That was the sentence my stats lecturer said to us when we were in our stats tutorial and using SPSS. We were doing some sort of calculation and was just following the step-by-step instructions to generate our output. Don't ask me what was it.. I think it was Cohen's D? Or something else.. Pearsons? fudge.. i have no idea what all these terms mean.... I don't even know WHY we are doing stats!!!!! I don't want to do research!!!!!!
Anyway.... back to so called following step-by-step instructions. Seriously, if you look at the instructions we were given, it was REALLY step-by-step (no sarcasm intended)... I just think we are too dumb to follow it. We kept on clicking OK but nothing happened. So we called our lecturer to help us. He looked at our screen and said... "You didn't put in the operator... see, it says ADD group_A, group_B,group_C, you're missing the operator". Nat and I looked at each other.... in our heads, we were both thinking... "What the heck is an operator? what is he talking about?" Mish peeked over at our table because she was trying to figure out what's going on and her face was just blanked....
After a moment of silence, the lecturer said.. "look, it says ADD... u're missing the operator"... *still thinking what's an operator!!!!* and then he points to the '+' sign on the calculator looking thingy on the screen. Ohhhhhhhhh .... the 'plus' sign is an operator!!!!!!!! ding ding ding!!!! couldn't he just say that? the 'plus' sign?? as he walked away after we understood it, we both burst out laughing because we had no idea that was called an operator.... farrr out!!!!!
You see, my stats lecturer (ok, it's called Scientific Practice paper...sounds more cool right? but it really is just stats i think) is a very smart guy. His name is in countless journal articles. We think the reason being he's the few people who actually analyses the results and so forth. Obviously the other researchers can't be stuffed doing that so they get him to analyse the results and put his name in the paper. So yeaa... he's so smart and he knows his stuff really well but when he talks, it's all so scientific/mathematical and not in layman terms that we all understand. I never understood any of his lectures or tutorials. I mean, look... even a simple 'plus' sign is called an operator!!! OMG! He goes on talking about ROC, ANOVA, t-tests, Cohen's, Pearsons, ICC, k value (in my notes, i wrote ***DO NOT USE K!!! but really.. i don't even know what k is or means!!!!!)........ZzzZZZzz... all these terms in my head but i do not know what the heck they are... It's end of week 7 already.
This scientific practice paper is a joke really. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry about it. I am so lost in tutorials that I just burst out laughing. I'm sure some of you have gone though that feeling before? No? Yes? Thank goodness we have another lecturer who's in there to help explain things in layman terms. He is just awesome man!!! You can see him smirking at the back of the classroom when the main lecturer is talking at the front because he sees all our blank faces, trying to concentrate real hard to understand but still very lost.
Another thing that happened today was.. I slipped off the wheelie chair during that tutorial. I wasn't even playing!! But I slid of it "really smoothly and in slow mo" as described by nat. I was explaining something to her on the computer screen and as i was lifting my hand up to point, somehow i just felt myself sliding off the chair, slowly landing onto the ground. And as I was sliding off, I was still talking because i didn't want to lose my train of thoughts. Hilarious really. It was a smooth landing. Very silent landing. No loud BAMM!!! I don't even know how that happened. Must be by strong quads that enabled me to lower myself to the ground slowly. Hehehe.....the lecturer was just beside me, two computers away and apparently he saw everything. My back was facing him and I didn't see his face. But as Nat put it, it was classic. He was just shocked at what happened. He stood up and walked away. We think he was just trying not to laugh. I on the other hand was LMAO. So was nat, mish and chris. Now when I think of it, it's pretty darn funny and I've been giggling to myself everytime I think about it. Mish and chris who was sitting next to nat on the other side could only see my head and they said it suddenly disappeared and all they saw was the chair sliding back.
It didn't end there.... at the train station, as I was walking down the stairs, Nat told me to be careful on the stairs... she was saying it jokingly because i fell off the chair.... and i was like.. Ya right!! like i would fall... And right at the very last step.... I tripped. Just my day. Just my day alright.
So that's my day and my rants. Ohh yahh.. today's 8/9/10. 8,9,10!!! Ok, before I go crazy.... good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment