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Does anyone else find stats really, really hard? When I was doing GCSE ten years ago, I failed the stats part of the coursework because I really, really didn't get it but my teacher said I must not have put the work in, even though I did, and that I was good at maths (I got A*s in all the other parts) so must have not tried hard enough. It was a really horrible time- the coursework made me really panicky and I genuinely didn't get it. I understood how to do all the maths equations behind it, but I had no idea what information was relevant and why, or how to write it up and had no idea whatsoever about how to present it or get a conclusion. Even ten years on, people I know still remember how stressed I got, and it really didn't help that I was terrified of my teacher (she was a first year form tutor, I was in fifth year but my friends were first years which she thought was immature and 'wrong' which she told me several times).

This year (for psychology), we had a stats essay which really freaked me out. i didn't get it, and it brought back so many horrible memories from GCSE and made me physically panicky- I couldn't think straight, couldn't stop shaking and felt sick every time I tried to do it. I couldn't get the essay finished on time (still haven't) and failed that module. No idea what to do :/ has anyone else had this problem? I hate it when people say 'you're good at maths, you should be able to do it". I really don't get it!!

I'm terrible at abstract math but I did exceptionally well in psychology stats when I took it! I find applied math easy to comprehend but I've been told that those who excel math often struggle with social science statistics.

It's pretty cool; Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who studied why people aren't good at understanding stats at an intuitive level and won a Nobel Prize for his findings on this work. I just started reading his book on "Thinking Fast and Slow" where this research with Amos Tversky discovered the difference between these two levels of thinking.

Anyways I don't know what else to recommend but thought that you might find this book interesting.

I do not have a problem with stats (actually I do very well with them). But I can relate identically with anything involving programming. One would think that I would find it easy as I am good at math and it theoretically follows logical steps but I just cannot get my head around it no matter how hard I try.

I relate and sympathize for you but I have no solution. I about incredibly worried about what I will do if I have to take a clas that uses dAtabases that you program the statistics and analysis into it such as SAS or Oracle.