that I had shoe-lust. This sort of thing usually afflicts fashionable females and I don’t even wear makeup. This is either a profound success of some marketing department or some kind of deeply rooted expression of femininity*.
I incline to the latter point of view. My best friend (who is much more butch than I am) has a handbag problem, but understands my love of shoes in the same way I understand her handbag problem. She likes looking at shoes, but is fixated on handbags. I like looking at handbags, but am fixated by shoes. My sister has admitted that she gets her sparkly shoe fix out of buying shoes for her three year old daughter (my niece has a pair of blue glitter mary janes that I covet.) My mother (who is admittedly much more fashionable than either of her daughters) has a lovely collection of shoes. One of the butchest girls I know showed up at a party with a lovely pair of distressed ox blood Frye boots. “Yeah, I was feeling bummed because my girlfriend was out of town, so I indulged in some retail therapy.”
I’m writing this up because I don’t actually mind admitting that I have a shoe problem. I didn’t acknowledge my love of shoes for a long time because that was so…feminine. Ick! Gross! To be feminine is to be weak! I won’t try to explain this point of view in its entirety, but suffice to say that it is embarrassing to discover that I have the same weakness (shoes!) as the young ladies who work in my office who read gossip mags for fun. I have a very thin skin, so admitting any weakness and leaving myself open for ridicule is hard for me to do** But my although friends laugh and suggest that I might need a corrective shoe collar, I don’t retreat to my basement apartment and refuse to talk to anybody for a week. I laugh as well, and then suggest we check out the Birkenstocks at that place in Gloucester (don’t you need a new pair, Herr Baron?)
I suppose, that once MBA school turns me into a ruthless capitalist I could get the kind of well-paying job that will allow me to no longer live in a one-room basement apartment. Then I can have room devoted to shoes. It will be full of beautiful confections that I’ll never actually wear. When I’m feeling low I can just stare at my collection of fanciful footgear and sigh.
*now there’s a word I hate.
** In my Cambridge life I live with my (now ex) boyfriend and a friend of ours who was an artist. The boy and I were going to see my favorite band Bishop Allen at the Middle East. They were opening for somebody else. When the roommate asked if we were staying for the next show my boy apparently responded something like “Eh. I don’t care and I don’t think she would want to see anyone follow Bishop Allen unless the Kinks showed up.” I got home from a bad day at work to discover that my roommate had drawn a cartoon of me in Hannibal Lector restraints wearing a Bishop Allen T shirt and a beer hat. I was so mortified I spent the next half hour on the porch feeling ashamed of my exuberance over the band I liked.
“Hi, my name is Cantabridgienne and I have a shoe problem.” The problem is that there are all these sets of shoes out there and I can’t possibly own them all. I was surprised to discover I had a lust for shoes. I mean, I am not unacquainted with obsessions, and there are many things I covet—but I don’t covet them the way I covet shoes (all the shoes!) For example, of course I want a new Mac, but I only need one Mac (and maybe an iPad.) I don’t need an Air and a MacBook Pro and something from Dell to run Windows 7 on and a server to try out Windows new server environment….well actually now that I mention it.. Anyways, the point is whatever I would want in terms of hardware I wouldn’t need a Mac, a Dell, an Acer and something from HP. That’s not how it works with shoes.
I realize that many women have similar problems with shoes. However, I am not like other women in this. My obsession with shoes is a bit like a fairy curse—I love items that are expensive, but of no practical use for me.
I’m tall and clumsy and so high heels are entirely out of the question. Furthermore, although I love beautiful ballet flats (green leather! leopard print! shiny buckles!) but I don’t really have much use for them. My work dress tends to vary between plain and frumpy. Ballet flats with glitter on the toes look ridiculous when paired with khakis and a polo shirt. My social life is conducted entirely in jeans, so the sparkly-toed thingies would not be much use to me there. Also, I don’t have a car and so I need to be able to run for the T or walk a mile or two on occasion.
