I HATE STATS I HATE STATS I HATE STATS I HATE STATSSSSSSSSSSSSSS WHY MUST IT BE SO SO SO EASILY EXPLAINED I FULLY KNOW WHATS GOING ON I FINALLY UNDERSTAND SOMETHING AND THEN IM ASKED TO DO A QUESTION AND I HAVE NO CLUE WHATSOEVER OH MY GOD IM GOING INSANE I HATE STATS SO FREAKING MUCH.
I ACTUALLY FEEL SO INCOMPETENT BECAUSE WHEN THEY'RE EXPLAINING TO ME IT MAKES FULL SENSE AND THEN THEY PULL OUT THE GREEK NUMBERALS AND FORMULAS AND IMMEDIATELY ITS NOT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO READ IT AT ALL LIKE IT MAKES ZERO SENSE TO ME. I KNOW THERES A WAY FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND BUT IT WILL TAKE SUCH EXTREME LEVELS OF EFFORT TO BE ABLE TO FORMAT EVERY SINGLE THING INTO SOMETHING ILL UNDERSTAND WHICH IS JUST INSUFFERABLE. AND THEN WHEN I FINALLY DO MANAGE TO SOMEHOW PLACE IT INTO A FORMAT THAT I GET AND THAT I CAN READ OH NOOO SUDDENLY ITS ENTIRELY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GET IT AT ALL.
WHILE YES IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ME TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT MAKES ME UNDERSTAND AND I WRITE IT DOWN AND PUT IT INTO A WAY THAT IVE EXPLAINED IT TO MYSELF (YES IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING EYE NEED TO BE ABLE TO PERSONALLY UNDERSTAND IT BUT THEN ALSO NEED TO MAKE SURE IM ABLE TO REASONABLY EXPLAIN IT TO MYSELF AT THE SAME TIME OR ELSE I DONT ACTUALLY GET IT) THEN SUDDENLY IF I LOOK AT IT ANOTHER TIME I DONT UNDERSTAND IT AGAIN IT ACTUALLY PISSES ME OFF SO BADLY.
LIKE WHEN I WRITE MYSELF NOTES IT IS ENTIRELY BECAUSE THE PROCESS OF WRITING IT OUT AND FORMATTING IT IN A SPECIFIC WAY HELPS ME IN. THAT. MOMENT. THE WRITING IT ON DIFFERENT LINES THE ADDING ARROWS THE HIGHLIGHTING IS ALL HELPFUL TO ME RIGHT THEN AND THERE BECAUSE THOSE PROCESSES MAKE SENSE TO ME IN THE MOMENT IN THE WAY IM WRITING THEM AND THE WAY I PERCEIVE THE HIGHLIGHTS OR SYMBOLS. HOWEVER AFTERWARDS WHEN I READ THE NOTES IT IS ONCE AGAIN JUST A BLOB OF TEXT THAT IM MEANT TO UNDERSTAND IN MY OWN WAY ONCE AGAIN. MEANING I ESSENTIALLY NEED TO BE ABLE TO RE-FORMAT MY ALREADY FORMATTED TEXT I NEED TO PHYSICALLY BE RE-HIGHLIGHTING IT AND RE-UNDERSTANDING IT EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
when i say blob of text i literally mean that when i am looking at a peice of information i do not understand it at all because it is LITERALLY just a wall of text filled with words. like okay duh thats the textbook definition of a paragraph but that is GENUINELY all i see. all i see is these words just sitting there. while sometimes im able to understand them easily like if im reading just random things like texts or things on the internet (mind you i do still take time to process long texts and literally need to re-read and re-understand every single thing if i want to correctly interpret things - i.e. any text over 2 lines that maikel sends me) BUT especially when im reading something that i do not yet understand thats when the words get extra meaningless. i feel that im only good at understanding written things if i already understand the concept. like yes i could go read a book on like 4 different cognitive science theories and be able to highlight and add notes to extra explain it to myself as if im explaining it to another me and understand it perfectly. but thats essentially just revision. in order to get to the READABLE point of something, i need to have already completed this pre-established step that made me understand in the first place. what is that first step? I HAVE NO IDEA. NOT A SINGLE CLUE.
while lectures sometimes are able to help me understand, it is EXTREMELY dependent on the format it is being given to me. the optimal format that ive found is if on the slides there is all the information i need to a basic level.
the term: a short general definition
this is extremely helpful to me. especially if the slides write it very big and very simply in the definition and then gives me ample space to add my little notes of what the prof is saying externally in order to explain it to me which i can then make into my little slide notes that allow me to explain my own knowledge to me once again. THIS IS WHAT I NEED.
quick shoutout to Mark Miller <3 literally explains stuff in ways i undertand (his slides however are abysmal i hate the mix between paragraphs on the slides that may or may not be important and the random slides with just a picture of a monkey. but not everyones perfect he still has my heart.)
