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Statistics Made Easy: Six Easy Tips to Ace Your Class!

This article was originally posted at statisticshowto.com. We found the tips really useful especially for beginners.We have not made edits from the original post apart from this anecdote.

If you want to pass your stats class, these tips will ensure that you get through your class.

Statistics Made Easy Tip #1

Go to every class and do all the homework for the first month. Why the first month? About a quarter to half of allstudents drop out on the first month of a statistics class because they get behind. All of the basic principles areusually covered in the first month. If you miss a couple of classes, it’s going to have a snowball effect. After you’vecovered the basics, skipping a class here and there will have less of an effect.

Statistics Made Easy Tip #2

A shameless plug here: bookmark this site. See the Google custom search bar at the top of the page? Type in atopic (like “How to find the interquartile range”) and it will take you to one of several hundred easy how-to articleson just about every elementary stats topic you can think of. Plus, we have a free homework forum for when youget really stuck! You should also check out our Practically Cheating Statistics Handbook, which covers all of thebasic topics you’ll need to pass your class (including a TI83/TI89 calculator how-to!).

Statistics Made Easy Tip #3

Use a TI-83 or a TI-89 calculator, starting at the beginning of your class. Your instructor might insist that you learnhow to do things by hand for homework. But the most important part of the class is the test (especially true with APStats!) and a graphing calculator will be invaluable.

Statistics Made Easy Tip #4

Use Excel to make charts and graphs. Why? Some graphs (like the graphs produced by linear regression) can betricky to wrap your head around. But the nice thing about Excel is that it’s dynamic. That means you can changeyour inputs after you’ve made your graph, allowing you to see how different factors (like changing bin size) affectyour graphs.

Statistics Made Easy Tip #5

Don’t skip over a definition if you don’t understand it. Elementary statistics builds on information in the same waythat a recipe does: if you don’t know what “crack an egg” means, then you won’t be able to fry it. One example isaP-Value. In order to find a P Value you need to run a hypothesis test to get a test statistic (like an F Statistic). Inorder to run a hypothesis test you need to know how to state the null hypothesis. See how that works?

Statistics Made Easy Tip #6

Don’t leave your homework until the night before. This probably should be tip #1. It sounds elementary, but when Iwas teaching stats, the students who got the lowest grades tended to be the ones who started the homework onSunday night (the homework was due Monday). At first, the homework might seem easy (especially when dealingwith means or bar graphs). But later segments of homework will have lengthy questions (like finding linearregression equations). Those could take you a half hour or more per question to answer. And when you get stuck?Good luck at finding someone on a Sunday night who can help you.

That’s all you need to know to pass your stats class!