Of course I have problems, I’m a math teacher

Okay, that’s an old joke, but I really do have a problem.

We place some really unrealistic expectations on teachers, and people who teach math and English get the worst end of it in my experience.

I teach statistics and that means that I’m going to assume students have some basic knowledge of algebra.

If a student doesn’t remember or never learned what 7! Means, I can handle that.

(For those of you who need a refresher, that’s not a surprised 7 but rather, 7 factorial which is 7*6*5*4*3*2 . It’s also *1 but that’s redundant)

If you don’t know that you use an * instead of x for multiplication when writing code, that’s not a big deal.

However, there comes a point where I just cannot cope and teach you statistics. That’s somewhere between not understanding what a square root is and not knowing how to use a solve an equation like (5/37) / (4/26)

Let me be perfectly clear, I’m not saying you can never learn statistics nor that I can’t teach it to you ever. What I am saying is that I can’t teach it to you in the 10 or 16 or however many class sessions we have available.There is just not enough time for me to teach you the prerequisite information and then teach you the information you’re supposed to be learning for this course .