As a practical matter looking at the shoes I can actually wear on occasion the scope is pretty narrow. By the time you’ve ruled out shoes that don’t look weird with business casual attire and shoes that are no good for walking, you’re left with “sensible shoes” most of which are not particularly attractive. The matter is not yet entirely hopeless—Keen makes a lot of shoes that are pretty enough to wear for a business school presentation and practical enough to allow one to run for the Red Line after class (even if it is snowing) but one cannot just wear Keens. Keen doesn’t make shiny tortoise shell flats.
In addition to all these complications, I really don’t like wearing shoes. My feet prefer Birkenstock sandals. By the time it’s warm enough to wear most of what is on offer for women’s footgear outside of the house it’s also warm enough to wear sandals or flip flops (if you don’t mind a few funny looks).
So where does this leave me? Well better than the usual person afflicted with a fairy joke—at least I am not a queen in love with a weaver with the head of a donkey. I started thinking about this post—an explanation of my love of shoes—while out and about today. My statistics professor afflicted us with two chapters to read and do problems in this week and so I’d been doing Stats all day. I was bitching to myself that the “study break treat” I had to offer myself this afternoon was an opportunity to go pick up my dry cleaning. But to get to the dry cleaners I had to pass Mint, which has a lovely selection of shoes. To cheer myself up I went in and looked at the variety of beautiful, impractical footwear on offer. Yes they still had the lovely lime green ballet flats with the gold buckle. No, I still wasn’t going to buy them because they’re impractical and cost $110 (used!) Ooh! Brown suede driving moccasins. Beautiful, but I’ve already got the brown-hued-shoes thing covered in both the casual and the fancy areas. I didn’t buy anything, but it did cheer me up.
As I mentioned above I was surprised to discover that I had shoe-lust. This sort of thing usually afflicts fashionable females and I don’t even wear makeup. This is either a profound success of some marketing department or some kind of deeply rooted expression of femininity*.
I incline to the latter point of view. My best friend (who is much more butch than I am) has a handbag problem, but understands my love of shoes in the same way I understand her handbag problem. She likes looking at shoes, but is fixated on handbags. I like looking at handbags, but am fixated by shoes. My sister has admitted that she gets her sparkly shoe fix out of buying shoes for her three year old daughter (my niece has a pair of blue glitter mary janes that I covet.) My mother (who is admittedly much more fashionable than either of her daughters) has a lovely collection of shoes. One of the butchest girls I know showed up at a party with a lovely pair of distressed ox blood Frye boots. “Yeah, I was feeling bummed because my girlfriend was out of town, so I indulged in some retail therapy.”
I’m writing this up because I don’t actually mind admitting that I have a shoe problem. I didn’t acknowledge my love of shoes for a long time because that was so…feminine. Ick! Gross! To be feminine is to be weak! I won’t try to explain this point of view in its entirety, but suffice to say that it is embarrassing to discover that I have the same weakness (shoes!) as the young ladies who work in my office who read gossip mags for fun. I have a very thin skin, so admitting any weakness and leaving myself open for ridicule is hard for me to do** But my although friends laugh and suggest that I might need a corrective shoe collar, I don’t retreat to my basement apartment and refuse to talk to anybody for a week. I laugh as well, and then suggest we check out the Birkenstocks at that place in Gloucester (don’t you need a new pair, Herr Baron?)
I suppose, that once MBA school turns me into a ruthless capitalist I could get the kind of well-paying job that will allow me to no longer live in a one-room basement apartment. Then I can have room devoted to shoes. It will be full of beautiful confections that I’ll never actually wear. When I’m feeling low I can just stare at my collection of fanciful footgear and sigh.
*now there’s a word I hate.
