I teach at a very academically rigorous school. But, there are a few things this school does that might surprise people:

1. Many teachers teach a wide range of grade levels. So you could have a teacher who *could* teach Linear Algebra teaching you in 4th grade math.

2. The school makes time for creative math and CS in addition to the regular class. So I get to work with students without pressure to get them past any particular test or goal posts.

@futurebird Yabbut do you teach physics with calculus or without?

@whknott

They know a little calc before they get into physics. And they often tell me about how they used it in my calc class.

But, what I wish we could do is stop treating Statistics like it's... the math class for "weak" students who couldn't do calculus.

Part of the problem is there is still a tendency to classify kids as "math people" and "not math people" although I'm breaking my peers of this notion every chance I get. Part of it is this snobbishness pure math people have about stats.

@futurebird @whknott As a "not math person" who teaches stats to people who Do Not Want To Learn Stats, full agreement.

Perhaps it's the cognitive dissonance effects, but I have formed an opinion that "math people" looking down on stats are reacting to their difficulty with/distaste for having to interface with the "real world."

Some approaches to stats are purely theoretical, but it is a field inherently pointed toward application. The history of academia is partly the history of "pure" academics denigrating any application of their pure knowledge. I think that's partly because interfacing theory with reality is messy and difficult in ways some of the pure-math people find especially challenging.

@guyjantic Reminds me of when I met my quantitative analysis prof. He asked how I was feeling and I said I was terrified cause I’m not a math person. He laughed and replied “not to worry. Stats isn’t math.” @futurebird @whknott

@AlliFlowers @futurebird @guyjantic @whknott I'd like him to try saying that to me after I spent two hours attempting to integrate the Gaussian normal distribution curve for my Stochastic Processes class.

Turns out it isn't integrable, which I would have known if had read the text.

@dan613 Et voilà! Juste comme ça, tu parles une langue je ne comprends pas. @futurebird @guyjantic @whknott