Half of Brookes students so bored they leave Stats lecture

Out of the 250 students meant to be present in last week’s three hour stats lecture for Biomed students, it was clear to everyone a significant fraction of them were missing.

Most left in the short break 50 per cent of the way through the lecture, some gave up trying and started browsing Facebook, and some simply never turned up.

The best estimate of student satisfaction was 25 per cent, however no one was able to calculate accurately it due to not learning how to do so.

Students are dissatisfied with the current situation, and have the same complaints.

Mostly commenting on the lack of actual teaching in the lecture, poor sound quality of the Marston Road lecture hall and problems with the R statistical analysis tool, which many say is a pain in the ass.

These concerns were passed onto multiple student reps and Academic Advisors. Some students were worried they were being mean, but they were not sure, as they could have been median or mode.

More than 1/6 of the lecture this week was spent on reviewing what had been previously covered, rather than new information. All of which was readily available on the slides for the weeks’ lecture, as well as being the actual content of all the slides from previous lectures.

The majority of those asked agreed the review was useful, but should have required no more than five minutes.

The threat of a student participation exercise (literal exercise it turned out) seemed to keep more people around after the break than last week, but several openly admitted they were leaving citing their reasons being that “we couldn’t hear anything, it sounds like mumbling” and “I’m not learning anything. I’m just sitting there, nodding and nothing’s going in” when asked.

The lecture is a bit like the matrix movies. If you’re not interested, it’s a long, boring and confusing mess of numbers and plots that make no sense. It’s hard to understand for even the diehard fans. Here’s hoping Keanu Reeves turns up at some point to sort it all out.