Michael Smith wrote:
I don't think Psychology is hard (meaning difficult to grasp). For some
reason the students that I have had seem to conflate what is hard
(conceptually difficult to understand) with what requires work.
I don't think there is anything conceptually difficult in psych, but it
does require work.
One student in my methods class bemoaned the fact that he took
psychology because there was no math in it, only to find he had to learn
statistics! The only hard part in psych may be statistics depending on
how far you want to go with it. But then again, a theoretical
mathematician friend told me there was nothing conceptually difficult
about statistics, it just required a lot of work!
--Mike
I have the opposite view. There are conceptual issues that are
very hard for the student to grasp. It is hard to learn there is
an issue with their everyday Cartesian dualism.
Students take psych to "avoid math" but most of the math is only
algebra. If you present it in the right manner then most
students can handle it easily. One of my favorite quips involves
a Rescorla-Wagner model simulation. The sequence starts off
easily but quickly descends into fractions. When the calculation
hits the third decimal place I turn to the class and say "Hey, we
are psychologists and fractions don't scare us--right?" My
students breeze through the integer R-W calculations in my tests.
Psych majors need to be able to think through simple quantitative
problems and concepts.
Ken
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Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
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