Wiki Page, Math 13 - Perez Sandbox : Module 2 - Learning Strategies (2 of 4)

Wiki Page
2026-01-17T21:15:28-08:00

About This Course

Students often think of learning math as following "the rules." You learn a set of steps for doing a specific type of problem, and then you repeat those same steps to solve similar problems. As a result, you may be able to recognize a problem type and solve it using a memorized procedure, but you may not understand the underlying ideas. This course is not like that.

In the words of one student:

In my other math classes, when I worked on a homework problem, I looked for an example that was similar and I copied the steps to find the answer. This saved me time, and I could still pass. But when I tried that in this class, it didn't work. The problems were mostly word problems and they looked different than the examples. To solve problems, I really had to pay attention, read carefully and think about the ideas in the examples. It was harder at first, but I think I ended up learning a lot more.

This course is different. It is about ideas not procedures. There are examples that illustrate a concept, but skimming the examples and trying to mimic a procedure is not going to work well. Instead, you will need to read, apply the idea to a problem and use the feedback to improve your understanding. Yes - there are some formulas and you will occasionally have to calculate something. But in general we will use technology (StatCrunch) to do calculations and make the graphs. Your job is to understand the ideas of statistics so that you can apply those ideas to answer real-life questions and interpret your results.

Why Focus on the Ideas?

Why did we make this course all about the ideas of statistics? Because if you actually understand the ideas, then you can apply them in the world.

We live in a world full of statistics. News headlines are filled with scientific reports and claims about healthy living, salary differences between women and men, climate change, and other important issues. Are these claims true or false? What do we trust? Statistics helps you to find the truth in these claims.

In 2009, the New York Times published an article called "For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics." According to Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Digital Business,

We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured. But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze, and make sense of the data.

Statistics is how you make sense of data. It's about learning to find patterns in data.

Computers vs. Humans

In order to do statistics, you need to

Use technology correctly in order to perform statistical calculations and construct graphs of data

Interpret the results to draw a conclusion or make a decision

Computers are already good at doing the calculations. They can follow the rules perfectly, but that's all. You have to tell them exactly what to do. The world does not need people to follow instructions mindlessly, because computers can already do that.

The world really needs people who understand what the calculations mean—people who know the right calculation for the right job and who can tell if someone is using statistics incorrectly.

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Content by the Open Learning Initiative and licensed under CC BY.