** In my Cambridge life I live with my (now ex) boyfriend and a friend of ours who was an artist. The boy and I were going to see my favorite band Bishop Allen at the Middle East. They were opening for somebody else. When the roommate asked if we were staying for the next show my boy apparently responded something like “Eh. I don’t care and I don’t think she would want to see anyone follow Bishop Allen unless the Kinks showed up.” I got home from a bad day at work to discover that my roommate had drawn a cartoon of me in Hannibal Lector restraints wearing a Bishop Allen T shirt and a beer hat. I was so mortified I spent the next half hour on the porch feeling ashamed of my exuberance over the band I liked.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Strange Days Have Found Us
When one of my facebook friends first mentioned the protests in Wisconsin, I thought she was making a joke. "Protests? in Wisconsin? in the Winter? Did they run out of cheese curds? Are they up in arms over their right to call a water fountain a bubbler?" Although I have not spent much time in Wisconsin (48 hours tops) I went to school in Minnesota. Surely the good people of Madison are happy go lucky mid-westerners like those I went to school with--what could they possibly have to protest about--especially when it's Fuck You degrees out?
Then I found out what was happening. Yup, that's worth standing out in the cold to protest about. Wear smartwool socks and a down parka. I'm not going to go on at length about this but although I realize that there are problems with unions*, I am pro-union. I wish there was one for white collar support staff (administrative assistants, receptionists, and yes, tech support personnel.) However I accept that there isn't one, and I'm not going to be the firebrand that tries to start one.
I have been distressed at watching unions concede privileges throughout the latest financial crisis, and further distressed by the narrative I see about unions and pensions at work in my job at a Wealth Management company and at school in my classes. "GM failed because they offered pensions." Um, no, GM failed because they didn't *account for their pensions properly.* Also, maybe because they made cars that no one wanted to buy.
But I'm straying from my point. There were protests in Egypt and there are protests in other middle eastern countries. Several nut bags in the mid-west of the US have taken it into their heads to try a spot of union bashing. And instead of rolling over and saying "thank you sir may I have another?" people are actually *objecting* vocally to what's going on.
That is what I find surprising. People are actually protesting instead of just rolling over. We Americans are soft (I count myself in this--I haven't made it to any solidarity protests nor am I likely to make it to any) or we have Other Things To Do (like getting an MBA or playing Wii).
I don't know if it will make any difference in the long run--all these protests. After all, we got up off of our couches in vast numbers in 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq and that made no difference. We even re-elected W afterwords.
In addition to all that fun, Barack Obama has suddenly decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. And the Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to shut down the federal government again. *Sigh*
All of this is going on while I do my Statistics homework, process Gain Loss reports for my employers, argue with my boss about software, call my nephew to wish him a happy birthday and have the occasional dinner with my friends. I feel bad for not participating, somehow. But my time taken up by other things, so I watch and hope for the best.
*Yes, people get corrupted by power and occasionally abscond with other people's money and some people are just plain lazy and only do the minimum amount of work required by the union. Lucky for me I work in financial services, where no one would ever think of doing that.
Then I found out what was happening. Yup, that's worth standing out in the cold to protest about. Wear smartwool socks and a down parka. I'm not going to go on at length about this but although I realize that there are problems with unions*, I am pro-union. I wish there was one for white collar support staff (administrative assistants, receptionists, and yes, tech support personnel.) However I accept that there isn't one, and I'm not going to be the firebrand that tries to start one.
I have been distressed at watching unions concede privileges throughout the latest financial crisis, and further distressed by the narrative I see about unions and pensions at work in my job at a Wealth Management company and at school in my classes. "GM failed because they offered pensions." Um, no, GM failed because they didn't *account for their pensions properly.* Also, maybe because they made cars that no one wanted to buy.
But I'm straying from my point. There were protests in Egypt and there are protests in other middle eastern countries. Several nut bags in the mid-west of the US have taken it into their heads to try a spot of union bashing. And instead of rolling over and saying "thank you sir may I have another?" people are actually *objecting* vocally to what's going on.
