On 23 Oct 2002 at 12:25, Mike Procter wrote:
> I would only add that a similar point could be made about foreign
> languages -- in the UK and US there is an indifference about linguistic
> incompetence that is not found in other countries.
This is certainly true. In the British Isles, and in N. America and
Australasia - the parts of the world where we didn't merely colonise
but totally subjugated the native culture (whether deliberately or
due to our bacteria) - we obviously benefit from the worldwide
hegemony of the most powerful language that humankind has ever known -
even in Canada a language as powerful as French has struggled to
maintain its share. When the UK joined the EU people didn't flock to
language classes. It is clear that the status of the English
language as a "lingua franca" (a doubly ironic term) has huge
advantages in areas such as air traffic control and scientific
communication, provided of course use (in all areas, speaking,
listening, reading and writing) by non-native speakers is competent
(communicatively, not quite necessarily grammatically). In other
parts of the world, bi- or multi-linguality is commonplace. And this
is no new thing - e.g. in the far-flung parts of the Roman Empire
educated people were usually capable of communicating in Latin, Greek
and their own local language.
For those of us who take the view that statistics is an applied
subject - i.e. not just a subset of probability and measure theory -
ordinary human language (in distinction to either mathematical or
programming language) is just as vital a component as the
mathematical content of our discipline. For us, taking a history
from ones "patients" (i.e. clients), and communicating the results of
analyses back to them and to a wider readership, are essential
skills. There is also a pedagogic issue here. Non-specialists who
start to learn about statistical methods in order to apply them in
their own areas sometimes find it difficult to take a paragraph of
text such as the following, and convert it into a 2 by 2 table. This
applies to those with first language English as well as those from
overseas.
"In a study comparing those that did and did not agree to take part
in a survey of infant feeding, 61 mothers declined to take part and
473 responded. Data collected from the clinical records showed that
23 of those who declined to take part were smokers compared to 123 of
those who did respond."
I'm not sure whether their difficulty lies in constructing the 2 by 2
table, or in assimilating what the chunk of text is saying. The
interface between the numerical and verbal is vitally important to
understanding data, but may well have been neglected by the
traditional educational system many of us came through.
..........................................
Robert G. Newcombe, PhD, CStat, Hon MFPHM
Reader in Medical Statistics
University of Wales College of Medicine
Heath Park
Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK.
Phone 029 2074 2329 or 2311
Fax 029 2074 3664
Email [log in to unmask]
Web:
http://www.uwcm.ac.uk/epidemiology_statistics/research/statistics/newc
ombe.h
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