Which subject is worse: Stats or Physics for Biomed? Totally looking forward to next semester.
I did Physics 2: Life Sciences, which is apparently not as bad as Physics for Biomedicine. The step up from no physics to the subjects in Uni is a lot worse than having done VCE (as long as you get 30 or above) physics and moving to Physics 2. Same with bio, same with chemistry.
Statistics is harder to conceptualise I would say and make sense of what is actually going on, what to use when, and also having to know how to use the computer programs. The subject made me feel so insignificant, I had no idea what was going on for the whole semester. But it is easier to score well on because of the scaling. If you're good with the distributions we covered in methods, you'd be alright here. But if not, you need to work for it. I've attached two pages of the exam summary sheet below - if you want the whole thing just go through some past papers. It's either you get it or you don't.
More off topic:
Spoiler
We had Davide Ferrari for statistics, he was a very funny guy (who would talk about his travels from Italy and how people in airports would stop him to ask whether he had a Ferrari). Again, one of those lecturers who was very transparent and would update students on a regular basis.
Physics is something that people often complain as being dry, and often coupled with teaching mechanisms etc. which are... let's say not to everyone's tastes. It is truly a subject that has a bad reputation at least at UoM for first years. I was fortunate not to have endured such negativity, Michelle Livett happened to be a great lecturer which explained everything to us from many viewpoints and did so slowly, and was very transparent in the assessment tasks etc, so we were completely prepared for the subject. I don't think this is necessarily an entirely truthful statement for the other subjects. I am choosing to tread carefully, but my opinions have been voiced already through the statements of some of the others on here. The testing is not based on your ability for fine tune details, but it is for the concepts. According to the lecturer, the exam is not going to be a plug and chug exercise, half is showing you know what you are doing with the equations/concepts, etc. and the other half is doing it.
More off topic:
Spoiler
Apparently there are also some tutors that deliberately take off marks for no reason other than that they want to be trolls to students in biomedicine because they want them to face the real world, and that many of the students haven't really lost that many marks before in their schooling career. I overheard a tutor saying this once. I'll at least clear the tutors Millie and Steven Luntz from this, they were legitimate.
But to the other potential trolls I say this is utterly unprofessional and full of crap, which acts to further perpetuate the negativity of first year physics at UoM.
Back to the point, physics is harder to score well in. You will get questions where you have never seen them before. Hence you need to be flexible; you are almost guaranteed to be trolled with something you have no idea what to do at many stages. With statistics, it's more if you understand it, you will know what to do most of the time.
Which one was worse?
Physics. Yes. Even though I did Life Sciences.
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