What do you think about this class??

So I'm in my 4th year at school and realized that I have only the minimum amount of credits to be a full time student and all credits after 13 are free, so hell might as well take some classes. /images/graemlins/cool.gif Anyway, there is this stats class called "data analysis" its a 3000 level class so junior year or whatever, and this is what the course description says:

Further topics in regression and ANOVA; non-parametric methods; model selection and verification; writing statistical reports; use of statistical software; additional selected topics.

could any of this ever be useful for me in poker if I ever get into game theory or something especially the "use of statistical software; model selection and verification?". It is kind of sad, I don't even know what ANOVA stands for but I have taken the class right before this 3021. This class of course being 3022. Anyway thought maybe someone could help me decide if this class could be remotely useful.

thanks

[edtost]

anova is analysis of varience.

for poker usefulness, you'd probably be better off seeing if there's a class on game theory in the econ or math departments. note that game theory may well be hidden in the syllabusses of advanced microecon classes.

the only thing this class would help you do is more advanced analyses of pokertracker data (see, for example, the thread in high limit about normality of win rates).

[AaronBrown]

I loved this course, it is extremely useful for clear thinking in general (assuming it's well taught). As edtost there's not much direct application to poker, but anything that makes you smarter helps your poker.

[Siegmund]

It all depends what you see yourself doing, and what you enjoy. It doesn't sound too likely to be poker-related unless you are planning to write your own PokerTracker or have a bunch of things you want to do to your PT database that it can't do.

Will you enjoy it? Can't help you much there. Aaron says he loved it. It would bore me to tears: I preferred to get deeper into the theory than torture data sets, and never was overly keen on all the dozens of variations on (M)AN(C)OVA that are out there. All in all it sounds too much like what you'd be doing day after day if you got a job as a research analyst somewhere. Been there done that, and only did it as a way to support my research habit.