6 Reasons Why Do Students Find Statistics So Difficult in 2024

Without any doubt, students consider statistics one of the hardest subjects they need to learn, alongside probability of course. The case is the same in all parts of the world. There are so many things they need to understand in order to have complete knowledge about this subject. Some experts say that the reason why this is so hard for a lot of people to learn is pure human psychology.

At the same time, we can see that there are a lot of different myths that have a negative effect on the students and their ability to learn statistics. This is the reason the highest percentage of them need to hire some help to complete it at their universities.

Without any doubt, a lot of them need additional hours of learning to be completely sure that they’ve been able to learn all the things needed for a complete understanding of this subject. In case you are in need of some help to understand it completely, be sure to take a look at Homeworkdoer and be able to understand all of it. But, let us take a look at the reasons why so many people around the world have a hard time understanding even the basics of statistics.

1. Math is Crucial

As you know, statistics is pure math, but on a higher level. One of the main reasons students don’t have a good approach to this subject is that they haven’t learned their math properly. There are a lot of different reasons why so many people struggle with math. There is even a term that describes it, “math anxiety”. In order to learn something that is on a pretty high level, you need to have a good foundation. Sadly, we can see that a plethora of different people don’t have the proper foundation at lower levels, in this case, math. We are sure that you know that many people have this lack of foundation. Therefore, it’s not a surprise that so many of them struggle with statistics.

2. It Is Very Difficult to Relate to

Like math, a statistic is a pretty abstract subject that the majority of people can’t relate to. As we know, the best way to learn something is to find some connections that can provide you with an opportunity to relate to it. With each of the steps, you will be required to cover, relating to the whole concept will be much harder. So, we can see that this directly causes a lot of people to spend additional hours learning it. There are a lot of concepts that require even more time to learn. This is a pretty complex thing, and therefore, it’s not a surprise that there are so many people struggling with it.

3. Prejudices

We can see that a lot of students have prejudices before they even start learning statistics. Basically, they expect it to be pretty hard. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a large percentage of them don’t have positive results. This directly causes them to give up on learning it as soon as they stumble across some harder parts of the subject. We can draw a parallel between this topic and pretty much anything in life. When you have a negative mindset, you will have a much harder time solving some problem or learning something. This negative mindset comes with almost no confidence, no motivation. There is absolutely no surprise why the performance is not as it should be in this case.

4. It Requires a Lot of Time and Effort

As you can imagine, there are no scenarios where you will be able to click with statistics and similar subjects immediately. We’ve talked about this in the previous entry of this list of ours. The essential thing is to have a glimpse of all the lower levels before you can understand it completely. Add to that the fact that many people don’t actually enjoy studying this subject, and you have a problem. Without any doubt, you need to invest yourself into it 100%. Only by doing that, you will be able to solve it. So, stop looking at how many hours you will need to invest and start practicing. This is the only way you will be able to understand it in the end.

5. You Need to Understand It

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the biggest ones people make when studying this subject is that they prefer to memorize all the things instead of understanding them. Without any doubt, this is a huge mistake that will lead you nowhere. There is absolutely no way you can memorize all of these numbers. So, you need to understand the concepts behind them. After you’ve learned these, then the number will not be as important as you thought. Therefore, you will be able to implement these and numbers will be only a thing that follows them. You can be sure that this is the ultimate way that will help you to learn all the essential things about statistics.

6. It Builds on Itself

What many people don’t know is that studying statistics is a cumulative process. Pretty much everything you have to learn about it has a foundation. There is absolutely no way you can move forward if you haven’t learned the previous lessons. This is a process where you can’t make progress if you don’t have enough knowledge. You should look at it like building a house. You cannot build a roof before having the foundation and walls. So, instead of skipping lessons, you need to need to be pretty thorough about all the things you will need in the future, which means pretty everything. Many people simply give up since this is too hard for them, and that’s completely understandable.

The Wrap-up

We have absolutely no doubt, that people think that probability and statistics are pretty hard topics for a vast majority of students. When talking about statistics, there are a lot of different things you need to know before you start learning it. This was the reason we’ve decided to provide you with some of the reasons why people have so many difficulties while studying it. Don’t make these mistakes, keep an open mind, and we are sure that you will succeed in the end.