There should be compulsory maths and statistics units in all science degrees.

I will state that I only have experience in Biological sciences, but I would be interested to hear others opinions on this.

Background:

I graduated from a top university in Biology (well technically Zoology, but they are much of a muchness) with very little knowledge of statistics bar how to bung everything into SPSS and pray it works. This got worse at Masters level where there were people who had done science degrees and done no statistics whatsoever.

Statistics and data analysis are an integral part of the sciences and I find the lack of more in depth teaching on the subjects pretty awful frankly. There are academics in my field that have little to no understanding of that side if things. I feel it leaves you grossly under prepared for any kind of research or any jobs in the areas of analysis or data management.

Biology, peh. You lot are scared of numbers

What you say would be a good idea though.

I will state that I only have experience in Biological sciences, but I would be interested to hear others opinions on this.

Background:

I graduated from a top university in Biology (well technically Zoology, but they are much of a muchness) with very little knowledge of statistics bar how to bung everything into SPSS and pray it works. This got worse at Masters level where there were people who had done science degrees and done no statistics whatsoever.

Statistics and data analysis are an integral part of the sciences and I find the lack of more in depth teaching on the subjects pretty awful frankly. There are academics in my field that have little to no understanding of that side if things. I feel it leaves you grossly under prepared for any kind of research or any jobs in the areas of analysis or data management.

We did a load of maths modules of course, but we didn't do any specific stats modules. Stats is pointless grunt work in most practical case, if you've got any meaningful amount of data you're going to use a computer to analyse it anyway. You still need an understanding so you can tell how to process it and in the case where the your software is blatantly bull****ting you, but to dedicate an entire module seems a bit extreme.

I just kindpf wanted to die in a hole when I realised you can do a science degree with no statistics. WHY IS THIS A THING!!!


Also maths is really important in biology it is stupid they don't teach it.

I didn't realise there were any science courses without any maths modules...

Where I am, the biologists and even psychologists have a load of stats each year...

We did a load of maths modules of course, but we didn't do any specific stats modules. Stats is pointless grunt work in most practical case, if you've got any meaningful amount of data you're going to use a computer to analyse it anyway. You still need an understanding so you can tell how to process it and in the case where the your software is blatantly bull****ting you, but to dedicate an entire module seems a bit extreme.

We did a load of maths modules of course, but we didn't do any specific stats modules. Stats is pointless grunt work in most practical case, if you've got any meaningful amount of data you're going to use a computer to analyse it anyway. You still need an understanding so you can tell how to process it and in the case where the your software is blatantly bull****ting you, but to dedicate an entire module seems a bit extreme.

Sometimes the maths abilities of my fellow biologists is quite embarrassing. I had to explain to one of them how to calculate the mean recently.

I did psychology and there was loads of stats in that. Even though it was a BA...!

I know people who did psychology and it is similar to what most Biologists do I think (no offense) it seems to mainly SPSS type plug it in and hope it works?

Still working with parametric and non parametric type stuff? which really is just plain wrong...

It's like when you do A-level and you get to Uni and they say 'that was all rubbish' - that's what happened after my undergrad with stats


I will point out the people who hadn't done any stats had gone to ex polytechnics. I just can't believe a course without that is allowed anywhere though.