Kayla Schafer

Mrs. Sarah Lewis

Statistics and Probability

8 May 2019

Final Reflection

For my senior year, I decided to take Statistics and Probability as my math credit, mostly

because I was terrified of Calculus. Throughout the year, there were time where I was genuinely

interested in the information being taught and other times when I could barely keep my eyes

open because the information honestly seemed pointless to me. In the end, I’m happy with my

decision to take this class.

Something that I will take away from this class comes from all the way in chapter two.

Chapter two is one of the only chapters that really stuck with me and that makes me think I will

need to use it someday. I learned how to create frequency tables, histograms, bar graphs, circle

graphs, time-series graphs, and more. I believe that these are some of the most valuable things

that I learned how to do because I will come across a lot of different ways to portray data

visually in my select career path. In accounting, I will need to be able to read graphs such as

these on a day to day basis. I believe that chapter two has prepared me for a future in the field of

accounting even if it seems insignificant at the moment.

Throughout the year, there were times when I was completely confident in the work we

were doing and there were times when I was completely lost. One of the things that we did this

year that was difficult for me was when we learned about compound event probabilities. This

chapter was extremely stressful for me because I couldn’t figure out which equation needed to be
used when and what letters were what. Then, when I was already lost, we put in the addition

rules for mutually exclusive or non-mutually exclusive events and I struggled. It was hard for me

to differentiate between dependent or independent and mutually exclusive or non-mutually

exclusive. Eventually I figured it out and did well enough on the test, but that doesn’t mean I

didn’t have mini mental breakdowns along the way.

This class was a little different than I expected. In my mind, I still think of statistics and

probability as “If there are four blue marbles and one red marble in the bag, what is the

probability that you will pick out the red marble?” Come to find out, it is much more than that. I

didn’t expect to find out all the background information that comes with something as simple as

picking out a random sample. There are so many things you have to watch out for in order to

avoid bias or to make sure that your sample is large enough, etc. It is not as simple as it used to

be when we were younger. I would honestly say that the class was better than I expected. If I

expected blue and red marbles, that would’ve gotten so monotonous and boring throughout the

year. Diving in deeper into the world of statistics and probability at least offered new information

and a little bit of a challenge.

Finally, if I were to take another Statistics class in college, I would approach it very

differently. First of all, I would take it more seriously and not slack off as much as I tended to do

this year. Maybe if I had paid more attention, chapter five with compound probabilities wouldn’t

have been so difficult for me! I would also go into the class with a little more of an

understanding than what I came into this class with. Some of the stuff is actually pretty

interesting if you have an open mind and are willing to dive into more of the nitty gritty
background details. Again, I do not regret taking this class and look forward to possibly learning

more in the future.