This was a message I sent to my stats class now that the semester has ended.

Hello class!

I just wanted to write and say thanks for a great semester! Enjoy the new year, the new semester, etc. and keep in touch! Just because the semester is over doesn’t mean you can’t reach out if you need help / guidance, etc. You can get in touch with me at my <withheld> address or you can Google me to find me on some type of social media outlet. I hope you enjoyed the course and more importantly I really hope you got some knowledge out of it. When you hear words like “average”, “mean”, “percentile”, “standard deviation”, “normal”, “distribution”, “significant”, “confidence interval”, “p-value”, think back to the things we learned. It’s ok if you can’t yet do the calculations fluently — that’ll come with practice — but make sure you remember the concepts and ideas we learned.

Most important is the following: you spent upwards of 80 hours of your LIFE on this course: lecture, homework, labs, studying, travel time to and from class, etc. What kind of “return on investment” do you want for your time? Knowledge needs to be maintained. So, as unpleasant as it may sound, open up your stats book regularly and spend at least 15-20 minutes each time perusing the things you learned. You’ll be amazed at how much doing just this can help with knowledge retention. If you can do more all the better. Get something for the time you spent! Don’t think of this as “a course I had to take to get my degree” and don’t fall into the trap of “when am I ever going to need this?”. You can’t say that you don’t need to know something if you don’t know it!

Ok, I’ll stop preaching.

Check out this article about how statistics helped to (a) prove that hiring musicians for orchestra openings was heavily biased in favor of men and (b) fix / reduce that bias by introducing “blind auctions”. It’s fascinating stuff.

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/01/0212/7b.shtml

Regards,
Manan