Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Study Aid Review: Mastering Statistics Volume 2

 


This is set 2 in, as of this writing, a 6-volume set of mastering statistics volumes Jason has put out, with possibly more to come down the line. It is still covering basic material, and expanding on the core concepts that were introduced in the first volume, and there is still some overlap with the older set Jason put out years ago,  The Probability and Statistics Tutor - 10 Hour Course - 3 DVD Set - Learn By Examples! .

He starts out discussing discrete and continuous probability distribution, then basically spends the rest of the sections on Normal Probability Distribution (bell curves), finding the area under the bell curves using z-values and the tables in the back of most books. It should be noted that while he does mention that finding the area can be done with calculus and doing integration, he left that out and just focused on using the tables in the book, how to interpret the information in the problems, and look them up in the table. If you are taking a statistics class in the math curriculum that may be okay, but if you are taking something like an engineering data analysis class you will probably have to do the integration. But the integrals will end up being relatively basic and easily done with a graphing calculator so it should not cause most people in that situation a lot of problems.

If you have ever seen Jason's material, either because you own another set, or because you have seen sample videos on his site or on Youtube, it follows much the same format as his more recent DVDs. He introduces a concept in one or two lecture sections, then he does problems. Sometimes he does a couple problems in one chapter of the DVD, and sometimes just one. So overall the chapters are shorter, but he still packs a lot of information into the entire disc set. This is still the material that you will see early on in any statistics course, and would probably not cover all the material that you would get in a first exam. It probably translates to the material in the first 2 to 3 weeks of a course. Luckily the later volumes cover material like confidence intervals and hypothesis testing which make up the bulk of what any of the courses will cover.

I personally find that Jason's teaching style meshes with my learning style a lot. He explains things in a way that I find very easy to follow and I have used his DVD sets from algebra through advanced calculus and engineering. While none of his sets cover everything you will need to learn in the classes, and not even all the material you will likely be tested on, he goes through the big, main concepts that you have to know in order to be able to handle any other material. So while this is not a substitute for going to class or reading the book and doing homework, it will help you understand the material much more, so what is in the book is not so hard to follow, and if you have a teacher that is not so great, can make up for what you may not understand from him or her. They have been a great tool for me, and I cannot recommend them more if you are a visual and/or auditory learner.

No comments: