Statistics trouble

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

Published

Hello, I have posted on here before about how I am struggling with statistics an I am sure some of you are annoyed by it, but I really need to talk it out. We just had our second exam and I bombed it and now have a C in this class. This is the worst I have ever done in a class and am quite crushed, especially with the knowledge that this statistics is my last prerequisite for nursing... I don't know what to do and am really down and scared right now. Thank you for listening, your feedback really does help.

Same with me! I have a low C. We just had our 2nd exam today. I'm feeling good about it, but there was only 6 problems so each one is worth like 15 points!

This is the problem I had with my 1st test, it was only 5 questions and while I didn't really get any questions "wrong" I lost points on dumb mistakes!

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Go to tutoring it could really save your grade, use them as teachers and to review your class lessons/notes/examples. It seems like your professor isn't helping you guys prepare well for the exams... Statistics is not that bad it's just alot of calculator moves and knowing how to navigate your calculator and punching the numbers in correctly. I'm sure if you go to your school's tutoring they could help you with the calculator moves. I find it strange your professor isn't showing you guys how to use your calculator that's the most important part.

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Also if you use a textbook in class review the end of chapter questions/quizzes even the tough ones. Sometimes professors model their exams after those problems.

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Specializes in Medical Surgical/Addiction/Mental Health.

Would love to see your spreadsheet. PM me the attachment, please.

Thanks

Are you allowed to use Excel during your exams? Or do you just need formulas? If so, I can email you a list of formulas used for statistics with the explanation of each one and when to use it. If you can use Excel, I can email you the spreadsheet with every formula used and which one it's for.
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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Educator here.

There is an increasing amount of (research) evidence that traditional methods are much better than online for math & 'hard science' classes. A good instructor makes all the difference. Stats is usually a challenging course, but IMO it is actually the "math" that will be most useful in your nursing career... essential to analyze and understand research findings. And - of course, it is a foundation course for your nursing research class.

If you decide to continue your education, you will probably encounter a lot more stats. I had to have 3 hours for BSN, 6 hours for MSN & 9 hours for doctoral program. BUT - it got much easier along the way, particularly when I got beyond the 'do the math' stuff and into the 'do the data modeling on a computer' stuff. That's turned out to be very interesting - and I can now bore people endlessly at a much higher level - LOL.

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

Another good book is The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. It's similar to the nursing made easy series with cartoon depictions of the concepts. I preferred this slightly more to the Dummies Guide. Also try the videos on Khan Academy. These are great resources if you need help understanding the concepts.

Have you availed yourself of any tutoring services offered by your school? Contacted your professor for help/guidance? Does your text have any related web/online resources? ( I've found the textbook provided online resources to be most valuable in many nursing and pre-req courses)

Knowing how to put the values into a spreadsheet is valuable but not knowing the why or how it works can be a problem if there is an error or unexpected result. If you know the concepts you will be able to trouble shoot results.

Example if it is a group of 15 values ranging from 1.001 to 20.004 and the output is N=18, mean of 35.5, and range of 33 you know there is a data error as it's not possible to have an N value greater than number of data points in the series and the average cannot be greater than the highest value.

I can definitely see significant value in having a basic comprehension of applied statistics in nursing.

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Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

Here's a link to the statistics section on Khan Academy:

http://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability

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