September 15, 2003

  • Ten reasons for avoiding becoming a Statistics professor...


     


    I’ve taught stats at the graduate level for years as an adjunct professor.  But there are some very good reasons to altogether avoid doing so and, in my case, for continuing my yearlong ‘sabbatical’ :


     



    1. Most stats are just sad.  Listening to their recital is like observing a convention of dogs crying at a memorial service for lost bones.

    2. Teaching sadistics, I mean statistics, can hamper your creativity.  Impromptu stream-of-consciousness thinking and statistics cannot coexist at the same time in the same brain.

    3. “Don’t blame the messenger,” never washes with statistics students.  In their minds, the professor is always “the asshole”.

    4. Every once in a while, you’ll find a student that really does like statistics.  But it usually turns out that the student is so strange, it’s frightening.  That gets you to thinking about how others are looking at you…

    5. Teaching statistics—six hours of class contact and 70 hours per week of preparations—just doesn’t pay as well as other side jobs such as house-painting.   Hence, the opportunity cost of teaching stats is comparatively excessive.   I have statistics to back up this assertion, but dare not bore you with them.

    6. Stats are not sexy.  Even 36-24-36 doesn’t seem to do it for me anymore.

    7. Being a stats professor makes you an ‘evil enabler’ since most of your students will use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp-post: for support and not for illumination.

    8. Statisticians aren’t allowed to play with children’s toys because they regress so easily.

    9. On the average, the average statistician says “on the average” significantly more often than the average person.  And that’s simply annoying to the average person with typical heartfelt sentiment.

    10. Numbers are hard to love.  And give no love in return.  On the average.  So why fuck with them?

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