Alles steckt in den Zahlen

Zwei plus Zwei ergibt Vier. Sowohl eine einfache als auch richtige Aussage. Ich erinnere mich als ich mich das erste Mal mit Textaufgaben auseinander setzen musste und merkte, dass Zwei plus Zwei eben doch nicht immer Vier ergibt.

Two plus two equals four. Both a simple and correct statement. I remember when I first started learning about story problems and found that two plus two did not always equal four. If we were adding two oranges and two apples, then two plus two could not equal four because the items that were being added simply weren't the same. I'm sure by now most of you have rolled your eyes and wondered where all of this is going. Stick with me a little longer.

Fast forward several years to your college level statistics classes. Most of you have no doubt already cringed and wanted to bang your head against the nearest wall or hard object. No explanation required on the complexity of getting MEANINGFUL data or information from a host of dissimilar numbers. Enter the statistics engine for GWAVA. It's been a long process, but we're finally almost there!

The biggest difficulty in adding statistics to GWAVA is determining what things can be added together and what things actually make sense to report on. But what if I want a report that adds my apples and oranges into the same total? My elementary school teacher would take exception to that, and yet that's what people want. What's that you say? Save you from the numbers? Deal. Enter in the pretty graphs that display the numbers that may or may not have meaning, but it does show that GWAVA is doing its job.

By no means am I minimizing the necessity of much better statistics in GWAVA. I'll join the world in saying it's about time we have all that information. Here's hoping that we all don't forget what our teachers taught us about combining oranges and apples!