At 04:19 PM 7/22/02 -0700, Gordon Kenyon wrote: > It seems to me that the lack of theoretical fundamentals in the vast >majority of social/behavioral science students' introductions to >quantitative work (what they come to know as "plugging and chugging") >is fairly damning.
1. your generalization about this ... while maybe true in many cases ... lacks data to warrant the extent of your generalization 2. have you looked around to the non social/behavioral sciences recently? bet you will finds lots of, how do you say it? "plugging and chugging" too ... check with mds ... and what they got (if they even took) out of biostat ... >I myself, trying to turn it around with >probability theory and real analysis fairly late in the game, notice I >have some terrible mathematical habits and badly under-developed >facilities. Considering how many of us wind up as data analysts, it'd >be great if some form of competent intermediate mathematical >instruction accompanied the inference and descriptives- it isn't like >we can count on undergraduate calculus or numerical analysis >instruction in math departments to go out of its way to be too >relevant to our needs. 3. unfortunately ... the question of "what should be required of students" ... ie, what they should know and be able to do ... is not quite so easy to solve as you might suggest how much should a typical person know about the normal distribution? integrating the normal distribution function ... would not be high on my list i wish i had had a much stronger math background ... which would have enabled me to understand some stuff better ... but, my question is ... would it really have made much difference other than me feeling better about myself? not sure if would have had any impact on anything or anybody else ... of import but then again ... wish i had studied the "classics" more ... had a better grasp of philosophical points of view ... understood "art" better ... knew principles of physics much more eloquently ... there is only so much time ... > Anyway, integrating the normal distribution function sure is a bear, >huh? >. >. >================================================================= >Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the >problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: >. http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . >================================================================= . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
