Stats with first semester NS?

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Hello all!

I have a question for all you seasoned pros! :D

I am currently signed up to take a 3 credit hour statistics class with my first semester of (ADN) nursing school this fall. For those of you who have taking your first semester RN and/or statistics class, is this a manageable combination? I need to take it eventually but I don't want to do anything to sabotage myself either..:eek:

Thanks in advance for any advice!!!

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Specializes in Nursing Education.

Probably depends on how comfortable you are with math. I might be a bad person to ask, because I enjoy math, and I actually love statistics!! When you take the time to understand WHY the formulas are put together they way they are, it actually is very logical and makes a lot of sense. It takes a little bit longer to study that way in the short-term, but in the long-run you will remember the info better (including at test time!).

And it's just good general knowledge to have...news and articles throw around statistics all the time, and if you don't have a good understanding of what they're talking about, it's heard to evaluate their claims. For example, a lot of times News stories will make a claim like "You're more likely to stub your toe if you where red shoes than blue shoes." But then when you listen to the story, they'll add "although the difference was not statistically significant..." That basically means that, according to statistics (and real life)...there was no difference. But if you didn't know that about statistics, then you'd stop wearing your red shoes...

Ok, went off on a little tangent there, but hey, I think statistics is fun :up:

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I think it depends on what other courses you are taking with Statistics.

I have to take it as well, ugh. I am good at math but I don't really like it. I plan on taking Stats with some really easy classes. But I can pick what classes I want to take. I don't take clinicals for 2 years. I do all of the non clinical classes in advance.

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It really depends on how good you are in Math. I took stats with Anatomy, Developmental Psych and Micro which I know aren't the same as taking it with nursing classes but I found Stats to be easy for me and I didn't really need to study that much for it. However if you're weak in Math then it may be a bad idea. Half of my class got C's and lower because they just couldn't grasp the material and we had the best professor teaching it that semester who made it very clear. We did have a lot of homework (about 15-20 problems two nights a week) so try and see if your professor is the kind that gives mandatory hw assignments or not. The homework helped me because most of the questions from the test were based if not exact homework problems, but a lot of people just looked up the answers in the back of our textbook so when it came time for the exam they couldn't understand how to do the problem.

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For me, it would be a trainwreck...your results may vary.

I took stats about 2 years ago and, honestly, cried my way through most of it! It's not that I'm stupid or math-illiterate, but stats was something entirely new to me and frankly just not the way my brain works.

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Hmm, sounds like I'm getting mixed reviews! I think what I may do it try out a stats book and see if it's something my brain can process...LOL

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