I was preparing for my other class and getting a big dataset ready in SPSS. My son, Nathan, came in the room, stalling, not wanting to go to bed.
"Watcha doin'?" he asks
So I tell him all about statistics and correlations and so on thinking he will get bored and go to bed. Instead he asks a ton of questions and we start to run some stats together. We find some evidence that playing violent video games is bad for kids. We find that having a really mean best friend isn't good for anything. We find that when parents are authoritative to their kids then good things happen. We look at a ton of gender differences. Boys are better at self regulation, girls are more depressed, boys are more violent, girls are more anxious and so on and so on. We look at mean differences and significance levels. He kept asking me to run more..... so interested in the gender differences and taking it personally for boys everywhere when girls were significantly higher on a given trait! We ended with a good discussion on gender showing that both boys and girls are good at lots of things, so hopefully he doesn't read TOO much into the stats.
We seriously did this for an hour. He asked how he could do this for his job. Just keep doing well in Math, I told him. Now as I'm reflecting on this, he totally just manipulated me into staying up an hour past his bedtime. So he wins. But I win too.......SUCH a nerdy mother/son bonding activity but I'm loving it!!!!
Me and my little guy
That is so stinking cute! What a great bonding/teaching moment for you and your son! I hope that when I have kids they will be interested in the things I do for a living too :)
ReplyDeleteI love this! That is so fun. You would think that a kid wouldn't care about numbers in a computer, but alas, you may have gotten him hooked. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen he tells his maths teacher about MANOVA's she'll get equalized.
ReplyDeleteOh I love it! I'm sure when he becomes some famous statition/researcher you'll be glad you let him stay up to run stats with you ha!
ReplyDeleteThat is so fun. He is obviously going to take after his mother and get his pHD!
ReplyDeleteThat's such a fun story! Its a clever way to engage your kids in your job and educate them at the same time! Thats cute that he was so interested!
ReplyDeleteI love what you did with your son! Bonding time with a child, no matter the hour, is priceless. Several years ago I stayed up late into the night with my teenage son helping him make a neon green, duct tape suit for prom. I made the comment to an acquaintance about the suit only costing $15 dollars and he said, "You obviously don't know the value of your time. You probably spent 10 hours on that suit" I realized then that some people don't understand the value of time spent bonding with a child....priceless.
ReplyDeleteI think it is awesome that he was so interested in statistics (because they are pretty cool sometimes), and I also love that he wanted to learn more about what you do! So sweet! :) You are such a cute mom.
ReplyDeleteToo funny! Math has never actually been one of my strengths, but over these past two semesters I've really gotten into research and SPSS. I never thought in a million years that I would say this, but I actually enjoy running statistics and doing research!
ReplyDelete