I Need to Learn Statistics
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I Need to Learn Statistics

I Need to Learn Statistics

The week before last week I had been going through a book on Excel simulations but then I got sick and work became busier, so I had to put the book aside.  The last set of simulations that I had been going through were centered on statistics. In going through these simulations, there were some things that were confusing me. First, there seems to be some interchangeable terms (?) such as confidence margins, margins, margin of error and confidence, and yet there were times when the meanings didn’t seem quite the same. All I know is that in a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 10 and a mean of 100, 70% of the data will fall within 1 SE (standard error) of the mean or between 90 and 110. So 1 SE will be equivalent to a standard deviation around the mean. Also, such SE will be loosely described as being 70% confident that the data will fall between 90 and 110. And that’s the extent of my understanding.

I definitely need to learn statistics.

The interesting thing about this book Excel Simulations by Dr. Gerald Verschuuren is that there were some exercises on testing that I had never learned in college. One was on how to determine

the sample size in order to detect a difference “for a certain desired margin of error”. The other was on quality control. These were interesting simulations that really induced a desire to learn more. The question is: which book will be simple enough in order for me to learn this stuff? And the other is: where can I find example data or testing materials in order to try this because the best way I learn is by doing?

I’m not sure if I’m going to have time this week to continue with the book because I’m actually deep in the healthcare reporting. It’s kind of making me tired. The next section of the book is on genetics which I believe is heavy on probability and statistics, so maybe in those simulations, some of this statistic stuff will become clearer.

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