In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Bruce Weaver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>... I've noticed that undergrad introductory stats
>students have a habit of treating terms we give them as
>meaningless labels. Take "independent" and "mutually
>exclusive", for example. I think the reason so many
>students confuse them is that they do not think about what
>the terms mean.
I think that can't explain this rather striking phenomenon. In my
experience, they don't confuse these two terms, but rather think that
they are synonyms. A substantial fraction of them continue to think
this regardless of how many warnings about this specific point they
are given in the textbook and lectures. I think part of the
explanation is that the common meaning of "independent" can indeed be
taken to by synonymous with "mutually exclusive" - thinking about it
(without actually reading the technical definition) doesn't help.
This doesn't really explain the persistence of this confusion,
however. Is there something deeper, such as a failure to appreciate
that a term can have a technical meaning that is not the same as
common usage? Or is it just that they don't go to lectures and don't
read the textbook, and hence never encounter the attempts to correct
them on this point?
Radford Neal
.
.
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