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Articles    H2'ed 12/4/11

Reflections on Teaching Statistics Again

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Nevertheless, teaching statistics has generated some philosophical ideas for me.   First, we live in a probabilistic universe as much as we try to avoid thinking about it.   The future is not determined.   In fact, the most parsimonious theory of quantum physics predicts that every time we make a decision our universe divides into two copies -- one in which we leave New York to open up a restaurant in Santa Fe (see the musical, Rent) and one in which we don't.   The possibilities are endless giving an almost uncountable number of parallel universes arranged in some probability distribution.   Some parallel universes are more likely than others.   For example, there can't be too many parallel universes in which I won the lottery since it hasn't happened yet.   For every parallel universe in which I do win the lottery, there must be many in which I don't.   Some occurrences are more likely than others.   Here's where probability enters.   I say to my newest client, what are the odds that your Toyota Camry is not a hovercraft and won't stay afloat if you drive it over a cliff.   He has to think about this for some time because he was quite convinced of its anti-gravity drive and its cosmic multi-dimensional nature.   Finally he agrees that there might be some parallel universes in which it's only a car and that it might behoove him to be aware of which universe he's in when he turns on the ignition.   (Seeing more than one dimension at a time is often problematic for those without the training of a holy person or a culturally sanctioned inter-dimensional traveler.)

 

So, many of the forces in our lives are random and we do what we can to rig the outcome.   We do this through visualizing the probable future in which we wish to arrive, through prayer, through taking action when we can envision what to do, and more.   Many of my patients are patients because they spend much of their time visualizing the most negative outcome that could happen.   As Mark Twain once said, "Now that I'm old, I've lived through countless disasters, most of which never happened."   Many of my patients spend hours each day imagining probable futures in which the direst events transpire.   My job is to help them redirect their attention.   I do believe that their visualizing in this way increases the likelihood of negative (from their value system) events happening to them, but I don't know how much.   I also believe that prayer increases our likelihood of being pulled into the probable future into which we hope to arrive, but, again, I'm not sure how much.   It's uncertain.   I'm more certain that exercise increases my likelihood of staying healthier for longer, but it's certainly no guarantee.   A myriad of other random forces could intervene.   That's why it's important to me to express gratitude each day for my life and my health and all my many blessings and to not dwell too long on what I don't have but to focus on what I do have.   Mark Twain also said, "The easiest way to be happy is to be content with what you have."  

 

I'm not a statistician though I enjoy learning.   I have used statistics extensively in my research work and I appreciate the beauty of numbers and equations.   I confess to not know fully the basis for every technique that I use.   I know enough to get by, and, actually, learn more and more every time I teach statistics and every time I read about statistics.   Learning, it turns out, is a life-long process.   We've done a disservice to students by assisting them to feel that they can actually know a field or a subject.   Just when we think we know something, the rug gets pulled from beneath us and all of the old concepts are null and void.   Many of us avoid this by pretending that the rug is still there.   For example, nearly everyone I meet believes that low levels of serotonin in the synaptic cleft in the brain causes depression even though we've known for years that this isn't true and the drug companies get fined regularly for implying it in their ads.   Yet, it's a story that simplifies the complex, generates an air of certainty, and certainly sells drugs, so it remains part of the general knowledge base.   It's a story that serves regardless of its lack of validity.

 

What I can't do, apparently, is to give my students an interest in numbers.   I've tried such things as using the Beastie Boys in calculating confidence intervals, discussing probability from the standpoint of the Cat in the Hat, and analyzing a database with them of meditators in Los Angeles trying to affect the growth rate of bacteria in Oakland through intent.   I thought this last exercise would be really exciting, but no one even came to that lecture (since it wasn't part of the homework).   It does, by the way, turn out that meditators in Los Angeles can influence the growth rate of bacteria in Oakland, and, thanks to the need to entertain my students, I will get to be part of a publication about that finding, so boring statistics students isn't all bad.

 

What worries me, however, is how rigged research is.   The knowledge generating empire is set to crank out certain kinds of knowledge that matches its biases.   Funding will go to those who comply with the invisible rules for what you can study.   Some of us at the margin find ways to do small studies to challenge this status quo.   We don't typically score the large grants to do big randomized controlled trials because the questions we ask are too weird.   Good questions related to drugs' effectiveness compared to placebo or sometimes the effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy for specific (and relatively minor) conditions, but a study of psychotherapy and healing for psychosis, for example, is probably not going to get funding.   Nevertheless, I can do small studies at the margins and even publish them as I have been doing and thereby support a small, but hopefully growing number of people who think like me.   I wish my graduate students had this desire and interest, or even the interest to critique the available research to understand how it's rigged.   My favorite example currently of this rigging is the study that facilitated the FDA's approving the drug, quetiapine, for monotherapy for bipolar depression.   The study requirements meant that to be a suitable candidate, the participants could have never considered suicide, never used a substance of abuse, have no other mental health or medical problems, and so on. It took 43 academic centers to recruit just under 250 patients with bipolar depression that met this description. I believe we could help this population with almost any intervention and show better results than placebo, including gluten-casein free diets, reiki energy healing, or homeopathy.   They certainly don't match virtually any of the patients I routinely see in my office who do misuse substances, consider suicide, and have a host of other problems.

 

Just like my clients, my students feel only average and believe that they would do better with a great teacher.   Unfortunately, I'm an average teacher looking for great students in the same way that I'm an average healer/clinician looking for the best patients.   Because I'm not the one to change!   Effort must be made and many students, like many patients, don't want to make that effort.   We'd all prefer to be passively entertained and just learn or heal without having to show up and do the hard work of focusing and shifting our attention and trying things that are outside our comfort zone.   One of my current patients believes he's invisible and will not do anything to increase his visibility.   Consequently, he spends a lot of time sitting in his mother's basement -- one way to become invisible.   The hard work, in teaching statistics or doing healing or medicine is inspiring people to believe that they can make a difference in their lives, their learning, their outcomes, their level of suffering, and to take action to do so.   Here is where story emerges.   We need good stories to help people move outside their comfort zone.   I'm looking for better stories for motivating students to learn statistics.   I'm thinking that quantum physics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle coupled with the Quantum Zeno Effect is the way to go.   Mystical physics is usually a good source of inspiration as we say in the movie, "What the bleep"".   Maybe this will work for clients as well.   Therefore, I conclude, that we should all learn more quantum physics, and that's all I have to say about that.

 

Lewis Mehl-Madrona will be at the Mesa Center, Burgettstown, December 2-4; presenting in Rhode Island, January 7th; Following the Healing Paths of Story with Deena Metzger in Topanga Canyon,   January 20-22, and teaching a health practitioners workshop in Honolulu February 3-5th. Make friends with Lewis Mehl-Madrona on Facebook and see his website, at http://www.mehl-madrona.com.

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Lewis Mehl-Madrona graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed residencies in family medicine and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom, and (more...)
 
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