Donna Goddard

Here’s a NEW story about the mysterious ways of the Divine.

My daughter is currently studying statistics as one of her university psychology subjects. It’s her least favourite subject, but we joke that, at least, it’s not as bad as when I did statistics at age 20. The subject was simply beyond me. My maths capabilities were far below what would make the subject understandable. Nevertheless, in order to pass psychology, I had to pass statistics. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to pass and was, most likely, going to get zero.

Then a most amazing thing happened. My friend, Alex Baturnysky, was very good at statistics. An hour before the exam, my friends and I were sitting with exam-stress glumness in the university cafe. Alex must have seen the rather doomed look on my face. He asked if he could help.

I responded, “Thank you very much, but I am beyond help. Anyway, there is nothing you can do in such a short time.”

He persisted and said, “No, let’s try.”

I really didn’t want to try because I was desperately hopeless about it all, and frankly hated everything to do with the subject. I listened as best as I could out of politeness. He went through five questions that were the sort of thing that could be asked. He explained in detail what the correct answers would be. Numbers, numbers! For some reason, numbers have always been meaningless to me. Meaningless and entirely forgettable.

Continue reading “Miraculous Stats—Zero to Hero”