Fearful of Statistics? 5 Steps to Ease the Process

When we hear ‘statistics’, most of us remember about unwillingly attending a boring and meaningless lecture regularly in the morning, at school or perhaps at college and finally facing our worst nightmares during ourtests. If you are a student, studying statistics but not afraid or anxious about it, then you are one of the lucky few who managed to love the subject.
However, other students are not so fortunate, and this subject is often painful and fearful for them. Termed as ‘Statistics anxiety’, the phobia about this subject is a growing problem amongst the students nowadays. Are you one of themand wants to overcome your nightmare? Do you want to show the world that you too have the potential to succeed? Then this is the right place for fulfilling your wish!
The main problem with the subject of statistics is that students do not find it interesting or inspiring, allowing themto forget easily about the learned facts and then make a fool of themselves in the tests. Here are some simple ways to avoid such troubles and ease the studying of this subject. But always remember, in the end only you can control your emotions and get rid of your phobia.

1. Get in the habit of self-studying

Whatever you are taught during the lectures are not to be kept limited only in the classrooms, else you are bound to forget it, especially if it involves a seemingly boring subject like statistics. You should grow the habit of studying extensively at home, even though if it seems painful, initially! Not a good idea? Not your cup of tea? Don’t be disappointed! Try the following tricks to get into ahabit of self-learning.

• Studying does not mean opening up your books and notes and jumping into solvingthe sums and problems.
• Give yourself enough time to read and catch the concept.
• Try to recollect the lecture and compare it with what you read and understand.
• If you have trouble understanding, do not get frustrated.
• Read again and again.
• Try to form a few examples yourself and see what you make out of them.
• Rack your brains for getting deeper into the subject and there you might find interest. Remember, there is no teacher for you better than yourself!

Do not take failure too personally. Usually, when you get a wrong answer to mathematics or statistics problem. You may give up in the fear of further failures; that is basic student psychology. Always keep this in the back of your mind, the more anyone fail, the more they learn and failure is the pillar of success. So do not give up so easily! Take up another problem and if you fail there, go to the next one. Keep on and soon you will see that you have successfully solved one.
An extremely useful way of studying is to get into groupstudies with your friends and fellow classmates. In such friendly atmosphere, any student would feel comfortable in studying and also may get thenecessary help from others. Group studying means that everybody there is a student and everybody a teacher too!

2. Give a little less stress on calculations

The subject of statistics has animmense amount of calculations and computations and students often get confused between statistics and arithmetic. But let me tell you, Statistics is not all about calculating means, R.M.S., standard deviations and probabilities rather you should spend more time finding out what they are and what they actuallymean.
At a glance, it may seem that statistics means calculating and getting an appropriate answer, but there are calculators and computers to do that job. So what is the role of a statistician? Is it just to enter data into a computer and get a result? No! Then what? The answer lies deep in this subject and if you wish to get it then keep down your calculators and study its theory asking yourself ‘why is it so?’ and ‘how?’ at every step. That is the way of advancement of science and statistics being a science subject is not an exception.
Great physicist Albert Einstein once said,
“We should teach our children how to think and not what to think.”

3. Improve the classroom

It is not always the fault of the student that they do not find interest in statistics. Often the environment of the classroom makes the subject more painful.To change this situation:

• All students should unanimously request their teachers or authorities for aid.
• Teachers should be easing into the subject while teaching and not jumps into them.
• Individual care should be given to each student, especially the ones who is weak in statistics.
• Interactive sessions and quizzes should be held every week where there will also be credit for attempting questions.

This will encourage students to study regularly. Apart from that, the doubts and queries that you develop while studying at home must be put forward to the teacher in the class. Do not hesitate to ask questions to your teachers. Remember, questions are never stupid.

4. Active and humorous learning

Statistics does not involve only theoretical parts; it is also equally dependent onexperiments.These experiments can be interesting to students, so I would suggest you all participate actively in them and never forget to lose the scientific attitude of asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ every time.
Experiments are something that canmake any subject active and exciting. Another important aspect is to add a little humor to the studies so that statistics become more fun than a burden to carry.This includesseeing the bright side of this subject and lookyour world from the perspective of a statistician. It would be a miracle if you get a teacher with a good sense of humor teaching statisticsand then learning anything becomes much more interesting.

5. Other useful ways

Following all the above steps will most probably turn you into a statistician of your neighborhood, but still if you are having troubles with statistics, then there are more ways to help.

• The Internet is a useful tool for education. You can get simpler notes and educational guides on the net offering help in statistics.
• You should get involved inthe different discussion forums on the social media where you can give your queries and the other members can answer them.
• You can also watch the educational videos of lecturers from different places around the world.

Although apparently so boring, yet statistics deep within is a beautiful subject having an enormous range of applicability. It is used in every field of science, viz. bio-informatics, medical science, genetics, thermal and quantum physics, geophysics, astronomy, etc. Apart from that, government census, demography, accountancy, business management, etc. also employ statistics. So, I believe that instead of fearing statistics, if we learn to love it, then it will prove to be more beneficial for us.
Now, students of statistics follow the said steps sincerely and say good bye to your ‘statistics anxiety’ forever. A prosperous and ambitious future is waiting for you, my friends!