[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >On the other hand, a body of knowledge can be thought of as a set of
> >'rules'. The important thing is that this set is constructed by the
> >individual, so our aim should not be to teach statistics as a set of
> >rules, but in such a way that each student can develop his or her own
> >set of rules. They won't be the same for all, and they will different
> >from the teacher's, but they hopefully will work. (If you like, this is
> >a defintion of a 'good student' - one who manages to construct a
> >successful set of rules for each subject.
>
> It's either undergraduate students in Australia are much smarter than those
> living in the United States or you live on a different planet. The last time I
> taught an undergraduate introductory statistics class, some students couldn't
> even do fractions and simple algebra. Can you expect them to develop their own
> rules?
My comment above has nothing to do with students' 'smartness' or with
their level of skill (two different things!) It is simply a way of
describing what learning is.
>
> Why are people so obsessed with T and Z? When the degrees of freedom exceeds
> say 30, the difference between T and Z is practically negligible. You can use T
> or Z in such a case. However, the P-value from Z is easier to compute.
Your interpretation of 'practically negligible' is different from mine,
that's all. And with a computer, the p-value for t is exactly as easy to
compute as the p-value for z.
Regards,
Alan
> --
> Tjen-Sien Lim
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> www.Recursive-Partitioning.com
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--
Alan McLean ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Acting Deputy Head, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne
Tel: +61 03 9903 2102 Fax: +61 03 9903 2007
