Okay, so far I am making a low "A" or possibly high "B" in Managerial Economics but despite that, it's not going so well. I have the feeling like I'm in WAY over my head and again, my lack of a business undergraduate degree is starting to show again. It's not the principles of economics that are getting me really, it's not what to do with economic information either, it's the tables, the vernacular and formulas that are killing me. Do statistics scare you? Honestly they do me a little, but I thought after Quantitative Methods I had it kicked, but nooooo, I'm right back to cowering in a corner like before. It's like I'm taking algebra or something and I'm so lost.
For instance, this week I'm hung up on Regression Analysis. I mean, it seems like basic algebraic stuff but where I'm getting hung up at is figuring where to find the data for "a" or "x" or whatever. It's really frustrating but I've had to look at some of my classmates work then kind of reverse engineer the stuff to understand the concepts. Like starting off with the answers and working backwards. Of course I'm not cheating but instead using the discussion forums to understand exactly what the heck we are talking about before opening my big fat mouth and some of my peers are good at this stuff, really good and it makes me feel all the more out of my depth.
I mean really, the stuff even looks scary in basic formulaic equations. I mean Y = a + bX + E shouldn't be that tough unless of course you have no idea where to go to find the values of "a", "b" and "X". Don't even get me started on "E"; we haven't even gotten that far yet. And forget "goodness of fit" (is that even proper English?) or "statistical significance". Goodness of fit, seriously that must be the same guy who came up with a name as complex as "coefficient" to name that stupid little number in front of the variable which is the name of the stupid letter behind the stupid number. Perhaps they should just call it the "stupid number in front of the letter" but no, we're math people, we like names that confuse outsiders like coefficient, variable, residuals, probit, or my favorite t-test which inevitably gets the smart-A remark of "excuse me? Did you just stutter?" But we're economists, we don't have a sense of humor and we're way beyond the constraints of logic that would dictate how far we can go with numbers. Oh no, we're economists, if you have a simple answer trust me, we can attach it to a very complex question.
So just to have some fun with all of this:
I'm going to go soak in the tub, appreciating its goodness of fit and work out some of my regression while cleansing off any residuals. When I get done scrubbing my linear I think I will pick up my textbook and probit sum more, fully dressed of course as I don't want anyone to accidentally see my ordinal variables or my negative binomial, that would just be ungentlemanly of me.
Notice the economic jargon substituted above?
Oh yeah and LSU lost tonight...it's all crappy.