Reflection
Charles Carrion BA-215

After completing this course, I now have a new found respect for statisticians and anyone else who uses stats on a daily basis. Stats are a very important part of life and without them it would be hard for society to function the way it does. Before this course I was unaware as to how everything in life can be categorized and anilized, from the weather, what goes on the shelves of stores and all the way down to what we buy. I now know that everything from weather forecasting, predicting diseases, medical studies, insurance and the stock market wouldn’t be as effective if not for extensive research and data collection. After completing this course, I have found myself looking at stats in a whole different light. Before I would read articles in the paper or magazines, look at commercials, read product labels or listen to sports announcers talk about stats and was easily manipulated because I never really paid much attention to the numbers. Now I find myself doing the same thing but this time I find myself trying to figure out how these numbers or stats came about. Just as an example, I live in a small town that is no more than fifteen minutes away from two Mexican borders. While reading the local newspaper, I notice an article about the Hispanic population in my town and how it has decreased 29.6% from 2010 to 2012. After reading this and knowing that this couldn’t be true, I immediately found myself looking at the sources and doing some