Before I took this course, I saw statistics as a weak spot in academics for me.  I had taken half a semester of it during an introductory course for freshmen when I was in high school, and nothing about what we did or the complex series of steps on the graphing calculators made any sense to me.  Happily, that experience did not repeat itself in this course. Statistics required a very different type of thinking than most of the classes I have taken in college, and the change was refreshing.  The professor did not simply present the material we were to regurgitate, but encouraged us to think critically about it and its potential applications in the real world.  The small class size allowed us to focus on discussions about the material and to ask questions rather than simply sit through lectures and take tests, and I think that helped me a lot in developing a thorough understanding of the concepts behind statistical tests rather than just how to use them.  Though I may not remember exactly how to perform each test in the future, this class instilled in me a healthy amount of skepticism for statistical claims and an ability to analyze a study’s methods which will be helpful to me as a consumer of information both professionally and privately.

Over the course of the semester we had a series of homework assignments with questions from the unit that assessed our understanding of the material.  After the assignments were graded, we had the opportunity to fix any mistakes we had made.  Below is the corrected version of one of the last assignments of the semester.