Statistics. Who automatically cringes? Read this ...

I was totally excited when Tammy asked me to write about my experience during the Back to School, Back to Blogging Challenge hosted by Kludgy Mom. When I sat down to think about what I learned from this challenge, I was overwhelmed, I didn’t know where to start – I learned so much! I decided to do a Best of Back to School, Back to Blogging Challenge and post the favorite five things I learned and found beneficial! This is #5.  Here we go……

 Statistics

I’m guilty of obsessing over my blog statistics. I would check out my Google Analytics each night and would get excited that I had three more visitors today than I did yesterday or that the average time people spent on my site was now 2 minutes, 26 seconds! Yes, that is exciting, but other than that, I didn’t know how to get the most out of my blogs statistics. That’s where the B2S/B2B came in!

Kludgy Mom introduced us to the StatBook StatBook. She gave us an excellent tutorial on how to bring all those worthless important information we pulled from our statistics into one spot. She walked us through the making of the book, and what information was important to include. Kludgy suggested many important statistics to include that I hadn’t thought of as significant until then. Now that my StatBook is complete, each month, I will enter the prior month’s stats and can start to look for trends in my blog!

• The Official B2S/B2B information about statistics can be found here HERE and here HERE!

This is the last guest post from Cori, she was a real life-saver. I hope you enjoyed it!

Tuesday Terror

OK, spoiler right up front: this post has nothing to do with motherhood, family, special needs, or anything else I generally post about. If that's why you are here, dear reader, please leave before I share this terrifying tale.

OK, you're still here?? Don't say I didn't warn you!!

The summer semester started yesterday @ MSU, where I am currently working on my degree. Nothing inherently terrifying about that, you may say. Well, it is for me!! Guess what I am taking... basket weaving, beginning pottery, cooking for Dummies? While any or all of those might be helpful in improving my woefully inadequate domestic skills, those are not the class that inspires fear in the heart of grad students everywhere.

The class is PSY 527, a.k.a. Multivariate Statistics. For those of you who know something about stats, you may think this is no big deal. You are wrong!! This class is required so grad level students can compile & understand their own statistical data used for their thesis or dissertation. Guess what, we don't want to understand!! If we did, we would be math majors. That is why there are thriving companies for hire.
Anyway, I digress. The primary reason for my chest-tightening, nausea-inducing anxiety is that this will be the FOURTH time I have attempted it.
In fact, my utter lack of ability to grasp these concepts prompted me to undergo testing to see if I have a math learning disability (jury is still out on that, should know soon).

If there are any stats whizzes out there, please give me a holler!! Otherwise, see you on the other side ... hopefully.