[JunsuLove]

For the students that have taken, are taking, or plan to take Statistics, how was it? When did you take it? I heard it was a lot of math and I was planning on taking it next semester, but I figured it'd be too much work for me because I'm a first year student but it is required.. and before I can take most of my other required courses, I have to take this class..

So basically my questions are, when did you take it? How was it? When would you recommend I take it?

Thanks !

[Angel_luvusa]

For the students that have taken, are taking, or plan to take Statistics, how was it? When did you take it? I heard it was a lot of math and I was planning on taking it next semester, but I figured it'd be too much work for me because I'm a first year student but it is required.. and before I can take most of my other required courses, I have to take this class..

So basically my questions are, when did you take it? How was it? When would you recommend I take it?

Thanks !

My school doesn't have a specified stats for psychology students, just an intro stats that most majors are required to take.. It's by far the easiest class I've ever taken in college.

There's a far amount of math I guess, but my stats (along with many others that I know of) use computer programs to simply the math a lot for you.. The math isn't too bad though. At most you're just plugging numbers into a simple equation and getting an answer.

Btw, I took it sophomore year (only because I spent freshman year getting classes I dreaded the most out of the way..) and it's an easy a for me. Take it whenever you need an easy class, this will more than likely be it.

Stats is much more of interpreting data than anything. Not at all a hard class. If you've taken a highschool algebra class, you'll be prepared for this.

[JunsuLove]

My school doesn't have a specified stats for psychology students, just an intro stats that most majors are required to take.. It's by far the easiest class I've ever taken in college.

There's a far amount of math I guess, but my stats (along with many others that I know of) use computer programs to simply the math a lot for you.. The math isn't too bad though. At most you're just plugging numbers into a simple equation and getting an answer.

Btw, I took it sophomore year (only because I spent freshman year getting classes I dreaded the most out of the way..) and it's an easy a for me. Take it whenever you need an easy class, this will more than likely be it.

Stats is much more of interpreting data than anything. Not at all a hard class. If you've taken a highschool algebra class, you'll be prepared for this.

o_O! That's a completely different view from this one guy I talked to. He was also a psychology major and he said that if you can pull an A out of that class, it'll look really good on your transcript and that was a really tough class.

[Lady Violette]

I took Psych Stats in my sophomore year. It was relatively easy for me because I'm a Math kind of person, but lots of students got D's and F's o.O. I recommend taking it as soon as possible just to get it over with especially as a Psychology major since those concepts will be popping up in all your future classes and it's good to understand them before taking upper level classes.

There are actually a lot more concepts involved than calculations. It's very important to understand the concept and then understand how the formulas are used and when to use them. In my class, all the formulas are posted on a sheet so they're right in front of you and you just need to know which to use and what numbers to plug in.

[JunsuLove]

^^ Do you think there's a math that I should have already taken or be taking when taking stats? I'm thinking about taking it during Fall 2010 along with Calculus I (that's assuming I pass pre-calculus next semester)

I'm in a "junior-level" class this semester and my professor often says "for all you who took stats already, you should know" and would explain something xD.

[Lady Violette]

^ hmm not that I know of. I took Calculus before I took Stats and they're completely different. You should be fine with that schedule.

Good luck! Isn't psychology awesome? =)

[pri-T]

Stats should be no problem if you're a Math person. I, unfortunately, am not, so it was a challenging class for me.
I would liken Stats to word problems, because calculations is the easy part. For my class, we had the equations provided and you just needed to plug in the numbers to get an answer. The difficult part is figuring out when to use which equation and understanding the concepts behind them and the rules that go along with them. In my experience, not all of the concepts were difficult to grasp, only some were, but it was definitely more challenging than the rest of my Psych classes.

About whether you should take a math course before taking Stats, at my school, it was recommended that we take Calculus first and it seems to be the natural progression, but they're completely different so you should be fine either way and Stats is definitely easier than Calc.

[xforeverwithyou]

I am taking the lab for the class right now and I have to say it's challenging.
I've taken the stats at a jr. college about 2 or 3 semesters ago. And now that
I transferred to a university and taking the lab, I was lost at first because I had
to review, but my T.A. was helpful. I actually have my part 2 of the midterm on Monday xD.

But I did hear that research methods class is the hardest. It's the next class that is required for psy students to take.
I'm planning on taking it next semester, but I hope I don't fall behind, because this call has a lot of stuff.

In my honest opinion though, I rather do calculus, than stats at times, but then I'm also glad statistics is all i'll ever need for my psychology.

[MoonChild]

My university allow students to either take Psychology Statistics (from the psychology department) or Elementary Statistics (from the math & statistics department). I ended up taking both classes. The first statistics class I took was Elementary Statistics it was pretty difficult because it was the first time that professor taught an undergraduate stats class instead of a graduate stats. Everything in that class was calculated by hand and with a simple scientific calculator. There was no using any statistical programs/software. Also, there was one final project where students needed to go out and collect data, analyze it, and put together a report. All in all, it was challenging, but I also learned a lot from that class.

As far as Psychology Statistics, I took it to gain experience using statistical software which I didn't have in my previous stats class. This class primary use excel, but no SPSS/PASW (which is needed for the Research Methods class at my university). This class wasn't tough, and catered especially to the psychology field.

My advice would be it is best that you take a statistics course a semester before you take Research Methods. You will learn better and process information quicker if you have some statistics background before you take your Research Methods course.