Gelman on the Popularity of Statistics
The popularity of statistics?
Jennifer pointed me to this site, which states that “white people hate math” but “are fascinated by ‘the power of statistics’ since the math has already been done for them.” I’d like to believe this is true (the part about white people liking statistics, not the part about the math having already be done to them) but I’m skeptical. Everywhere I’ve ever taught, there have been a lot more math majors than stat majors, and I’m pretty sure this is true among the subset of students who are white. But it might be true that the business majors, the poli sci majors, the English majors, etc.–not to mention the people who don’t go to college at all–prefer statistics to mathematics. Actually, I think most of these people should prefer statistics to mathematics. But I fear that a more likely reaction would be something like, “math is cool, statistics is boring.”
P.S. I looked further down, and this “Stuff White People Like” site is just weird. “With few exceptions, white people are actually fond of almost any dictator not named Hitler”?? Huh? I mean, I can see that the site is a parody, but this is just weird.
I’m just posting this because I also do not like the “Stuff White People Like” blog and was excited to finally find someone else who felt similarly.
