Learning Stats at UofT #6: Critical Analysis and Problem Solving

This is the sixth post of the series Learning Stats at UofT. In case you did not read my last post, here is the introudction.

The fundamental statistics courses at UofT are normally unchanged, at least from my experience in the past three years. Still, I think it is worth devoting some blogs to this topic. Before starting the introduction to courses, I would like to spend some time on the programs offered by DoSS.

I am a student in Applied Statistics Specialist, or Method and Application, at UofT. Though there were some changes in the requirements, the main focus of the two programs is the same. In particular, you will go through some fundamentals in R and (Frequentist) statistics in your first two years, and take upper year courses in some advanced topics. Compared to the Theory one, you do not need to take so many courses in theory, but you need to choose a focus depending on your interest. The focus seemed less important, but I gave a lot of thoughts about it in my past years. So I would like to share some of them with you. Note that all of these can be found on the official website of Arts & Science, and I hope this paragraph serves well as an introduction.

By meeting with a Vic alumnus, I summarize a set of core skills that are important for our future career. This is the first part of the core skills.

Critical Analysis

Critical analysis involves the ability to analyze the situation, to retrieve information from different sources, and the ability to communicate the idea quantitatively and qualitatively.

Statistics courses at U of T provide great training of quantitative analysis. In recent years, instructors also think about different assignments that requires student to apply their skills in analyzing real-life cases. Nonetheless, this is not enough from my perspective. First, such tasks have to align with the specific course objective. In particular, the data provided for the assignment are so good that you don’t need to consider any absurd situations. Second, the professors may not necessarily know what nowadays employers are looking for. Hence it is important to explore the real world by yourself.

Problem Solving

The following materials were adapted from the learning strategies at UofT, Rahul Bhat.

Background

What background information do I need to solve the problem? This should be combined with critical analysis. Specifically, you may want to know what information is missing all ignored.

Rules

What theories, solutions, rules, proofs, or approaches might I use to solve the problem? In quantitative analysis, you will need to use mathematical knowledge, for example, theorems, to solve questions.

Steps

Can I break the problem into steps - those I understand and those I can gather more information for? This way, you can explore the steps that can be done fairly easily, and save more time for the difficult tasks.

Connection

Is there something I have seen in the past that resembles this problem? You practice active retrieve of knowledge in this aspect, and look for solutions that are applicable in some sense to this question.