STATS 100A
Introduction to Probability
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisites: Mathematics 32B, 33A. Not open to students with credit for Electrical Engineering 131A or Mathematics 170A; open to graduate students. Students may receive credit for only two of following: course 100A, former course 110A, Biostatistics 100A. Probability distributions, random variables, vectors, and expectation. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - Guang Cheng is not a good professor. But, he is pretty clear when teaching straightforward and easy concepts in weeks 1-4, however, he fails to teach the second half (pdfs, cdfs) well because he explains none of the notation to students and expects them to follow along. Outside of that, there are some serious problems with his course structuring. He teaches the first four weeks extremely slowly, and I would say that the content at this time is not difficult and should be taught in 3 weeks. The midterm is also torturously easy, with the mean and median both being above a 90. Then, he rushes through the significantly harder and more applicable content in the second half of the quarter. With my class, he rushed through variance, covariance, and MGFs in the last three lectures before the final. Additionally, he was out of school, leaving the quiet and unengaging TA to teach expectation within a week (two lectures). In the end, his final exam was so difficult that the average was like a 50 and he didn't curve it. I scored in the upper quartile and ended with a 65 or something like that. In the end, even though I was in the upper quartile for both the midterm and the final, I ended the class with a B, which felt really bad because I put in a lot of work and also did significantly better than my peers but got a grade that didn't reflect that.
Winter 2023 - Guang Cheng is not a good professor. But, he is pretty clear when teaching straightforward and easy concepts in weeks 1-4, however, he fails to teach the second half (pdfs, cdfs) well because he explains none of the notation to students and expects them to follow along. Outside of that, there are some serious problems with his course structuring. He teaches the first four weeks extremely slowly, and I would say that the content at this time is not difficult and should be taught in 3 weeks. The midterm is also torturously easy, with the mean and median both being above a 90. Then, he rushes through the significantly harder and more applicable content in the second half of the quarter. With my class, he rushed through variance, covariance, and MGFs in the last three lectures before the final. Additionally, he was out of school, leaving the quiet and unengaging TA to teach expectation within a week (two lectures). In the end, his final exam was so difficult that the average was like a 50 and he didn't curve it. I scored in the upper quartile and ended with a 65 or something like that. In the end, even though I was in the upper quartile for both the midterm and the final, I ended the class with a B, which felt really bad because I put in a lot of work and also did significantly better than my peers but got a grade that didn't reflect that.
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Most Helpful Review
STAY AWAY from Christou. His exams are psychological experiments, and do not measure what you know. The midterms are not inherently difficult, but there is not nearly enough time to complete them. His final exam? A total joke. It doesn't matter how much you study you will not do well. And he tells us this! "The test will be hard and long." I don't need to hear that when I have three other finals to worry about. I ended up with a grade that I did not deserve even after all of my hard work. Then he tells us "grades will be submitted on Tuesday" and they don't appear until a week later. I am NOT taking Christou for 100B solely because of his ridiculous final exam.
STAY AWAY from Christou. His exams are psychological experiments, and do not measure what you know. The midterms are not inherently difficult, but there is not nearly enough time to complete them. His final exam? A total joke. It doesn't matter how much you study you will not do well. And he tells us this! "The test will be hard and long." I don't need to hear that when I have three other finals to worry about. I ended up with a grade that I did not deserve even after all of my hard work. Then he tells us "grades will be submitted on Tuesday" and they don't appear until a week later. I am NOT taking Christou for 100B solely because of his ridiculous final exam.
Most Helpful Review
Professor Ioudina is a pretty fair professor. Her tests are on material that she thoroughly covered, she is always available during office hours, and she gives out tons of extra credit opportunities. She does have a bit of an accent, but it's not that heavy. You get used to it very fast. She usually is also willing to give a few extra points on homework and exams if you go talk to her about it. The homework she assigns is pretty tough, definitely way harder than the exam questions. Going to lecture is a must, as she does problems that you will be tested on. Don't rely on the book, it is REALLY unhelpful. I came in to Stat 100A expecting horrible things due to some previous ratings, but to my pleasant surprise, she wasn't bad at all! Stat 100A is not an easy A, but it's definitely manageable. If you've never really taken a Stats course before, (like me) you'll get a lot out of this class with this professor.
