Hey baby, let me expand your series
This is a really interesting read.
I am someone who has very little mathematical intuition. I mean, I think some people just have a knack for thinking about math and “math things” and for piecing bits of different types of math together. I don’t. Like, even at the most basic levels—simplifying factorial expressions, the logic behind summation rules, all that stuff. I mean, I know I’m a total idiot, but still. At least with other topics I have some degree of intuition.
And I’ve always wondered if others who actually have a more intuitive understanding of math—or at least have delved into it far enough—see advanced math (or math in general) in a different way.
Anyway. Interesting read, check it out.
Annnnnnnnnnd BLOG POST!
So I’ve come to realize something. Actually, this is something that I realized quite awhile ago, but it’s still relevant: statistics is very intuitive to me. Math is not.
I can’t recall any specific instances or anything like that, but it just seems like anything statistics-related has just made sense to me on some intuitive level that a lot of things in math do not. Even back when I was first starting (like back in STAT 251), I felt like I had a more intuitive grasp on stats.
It’s like…I can explain why some elements in a variance/covariance matrix cannot be larger than someother values and it makes intuitive sense to me, but I can’t (at the same intuitive level) explain what to do with the powers when I’ve got something like (52)8.
Blah. I don’t know. I know that’s a crappy example, and it makes it hard to explain to people why I teach statistics but am still only in calc II.
Eigenblogger 