That is what I find surprising. People are actually protesting instead of just rolling over. We Americans are soft (I count myself in this--I haven't made it to any solidarity protests nor am I likely to make it to any) or we have Other Things To Do (like getting an MBA or playing Wii).
I don't know if it will make any difference in the long run--all these protests. After all, we got up off of our couches in vast numbers in 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq and that made no difference. We even re-elected W afterwords.
In addition to all that fun, Barack Obama has suddenly decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. And the Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to shut down the federal government again. *Sigh*
All of this is going on while I do my Statistics homework, process Gain Loss reports for my employers, argue with my boss about software, call my nephew to wish him a happy birthday and have the occasional dinner with my friends. I feel bad for not participating, somehow. But my time taken up by other things, so I watch and hope for the best.
*Yes, people get corrupted by power and occasionally abscond with other people's money and some people are just plain lazy and only do the minimum amount of work required by the union. Lucky for me I work in financial services, where no one would ever think of doing that.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Statistics For the Mathematically Challenged
When I applied to U Mass Boston's MBA program I didn't expect to get any waivers on any courses. At the informational seminar that I attended the Dean said that they only gave waivers for courses taken in the past ten years. I graduated from college in 1997 with a BA in French Literature, so I didn't expect to have anything waived. To my surprise, they decided to waive two classes. I didn't have to take the class on How to Use a Computer (well, that wasn't really a surprise--I did send them my CV) but I also got out of the basic Math class. Huh? They didn't waive the Macro Econ class, but they waived the Math class? I took Econ in my fall term Freshman year and got a B- (and I got a 5 on the AP test in Micro.) I took Calc 2-my last Math class ever-the next term and got a C+. Also, I scored a 47th percentile in Math on the GMAT (The test is adaptive, and you can tell how you're doing by whether the questions get easier or harder. By the end of the Math section I could hear the computer thinking "I can't *make* them any easier--did someone send their dog in to take the GMAT?")
Maybe the powers that be thought "Well let's not make her take a straight-up Math class because then she'll drop out. Let's collect tuition fees from her for a few terms and see how it goes."
And now I'm taking Statistics. I haven't spent any time on Statistics since my Freshman year of high school and I did not love it then. Taking this class was one of the thought-barriers I had to get over before applying to MBA school. But I have given myself room--I'm only taking this one class this term and I one of my friends knows a girl who tutors statistics.
My Dad has taught Statistics. He is not particularly mathematically inclined, but then again he's a psychologist. Stats are necessary to his profession. Just before this term he told me about how he felt in his first Statistics class as an undergrad "There were all these Math people and me and a Biology major. I was scared." Evidently he got over it.
I understand the usefulness of Statistics. If you have a hypothesis, you must test it. And after you have tested it Statistics are a tool to help you understand your results. I understand the concept of "statistically significant." If you send out a questionnaire to 500 people, but only 10 return it than no matter what your results are, they are not statistically significant because they come from a very small sample of your population.The only thing that you have learned is that of your population of 500 only 10-2% are the sort of people who answer questionnaires.
This weeks lesson was about mean, median, mode, variance and standard deviation. Mean, median and mode are 7th grade math. Variance I still don't get, but I work in financial services so I am familiar with the concept of Standard Deviation (it means Risk and Return.)
When I opened the textbook last Sunday to get a head start on this weeks homework, I saw some awful formula in sum notation and I quailed and put the book away for a few days. When I started reading the chapter, it became apparent that the formula that had scared me was just the mathematical notation for mean-average. Add everything up and divide by the number of things you had, can in fact be expressed as a sum series--but why would you want to do that?
That, however was not the interesting part of this week's homework. The textbook gave the formula for Variance and Standard Deviation (the square root of Variance-I never knew that.) But because this is a course in Statistics in Excel, I still haven't absorbed what the formulas are or how they relate to the data. Why? Well, I wouldn't really want to do the math--even with a calculator but as painful and error-prone as that is, it actually teaches you how to relate the variables to each other in a way that selecting a column of numbers and choosing "STDEV" from the Excel function menu fails to do.