the entire concept that this is how i need information to be formatted doesnt stop there. once i've made those slides im then able to make NOTES on my slides that i 1. already understand 2. have already formatted into my own mousey™ language and 3. are able to reformat those notes into more notes that i can also format and highlight in my own way. simply looking at those slides and reading them is not enough. simply making notes and rereading them later is not enough. the WRITING OF THE NOTES is the exact moment that i am UNDERSTANDING something and that knowledge lasts for an undefined amount of time where i can go ahead and apply my learning. this time frame is usually insanely short which is why i am CONSTANTLY cramming all my studying into the day(s) before the exam so that i am able to POSSIBLY have that knowledge understood. this process is of course insanely tedious and a huge amount of work for me to do within my time frame to be required to do in order to do well.
now we can say "okay yay she got it she understands and she will do well on the exam because she knows how to do these things!!! yippee!!!!"
no.
consider this new factor that has entered the equation: the numerous different ways these definitions or applications (ESPECIALLY formulas) can be explained or added to questions or even implicitly expected to be known to use in these situations. there are SO. MANY. POSSIBILITIES. it makes things WAY more complicated because now i need to be able to know which events is it possible for these things to be applied and which wordings mean what. it feels like i literally need to run an entire program to decipher these word problems of questions to understand what its even expecting of me.
this is where i get back to complaining about stats. ALL MATH QUESTIONS HAVE INFINITE POSSIBILITIES OF WHAT THEY ARE ABOUT, WHAT FORMULAS TO USE, WHICH SITUATIONS USE WHICH PROCESSES, and the WORST ONE OF ALL. when to know to MOVE THE FORMULA AROUND. TO BE ABLE. TO MAKE YOUR OWN CREATED FORMULA. TO GET THE ANSWER. i HATE these questions. i could complain for hours about specifically those but i will keep it general for everyones sake.
consider this: im in my stats class and i'm explained the way you put in information into like idk a z-score formula or something. in the lecture they give me all the steps. okay so i need my idk like see i dont even know the formula right now so i cant even give an example so im gonna spit out random things here but- it says okay get your sample size. n=15 okay cool! then get your population size. mu=500 yay great! then get your standard deviation and put that into the bottom of the division. SD=2 awesome! now do the formula. okay i did it lets freaking go. then find that in the z-table look for that value right there and BAM you answered the question. YAAAYYYY i did it. then i get put into an exam where its asking me crazy shit with random ass words we're switching things up where there are either actual words or greek symbols and the values are all over the place. oh bonus part we're just not gonna tell you random values that are needed in order to actually calculate the z-scores and not even explain that you'll need to find it yourself (bonus points if you need to move an equation around to find it). i cant even explain all the ways that these questions can be different because there are SO MANY WAYS they can change the way they describe the situation to you that i cant even be like "oh it says this in this way it probably means this" because its different every time. like OKAY i get that its meant to be taught in a way that you can apply it to the millions of different ways in which the thing can be applied but idk man i cannot do it. especially in the way i learn.
i just feel like the way i learn and understand things just really isnt formatted to work with math at all. in any way. first of all the equations feel like an alien language to me where instead of a wall of meaningless text its a wall of randomly placed letters and/or numbers and/or greek/roman/god knows what symbols. add on word problems where i now have a wall of text AND a wall of equations that may or may not have to be rearanged (yes im still on that its the bane of my existence). then we have the way that i absolutely need to know WHY things are happening in order to make them be understood to me WHICH IS NEVER GIVEN TO YOU IN MATH. EVER. THEY DO NOT TELL YOU WHY THESE THINGS GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. while it has been a little better with how things actually do what they need to do because the different concepts of stats are explained to me in this session(i want to feed insane amounts of bugs to marco sama why do you never explain what things are other than being like "yeah this is the p value". you coulda just told me it was the probability of it happening in percents). there is still the added part where nothing is really fully explained for the why and hows. in this lecture at least degrees of freedom and stuff is explained to me WHY we use that and WHEN (again marco sama lock your doors the bugs are on their way it takes 10 seconds to explain why we're putting that into an equation instead of just saying "in this formula theres df at the bottom intead").
my style of making and understanding concepts in the form of notes just really doesnt work with how math is formatted as well. while i can write examples and heavily format how i write my formulas in ways i understand there is 1. the issue that one example is HIGHLY specific to only that example and doesnt really help me apply it in the millions of differently written and formatted questions and 2. me heavily explaining formulas to myself will later just look like walls of texts and numbers and things later. this is why i need to be entirely within the more conceptual parts of academia because when im able to explain and describe stuff in pre-set ways that im able to put into my own words and things then im able to excell in whatever im doing. when its a formula that LITERALLY CANNOT be re-formatted or anything to make me understand then its just a lost cause.
all that is to say i am CRASHING OUT because i can watch these lectures and write all i want to make myself understand but then we get into the point in the lecture where she does an example and im just gone. i can follow along and watch what shes doing and be like "yeah that makes sense" but when i have to try it on my own and compute the values and everything its just so over. i can understand the exact same thing she just did as an example to an extent like if all the same info is given in the same way it was in the question then i can be like okay do what she did MAYBE. but im just so incapable of applying these mathematical concepts in that way. its just impossible to me.
6/5/2025