Date:         Fri, 5 Sep 2008 12:55:48 -0400
Reply-To:     Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gerhard Hellriegel <gerhard.hellriegel@T-ONLINE.DE>
Subject:      Re: Better Examples for SAS Courses Re: Advanced Macro Class

Hi Mary,
I'm german and I HAVE problems with many of technical terms. However I
never had a problem to ask, if I did not understand what is something. If
you had worked some time at the helpdesk of a steel mill, that would be
very near to practice for you.
I think, what you say is wrong: exactly that IS a example which come from
practice! The other way, without any practice would be, "you have 5
attributes, x1, x2, x3, x4 and y where y is the independant ...
You see one of the disatvantages of "practical examples": they might be
NOT from your (university)-"world"!
Look at the other side. If you get a class where all the examples are from
your university-world, what do you do, if your next job is in a steel
mill? Go to the "special-steel-mill-course"? Silly! You'd say, that all
the things you've learned are transferable in that other world with other
terms, as soon as the problem is to be solved with mixed models (not all
problems in steel mills are, I know, but I assume, that's also like that
in a university). By the way: I think that there are also universities for
engineers, what do you expect there?

(I'm no engineer, I'm mathematician. For most of the mathematical objects
you'll never find a practical realisation. A teacher told me: "if you try
to realize it in your brain as a kind of picture, you are on the wrong
way!")
Have a nice weekend,
Gerhard




On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:57:36 -0500, Mary <mlhoward@AVALON.NET> wrote:

>I'll change the thread name in the hopes of catching the attention of the
>SAS education birdies :-)
>
>Yes, the examples in some of the SAS classes definately need to be
improved
>and be more like real-life problems; given the specifics that many users
>give here on SAS-L, it would seem that there should be many "real world"
>examples that could be used by searching the archives of SAS-L in rather
>than examples that are hardly ever relevant to real-world users.
>
>One example that I particularly disliked, given that very few SAS
>programmers are engineers, was the "Ingot" example in the Mixed Models
>class; it went:
>
>"An engineer wants to test the strength of three metals used as bonding
>agents.  Seven ingots made of a composition material are randomly selected
>from a population of ingots and used for this strength test.  A sample of
>material is taken from each ingot, and a bond is formed using one of the
>metals.  The amount of pressure required to break the bond is then
>required."
>
>
>Even though I'd been a help desk person at a University for 10 years,
**I**
>had never heard of an ingot, let alone many of the Chinese students who
took
>the class!
>
>-Mary
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: ./ ADD NAME=Data _null_,
>To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 10:28 AM
>Subject: Advanced Macro Class
>
>
>You have been complaining about this class even before you took it.
>Lets work on these awful examples, so the "Ivory Billed Woodpeckers"
>can see them and improve this course.
>
>We can start with the example you refer to.  What macro technique was
>being demonstrated?  What would be a better example?
>
>When we beat this one to death we can move on to other irritating
examples.