Now, I don't know into whose hands this application will fall. So for those, it is an expansion course.

If you only got as far as eight grade, then all that you ever had to to more than just a passing degree was Arithmetic. Well, now it's a whole new ballgame and a chance to start fresh. If you have a "math block" it is really an Arithmetic block. The origins of this are many and often convoluted. However a calculator that does the arithmetic takes that, for the most part, off the table. Just as recorded audio and sequencing techniques have nearly obliterated the basic need to read music to perfomr, Calculators and computers have taken the need to be good at calculating to understand math. It is true that it helps if you are reasonably proficient at the art of calculation to understnd the "how it works" aspects. To understand the principles. you need not be an ace calculator. In fact morst of the number-crunching these days is done by electronic devices.

Another factor for us dummies is this. The conditions that led to the creation of the "math block" are gone. That does not remove the butterflies, dry throat and feelings of "I can't do this so why try". I'm going to give you a Behavior Modification lesson here. If you have any curiosity left, then just "get your feet wet", then go up to your angles, then up to your knees, then yor belly-button and then your neck and then you'll be swimming confidently over your head, but take as much time as you want at each stage.

Just how true are my words? My ex-best friend is an egineer who majored in Physics. There are four basic equations to the whole business. He spent an evening with me and had me understanding the whole thing. NOw I could not do the calculations to an Analysis of Varience or a chi-ssqure test, but I got an A in Post Grad college Statistics becuase the instructor taught that it's the concepts that are important. The computer can do the calculations but the guy behind the wheel has to know what to tell the machine to do. In 1978. I worked with a 16-year-old kid on a TRS-80 Model I Level II Basic and he wrote one of the most useful and difficult Statistics operstins: The Pearson Product Moment Coefficient of Correlation, Tokk that and got the Coefficients of Prediction and Alienation and the two Standard Deviations (of X and Y) and put it all in nice table so that you could use the old y-mx+b. and with an option to draw the scatterplot. Wheen I took Stat, I could never have gotten by without an electronic calculator.