Things Statistics Taught Me

Although I am such a loser in Mathematics, I always find it interesting even if many problems seem too difficult for me. In my entire college life, I’ve gone through five Mathematics courses: Math 1 (Fundamentals of Mathematics), Math 11 (College Algebra), Math 14 (Plane Trigonometry) and Math 100 (Introduction to Calculus) and, now, Political Science 199 (Quantitative Research in Political Science). I enjoyed them amid the headache brought about by solving. Except PolSci 199. As a spontaneous individual, subscribing to a stiff, patterned process (like those of Statistics) make me crazy.

I would just like to clear that I didn’t enjoy PolSci 199 only because of the nature of the subject. Other factors do not affect my feeling towards it.

Last Thursday, I retrieved a take home exam in PolSci 199, which I commonly refer to as PolSci Stat. We were asked to draft a research proposal regarding the perception of UP students to the Arroyo administration. Here, we are just required to explain the employment of statistical methods in research, and how do we intend to approach the topic qualitatively. Due to the lack of skill and my subjective feeling towards Statistics, there’s no chance to ace this exam unless I’ll seek help.

That same night, I messaged my girl to help me out. Yes, she’s brilliant in Math. At exactly ten in the evening, we stayed in Coffee Bean. It was a teacher-and-student type of relation, for I look like a student conducting a consulation with my professor. Due to the patience of the “professor”, understanding the concepts was a bit easy for me.

On that very same night, I find myself understanding not only Statistics.

For a relationship to work, the individual actors must employ values such as trustworthiness, honesty, patience, sensitivity and loyalty, among others. Maintaining a relationship does not require the use of pre-derived formulae. It’s not that we should not believe other people when they give us advice. Instead, how we work out these values in harmony along with the correct contextualization of these values in the relationship are the real keys. We know who our partner is. We know the situation. Stick to the things that work mutually.

Also, never ever compute the mean of your expenses allotted for dating or other expenses per month. Although expression of love can sometimes be supported and nurtured quantitatively, the fact still remains that it is mostly qualitative. Many relationships fail because of focusing on what is quantifiable. Some people give tangible things in excess purely out of love, not letting the other realize the essence of what was given. The receiver abuses the giver. When the going gets tough, some tend to tell these things to the partner. What’s the lesson? Continue to love, but realize that some things are given in moderation.

Learn to compromise. In the first place, you liked the other person at the inital because of similarities, which is a natural human tendency. Differences will surely occur in the long run, but working out on these dichotomies through meeting in a middle ground should be the primary concern. Anyway, it’s a give-and-take connection.

Lastly, good communication should be the mode of each relationship. All these abovementioned things won’t work without communication. Though this could be taken quantitatively, I will also consider this mostly qualitative. It has been the mistake of many to equate the frequency of text messages, phone calls and dates with good communication, not realizing that they were stuck to only discuss trivial stuff. Couples don’t need to text each other every minute. It clearly bores the relationship especially when the topics are not oriented towards a better understanding of each other.

As of the moment, I am thankful. We commit lapses at times, but we make up for those. We engage ourselves to different activities causing self-development, yet it fascinates me how we successfully relate each other’s stuff, which further enhances us as individuals working independently and together. We do things usually done by other couples, but we continuously innovate and deviate, causing variance.

Having these things at hand, regression is unseen. Our hypothesis about nurturing the love that we have will still lead to our conclusion.