Professor Ioudina is a pretty fair professor. Her tests are on material that she thoroughly covered, she is always available during office hours, and she gives out tons of extra credit opportunities. She does have a bit of an accent, but it's not that heavy. You get used to it very fast. She usually is also willing to give a few extra points on homework and exams if you go talk to her about it. The homework she assigns is pretty tough, definitely way harder than the exam questions. Going to lecture is a must, as she does problems that you will be tested on. Don't rely on the book, it is REALLY unhelpful. I came in to Stat 100A expecting horrible things due to some previous ratings, but to my pleasant surprise, she wasn't bad at all! Stat 100A is not an easy A, but it's definitely manageable. If you've never really taken a Stats course before, (like me) you'll get a lot out of this class with this professor.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - Going to be blunt, and a little rude. This professor should not be teaching, isn't mentally capable to teach anymore at this point in her life. Constant typos in important graded materials to the point where it looks like it was written by a senile person. I wish I didn't buy her textbook, as I didn't use it once the entire quarter. I cant remember if it was needed to access cognella (literally a ripped off version of ccle software). Doesn't care about the wellbeing of students at all, is not consistent on assignments. The way her assignments are valued changes on a weekly basis. If i had to guess, they moved professor sanchez to online asynchronous cause the students who had to suffer her in-person classes complained to much. Frankly I dont think she should be teaching at all, and it appears like the TAs do all the grading for her anyway. After taking this class, I still feel like I have learned nothing about stats. I dont know my final grade yet but im expecting anything from a B to an A-. I would have rather taken the class in person with a competent professor but they were not available to me. I wish I had waited to take Stats 100A instead. DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR. You are not going to be the top 1% of the class who gets an A. If you think you are, then you probably value your education, which in that case DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR since you will learn nothing. I am fuming that I spent money to "learn" in this class frankly, and she should use the money she has from scamming the university and their students to just retire.
Spring 2022 - Going to be blunt, and a little rude. This professor should not be teaching, isn't mentally capable to teach anymore at this point in her life. Constant typos in important graded materials to the point where it looks like it was written by a senile person. I wish I didn't buy her textbook, as I didn't use it once the entire quarter. I cant remember if it was needed to access cognella (literally a ripped off version of ccle software). Doesn't care about the wellbeing of students at all, is not consistent on assignments. The way her assignments are valued changes on a weekly basis. If i had to guess, they moved professor sanchez to online asynchronous cause the students who had to suffer her in-person classes complained to much. Frankly I dont think she should be teaching at all, and it appears like the TAs do all the grading for her anyway. After taking this class, I still feel like I have learned nothing about stats. I dont know my final grade yet but im expecting anything from a B to an A-. I would have rather taken the class in person with a competent professor but they were not available to me. I wish I had waited to take Stats 100A instead. DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR. You are not going to be the top 1% of the class who gets an A. If you think you are, then you probably value your education, which in that case DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR since you will learn nothing. I am fuming that I spent money to "learn" in this class frankly, and she should use the money she has from scamming the university and their students to just retire.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH PROFESSOR PAIK!!!!!!! I read all the reviews about how easy the midterms are and how this class was such a breeze but it was not! We base the entire class off his shitty book, in lecture he literally reads the same thing thats in his textbook then waits a couple seconds and thinks that by giving us those few seconds we are going to magically learn what he just read?? The class in not based on if you did the work/process correctly, it's based on if you get the correct answer which shows how lazy he is in grading the exams!!!!! The exams are all multiple choice and a lot of times theres one tiny mistake that changes everything and you get the wrong answer but no partial credit just a big fat zero. While he does let us use open book and open note, it's kinda deceiving because were on such a time crunch so going through the notes/book is a hassle and wastes a lot of time. I ran out of time on every exam. Overall I was very frustrated with this class. I've had bad professors but I've been able to teach myself the material and be successful in the course but not with this class! He did not give us the materials to succeed! He based everything off his book and slides which are basically the same thing as the book and there were very few practical practice problems. Take this class with a better professor! I chose Paik because of his past grade distributions but it backfired on me. I have multiple friends who were not successful in the course so I know I'm not alone on this post
Fall 2019 - DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH PROFESSOR PAIK!!!!!!! I read all the reviews about how easy the midterms are and how this class was such a breeze but it was not! We base the entire class off his shitty book, in lecture he literally reads the same thing thats in his textbook then waits a couple seconds and thinks that by giving us those few seconds we are going to magically learn what he just read?? The class in not based on if you did the work/process correctly, it's based on if you get the correct answer which shows how lazy he is in grading the exams!!!!! The exams are all multiple choice and a lot of times theres one tiny mistake that changes everything and you get the wrong answer but no partial credit just a big fat zero. While he does let us use open book and open note, it's kinda deceiving because were on such a time crunch so going through the notes/book is a hassle and wastes a lot of time. I ran out of time on every exam. Overall I was very frustrated with this class. I've had bad professors but I've been able to teach myself the material and be successful in the course but not with this class! He did not give us the materials to succeed! He based everything off his book and slides which are basically the same thing as the book and there were very few practical practice problems. Take this class with a better professor! I chose Paik because of his past grade distributions but it backfired on me. I have multiple friends who were not successful in the course so I know I'm not alone on this post
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