Just now I chatted with Teacher Yan JIANG for about two hours on the topic of course setting for undergraduates (when we finished the discussion of a project from the China Customs). There are really so many problems that I can list examples one after another. I’ve always been holding a belief that elder students in higher grades should communicate with those in lower grades, telling them some useful experience – no matter in the aspect of academic research or daily life. This is only too important. We need to simplify, or more precisely speaking, clarify their disordered directions.
Statistics is a discipline with strong logics. From traditional regressions (modeling the mean of Y) to generalized linear models (modeling a function of a certain parameter of Y’s distribution), and to quantile regressions (modeling the quantiles of Y); from sampling without replacement (traditional sampling) to with replacement (the idea of bootstrap); from the central limit theorem (CLT) in probability theory to the confidence interval of the sample mean in sampling survey; … There are just too many connected “lines”, and accordingly, many orbits in which this discipline can develop. Teachers should put great emphasis on the training of the thinking ability of students and tell them how to make innovations (after they’ve mastered the basic knowledge).
For postgraduates, currently I have noticed a strange phenomenon, i.e. we are pursuing the “frontiers” of statistics, but lack some very very basic knowledge of statistics. For example, we’re discussing LASSO every day, but we know little about computational statistics, or even we’re using the principle of least squares every day, but we still have no idea about the computation of standard errors of the coefficients in a nonlinear least square (NLS) regression.
Problems always exist. The only thing we can do is neither worry nor complain, but make efforts to improve the current situation. Again, there’s a long long way to go. Some day I shall discuss these problems with our teachers and students again.
By the way, this Sunday I should go to the China Customs to help them with the usage of my R program, so I’m worried about small’s going home. Just hope I can get back at noon. Besides, it seems that I’ll be extremely busy in the “May Day” holidays; mountains of things to do…
赞赏
作为一名没有固定工作的自由职业者，我非常感谢您通过捐赠的方式来支持我的写作和开源软件开发。当然，捐赠纯属自愿。无论金额多少，都是一片诚挚的心意。支付方式如下：
| 微信 | ← 奋力支开它俩 → | 支付宝 |
|---|---|---|
 |
其它爱心通道 ↓ Venmo: @yihui_xie Zelle: xie@yihui.name PayPal: xie@yihui.name |
 |
若使用 Venmo/Zelle/Paypal，请添加备注“gift”或“donation”，以免捐赠被视为我的可税收入。若使用 Paypal，支付类型请选 Family and Friends，而不要选 Goods and Services。
在不影响生活的前提下，我会将收到的捐赠以尽量大的比例回馈给开源社区和慈善机构。作为参考，2024-25 年间我共收到约三万美元捐赠，完税后我转手捐出了一万五千美元。