Numbers and Flowers

David

I just learned that Dr. David Frey died in 2019 at the age of 89.

He was one of three faculty trying to teach statistics to psychology doctoral degree students at San Francisco’s California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) campus, the first free-standing professional school,  in its earliest years, the first half of the 1970s.

His approach would be to stay for as many hours as it took to individually mentor each student and get them through, minimally. Even though he was just paid for the once a week three hour class, he would give them the whole day and into the evening, leaving only in time for Willie Nelson concerts.

Not all of his students volunteered to work with David in this way but those few who did managed some success.  Hard approach to replicate.

In later decades, psychologist Mike Acree continued Frey’s gift of unlimited mentoring time. The Acree perspective focused on the fundamental meaning of numbers along with critical focus on applied use and misuse.             

A few of the graduate students highly benefitted from this philosophical approach.

Though most, budding clinical psychologists only receptive to accruing their own tool kit of techniques, avoided it as best they could.

Then, in the 1980s, psychology professor Terry Newell made sure all new graduate students took a proficiency test before beginning a statistics class.

Dr. Newell chose the highest half of scoring students for his own class, taking them as far as their skills could go. The bottom half were saved for learning only the basics they would need.

Mike and Terry were successful for their ‘best and brightest’ students.

But only for them.

Nancy

The second instructor was young Nancy Maihoff.

She wanted to reach all of her students. 

In a school of professional psychology, she thought the obvious best starting place would be to address their childhood-based trauma from inept  math teachers.

Nancy had only a Master’s degree in educational psychology, not more of a credential than most of her own graduate students, but she was also a professional hypnotist.

And that’s what she used. Seeing her students as highly allergic to the Arabic numbers used in statistics for psychologists, she put her class in trance, with their eager consent, and guided them through the material. They reported being happy with this approach although at the end of the class few of them showed any statistical mastery.

Despite this, her students rated her very high as a teacher, possibly recalling how high they felt themselves after each of her classes.

Nancy went on to a career as a naval officer. Commander Maihoff likely maintained high morale among her subordinates, somehow.  

In her 90s today, she spends her retirement years in Delaware. With likely very contented neighbors.

Carl

The third and last stat prof I hired was a young Social Psychologist, just out of Princeton. He promised to “make the numbers dance” and succeeded. His class learned the course content and also learned to enjoy using it. A great success.

His fascinated students soon moved beyond their key understanding of how to dance with said numbers, to choreographing probabilities, exposing lies with statistics, predicting a future, winning bets, avoiding hazards, reducing risks, understanding  journals, choosing a better life path, and, above all, seeking the truth. These applications fulfilled their growing tool kit. More than that, it clarified a better client-centered guidance with up-to-date research-based information. All of his students got it.

Carl, by example, excited them about the value of research to answer the most socially useful and challenging questions. Beginning with their own doctoral dissertations. Numbers now fit into their career, their future.

His too. And yet so much so that he was continually in demand for specifically his statistics instruction.

Over the decades his option to actually teach in his core discipline of social psychology was eclipsed,

Still, his own research was groundbreaking, It was so important that at one America Psychology Association (APA) annual meeting in Washington DC, a division head opined that our own stat teacher was the top psychologist in the country for his field.

But they had lost track of him.

I let them know that we had him kept to ourselves in the San Francisco Bay area, camouflaged within his teaching of statistics to psychology students. Blasphemy? Maybe. But nobody else ever got close to his success in this.

Eventually he was recognized appropriately in widening circles for his other major contributions. Became a valued research consultant and colleague. A friend. And, as ever, a fully effective, calmly insightful, mentor. Then, in time, he moved into his healthy retirement.                                                                                                                                

His wife began a creative flower shop.

Dr. Carl Word now has the time to smell them.    

Per Einstein, time is a place. We remain alive in each day of our past, a statue in time. Carl’s temporal tapestry is a masterpiece.