<p>I am currently a pre engineering major. I graduate this year with plans to transfer to a university. I was wondering if it would be worth it to take probability & stats for my last two terms at the community college. I want to improve my GPA so I'm not sure if its a difficult class or not. I will be a full time student with two part time jobs.</p>
<p>It depends largely on the field you decide to go into. Engineering analysts and systems engineers will use probability and statistics frequently in their day to day work (e.g. performing trade studies, design of experiments, curve fitting, etc), and niche, or specialty engineers (i.e. RF engineer, optics engineer, etc) will use it less.</p>
<p>Every engineer should be comfortable with at least basic statistics (e.g. means, medians, box plots, normal distributions, standard deviation, etc), but statistics classes go much further than the basics. You may have learned some or all of the basics in high school. </p>
<p>As for difficulty, some find the class to be incredibly hard, or incredibly easy… it really depends on your math background and learning style. The material can be very abstract and therefore harder to grasp than say, Calc 1, 2, or 3. I took the class since I wanted a math minor and found it to be much more confusing than Calc, Diff EQ, Linear Algebra, and Advanced Math.</p>
<p>Statistics was my favorite “mathy” class, enough so that I took two other statistics classes (Scientific Sampling & Experimental Analysis and Design) beyond it. I had a fantastic Statistics professor, which surely had something to do with it.</p>
<p>I wish everyone would take Statistics. So many decisions are based on the results of surveys, polls and research that having some knowledge of statistics really helps in figuring out what evidence is valid, and what is garbage.</p>
<p>Yes you should. The previous postings gave good reasons and I will add another…graduate school. Quite a few M.S./M.Eng programs, regardless of the engineering major will require what a call a “Grad Stats” course. The good thing is that many schools have a “Probability/Statistics for Engineers” course that filters out the theory and focus on what is needed for engineers. Of course, if you want more depth (and probably a few proofs also), you can take the usual 2-course sequence in Probability and Mathematical Statistics.</p>
<p>Absolutely.</p>
<p>I think every engineer should have a working knowledge of statistics.</p>
<p>If you are interested in taking a stats class, my suggestion (contrary to some others here) is to take one that is solidly in the department. I would avoid anything called “statistics for engineers” or similar. I personally took a junior level stats class this way, while many of my friends took the one tailored for engineers. I came out with a much more fundamental understanding of the tools, which over time have proven very useful.</p>
<p>And it was also easier. Without putting engineers on too much of a pedestal, my class was composed of a general cross section of the university, and many of my classmates struggled with the basic math involved.</p>
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<p>@DecideSomeHow</p>
<p>Oh, it is not against the contrary for me…if one can find a “departmental-speciific” statistics course. You are correct, that would be even better. It is just so few schools offering those types of stat courses.</p>
<p>I have a degree in Economics and I did my capstone on Econometrics. </p>
<p>In my opinion, Econometrics was way more interesting than any Statistics class I have ever taken.</p>
<p>We dealt mostly with Regression Analysis in relation to a real life case, Monte Carlo simulations and learning how to use the SPSS software. Awesome course!</p>