What is the best way to give back to the community when I don't have the math skills?

Question

I have only taken introductory statistics courses, and those were several years ago. I haven't taken any other advanced math courses either, so my math skills are clearly not strong enough to answer questions. I tried to participate by engaging in a softer question, but it is clear I don't even have the knowledge to add meaningful insight there.

I've also tried to contribute by flagging obsolete comments, but scouring older posts for obsolete comments doesn't seem like a good use of my time nor the flag reviewers' time. Furthermore it seems like I don't have a good handle on what is considered obsolete here because I have a 33% decline rate (although a sample size of 6 isn't very large).

I know there are badges for asking questions but seems like all I'm doing is taking without contributing. I don't want to just take if it can be avoided because that seems parasitic, but I don't know how I can contribute without spending years studying statistics first.

Is it possible for me to contribute, or should I just get comfortable with the idea that all I can do is ask questions periodically?

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^{This post is in no way related to my current negative score on my answer to the question linked above. I didn't realize my answer was negative when I posted, and it wouldn't have been a factor regardless.}

^{Nor is this question driven by me feeling mistreated at anytime.}

Answer 1

Firstly, thank you for contributing to our site already. I've noticed you several times and have already been glad of your positive presence.

• there are a good number of more or less easy questions here, but they tend to come in "waves". In particular, there are lots of self-study questions, some of which are quite simple (posted by students at the start of a subject like one you've completed). If you keep in mind the guidelines on answering such questions there's often a useful contribution to be made.

• there's thousands of unanswered questions; our unanswered questions rate is one of the higher ones on the SE network (for a variety of reasons). The high voted ones won't likely be ones you can respond to (since they've been looked at a lot, so high-voted ones that don't have an answer are probably tricky to answer for one reason or another), but among the ones with few votes there's quite a few which are simple to answer and some of those will be within your skills.

• more votes are sorely needed. On questions where you are able to tell a more helpful answer form a less helpful one, vote up a good answer. Vote up interesting, well-researched or thought provoking questions, or ones that generate interesting answers.

• Your English skills are apparently excellent, so there's the opportunity to suggest edits; often questions are in terrible shape and every bit of that stuff helps.

• sometimes linking to a related answer (or flagging a duplicate) can be very helpful. If you remember a relevant answer to a different question, a link in comments can be an important contribution. The value of that sort of 'site curation' is easy to underestimate.

• even when a simple question has been correctly answered, sometimes a correct but more technical answer is less helpful to an OP who has few mathematical skills than a wordier one pitched at the "right" level.

• don't worry too much if some of your answers generate discussion, disagreement or even downvotes. I can point to plenty of my own answers that were wrong, or where I misunderstood, or gave a poor answer, and some of those were quite rightly downvoted. Being wrong is a crucial aspect of learning, and many of the most valuable contributions on the site are in the discussions in comments over a contentious point. I've learned a lot from being wrong!

• Wrong or contended answers are actually more broadly helpful in their own way - as long as someone explains why they're wrong or not the whole story - since that will correct not just the misconceptions of the answerer but also misconceptions of later readers that might otherwise never have their understanding challenged. So I've also learned quite a lot from other people being wrong too.

• ask good questions! We have lots of questions, but not always so many good ones. Having some people around who can express a question clearly and thoughtfully is the lifeblood of the site (it's hard to answer a question if it doesn't get asked). If you have something you want to know about that you can't find a good answer by searching, go ahead and ask. Getting someone else to give a good answer is adding value we wouldn't have otherwise.

• you can also contribute here on meta. You represent a lot of the readership/users of the site, but that readership is vastly under-represented as far as guiding how we operate. Opinions given on meta are part of the guidance on how the site works (upvoted answers to meta questions are actually a way to guide the informal policies under which we try to operate), but they mostly come from answerers, rather than askers and readers.

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In respect of the first two points above, here are some useful searches which might suggest other searches to try:

new unanswered self-study

relevant unanswered self-study

relevant unanswered "beginner"

relevant unanswered "basic"

Search engines can also be used fruitfully in ways the on-site search does less well on (searching information in comments for example). If your Google-fu is good, you can get good results that way.