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Critique Paper on Why we Love or Hate Statistics

Bryan Christian Madelo

College of Arts and Science, Manila Tytana Colleges

PSY 2: Psychological Statistics

Desiderio S. Camitan, IV, MAEd

March 10, 2021

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Critique Paper on Why we Love or Hate Statistics

I. Introduction

Mathematics has been an essential part of our lives and it is one of the primary reasons for the

development of our society today. It nurtures every individuals reasoning, creativity,

abstract or spatial thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and even

communication skills. Statistics, as a branch of mathematics, is a necessary component

responsible for the discoveries, decisions based on data, and predictions made by people.

It serves us to collect data diverse methods, to apply the correct analyses to be used and

to be able to present the results properly. As a student of social science, I am not skillful

when it comes to math and especially statistics but I do not hate using statistics although

it confuses me specifically when I am computing variables and I fail even though I

properly followed the steps instructed by the professor. It is very aggravating at first, but

indeed it makes me solve it further because getting the correct answer gives off a pleasant

reward that motivates me to solve more exercises.

The objective of the study was to explain the attitude of psychology students towards statistics

using a theoretical model to examine important factors such as mathematics self-efficacy,

appreciation towards history of statistics, statistics appropriation, ambiguity tolerance,

and previous bad mathematics experience that could predict or influence their attitude.

Attitude was considered because it can potentially reflect an individual’s response to

statistics based on their feelings, behavior and beliefs. The

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Critique Paper on Why we Love or Hate Statistics

participants consisted of 255 Indonesian college students aged 17-25 years, being 52 males and

203 females studying psychology in universities across Greater Jakarta, Indonesia. They

used convenience and snowball sampling to provide greater access to large-scale

participation in each university. They used different surveys, questionnaires, and scale for

the six factors that may predict or influence the student’s attitude towards statistics. The

result of the study suggest that all the proposed hypotheses of the researchers were

supported by the data and that the theoretical model can indeed be used to explain the

attitude of the students towards statistics.

II. Strengths

The key strength of this study is that the researchers used a theoretical model that could

absolutely explain the attitude of students towards statistics. They also proposed eleven

hypothesis which revolves in the theoretical model. The hypotheses that was proposed

was supported by the data which means that the factors that the researchers included in

the study actually involve or influence each other. Some researches only answer one or

two hypothesis and only use several data collecting instruments. This study used six

diverse instruments which some are even contextualized for the students to avoid

confusion and provide clarity to some definitions and terms. The sample size is quite

pleasant even if the number of female participants is greater than male participants.
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Lastly, this research is not centralized in the present factors but also included past factors

such as previous bad mathematics experience, an individual’s disposition in dealing with

new situations, behavioral tendencies, beliefs, and a stimulus trigger which could allow

students to make a greater effort which has a great impact on the results explaining the

attitude to statistics.

III. Limitations

These researchers made an effort to prepare a number of researches and instruments to be used in

this study. I simply want to point out that there might be some other factors concerning

the attitude of students towards statistics. One factor might be from the environment of

the student whether it is at home or school. Students who fail to answer questions asked

by their teacher or professor tend to be embarrassed and label themselves “stupid” or not

good at the subject. Parental strictness may also be a factor in which the parents are

applying pressure to their children to learn and may sometimes give punishment for those

who are having poor performance. Another reason why students find statistics difficult is

because they are not provided the opportunity to gain the skills needed in calculating and

manipulating which is essential to statistics. Students also need to be engaged in different

learning materials because as we know people are unique and they also have different

learning styles that they are comfortable with. These factors might be able to aid the

researchers in their future studies.

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IV. Implications

This study is relatable because I am studying a social science course and is currently enrolled in

the course subject psychological statistics. Statistics is crucial to my course because it

allows us to present and interpret data in clear ways. It also serves as a mediator to test

the hypothesis proposed. It also grants researchers, such as psychology students, to be

able to apply correct analysis of data and also to be able to predict possible outcomes.

Statistics is widely being use every day. People in medical fields such as doctors and

physicians, weather forecasting, business, economy, software development professionals,

architects and much more. Statistics is revolving to us in countless ways that we might

not be aware off and that students, like myself, should appreciate and learn how to use

statistics and how to apply it in our daily life.

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References

Jameel, H. (2016). Causes of Poor Performance in Mathematics from Teachers, Parents and

Student’s Perspective. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering,

Technology, and Sciences. 15. 122-136

Ramsey, J. (n.d.). Why Do Students Find Statistics So Difficult?

https://www.stat.fi/isi99/proceedings/arkisto/varasto/rams0070.pdf

Frost, J. (n.d.). The Importance of Statistics. Statistics By Jim.

https://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/importance-statistics/#:~:text=Statistical%20knowledge

%20helps%20you%20use,on%20data%2C%20and%20make%20predictions.