Is knowing how to do the Math important? YES-even though I'm bad at it. I'm the sort of person who does not put shortcuts on her desktop to network resources because it's important that I remember where they are. When I crunch numbers in Excel I make all the numbers, the sub totals and any side calculations I made visible because I want to make it clear how I got from A to B.
I find myself quoting/paraphrasing the Russian movie Nightwatch. "What is more important--what goes into the potion or the effect?" The answer is "The effect." But I actually care about "what goes into the potion" and why. Perhaps it's just me being a bit OCD. Perhaps it's because Math is so foreign to me that I want to see all steps to make sure I understand them.
"Do the Math" is kind of like "RTFM*" Anybody possessed with a modicum of intelligence should be able to do either. I am uncomfortable about the way that this course does not help me Do The Math.
*Read The Fucking Manual
Maybe the powers that be thought "Well let's not make her take a straight-up Math class because then she'll drop out. Let's collect tuition fees from her for a few terms and see how it goes."
And now I'm taking Statistics. I haven't spent any time on Statistics since my Freshman year of high school and I did not love it then. Taking this class was one of the thought-barriers I had to get over before applying to MBA school. But I have given myself room--I'm only taking this one class this term and I one of my friends knows a girl who tutors statistics.
My Dad has taught Statistics. He is not particularly mathematically inclined, but then again he's a psychologist. Stats are necessary to his profession. Just before this term he told me about how he felt in his first Statistics class as an undergrad "There were all these Math people and me and a Biology major. I was scared." Evidently he got over it.
I understand the usefulness of Statistics. If you have a hypothesis, you must test it. And after you have tested it Statistics are a tool to help you understand your results. I understand the concept of "statistically significant." If you send out a questionnaire to 500 people, but only 10 return it than no matter what your results are, they are not statistically significant because they come from a very small sample of your population.The only thing that you have learned is that of your population of 500 only 10-2% are the sort of people who answer questionnaires.
This weeks lesson was about mean, median, mode, variance and standard deviation. Mean, median and mode are 7th grade math. Variance I still don't get, but I work in financial services so I am familiar with the concept of Standard Deviation (it means Risk and Return.)
When I opened the textbook last Sunday to get a head start on this weeks homework, I saw some awful formula in sum notation and I quailed and put the book away for a few days. When I started reading the chapter, it became apparent that the formula that had scared me was just the mathematical notation for mean-average. Add everything up and divide by the number of things you had, can in fact be expressed as a sum series--but why would you want to do that?
That, however was not the interesting part of this week's homework. The textbook gave the formula for Variance and Standard Deviation (the square root of Variance-I never knew that.) But because this is a course in Statistics in Excel, I still haven't absorbed what the formulas are or how they relate to the data. Why? Well, I wouldn't really want to do the math--even with a calculator but as painful and error-prone as that is, it actually teaches you how to relate the variables to each other in a way that selecting a column of numbers and choosing "STDEV" from the Excel function menu fails to do.
Is knowing how to do the Math important? YES-even though I'm bad at it. I'm the sort of person who does not put shortcuts on her desktop to network resources because it's important that I remember where they are. When I crunch numbers in Excel I make all the numbers, the sub totals and any side calculations I made visible because I want to make it clear how I got from A to B.
I find myself quoting/paraphrasing the Russian movie Nightwatch. "What is more important--what goes into the potion or the effect?" The answer is "The effect." But I actually care about "what goes into the potion" and why. Perhaps it's just me being a bit OCD. Perhaps it's because Math is so foreign to me that I want to see all steps to make sure I understand them.
"Do the Math" is kind of like "RTFM*" Anybody possessed with a modicum of intelligence should be able to do either. I am uncomfortable about the way that this course does not help me Do The Math.
*Read The Fucking Manual
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