Back to School

I just finished Statistics in Medicine, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from the Stanford University.

I've been reading quite a bit about information visualization lately, and it seems a huge part of it is tightly connected with statistics. For my application especially, I need to know why the graphs presented in existing reports are visualized the way they are. I also wanted to know that I'll be using the correct terms in any documentation, and reports I'll be creating.

I did take a course in statistics already in my own college studies, but that was some time ago already, so this course was a good refresher. With this course, I also learned a lot about the medical context. I don't think I'll ever read an article popularizing scientific results without remembering some of the key messages from the course.

There was yet another thing I wanted to learn. Would I go back to school? My current financial income would actually be quite a bit better, had I chosen that route to take time off from work and enrolled into a university (yes, that's like it works in Finland). At least based on this course I think I made the right choice, though. General studies always include stuff that's good to know but not exactly what I need to know just now. I believe being a startup entrepreneur rather than a post grad student or a researcher better allows me to focus all my efforts into what I want to accomplish.

Nevertheless, I absolutely love that I can still get high quality education of my choosing when I think I need it.