Professor
Susan Cochran
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Most Helpful Review
Dr. Cochran is a very blunt, funny, caring, challenging, motivating professor. Can't handle the blunt/challenging/motivating part? Choose a different stats prof to breeze through stats 10 with an A. But if you want a dynamic experience, Cochran is the prof to take. She focuses on concepts a lot, and uses overheads (which are also copied into a reader so you don't have to copy down all the graphics/charts) which help so you can really listen to the specifics. Stats may not be the most enthralling subject matter, and she will wake you up if you fall asleep -- trust me, I know from experience. But she'll just laugh it off, I think she said something like: "Hey I already know this stuff, I want you all to do well on my final!" She really does care about her students, and when I went to her office hours about a missing homework assignment that I did turn in, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and said she'd count it towards my grade if I couldn't turn another in (you're allowed to skip one homework assignment per half quarter). Two words of warning: I had Jason as a TA, and he was horrible. I mean, really bad. Don't take his section, he confused all of us from concepts from lectures and was no help at all. Unfortunately, participation in section was part of your grade. Also, the final was VERY DIFFICULT. I was getting an A/A- in the class up to the final and got a B for the quarter. The final is definitely not easy. All in all, a wonderful prof.
Dr. Cochran is a very blunt, funny, caring, challenging, motivating professor. Can't handle the blunt/challenging/motivating part? Choose a different stats prof to breeze through stats 10 with an A. But if you want a dynamic experience, Cochran is the prof to take. She focuses on concepts a lot, and uses overheads (which are also copied into a reader so you don't have to copy down all the graphics/charts) which help so you can really listen to the specifics. Stats may not be the most enthralling subject matter, and she will wake you up if you fall asleep -- trust me, I know from experience. But she'll just laugh it off, I think she said something like: "Hey I already know this stuff, I want you all to do well on my final!" She really does care about her students, and when I went to her office hours about a missing homework assignment that I did turn in, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and said she'd count it towards my grade if I couldn't turn another in (you're allowed to skip one homework assignment per half quarter). Two words of warning: I had Jason as a TA, and he was horrible. I mean, really bad. Don't take his section, he confused all of us from concepts from lectures and was no help at all. Unfortunately, participation in section was part of your grade. Also, the final was VERY DIFFICULT. I was getting an A/A- in the class up to the final and got a B for the quarter. The final is definitely not easy. All in all, a wonderful prof.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - Took this class winter 2024 as an elective for the stats major. Class attendance: MWF, went to most classes but skipped quite a few near the end of the quarter for reasons listed below. Fridays were generally used as days in class to work on the upcoming homework assignments. Some random days were also used for random in class activities/worksheets that we would then submit as homework. Overall lecture attendance is not really required except if you miss a day where activities/worksheets were passed out and done in person then you would have nothing to submit later on. Homework: Homework assignments were really easy and were either just submitting worksheets we had done in class or doing the labs (done in class on fridays). Labs were just uploading and working with datasets in Stata except she gives step by step instructions for them so its very straightforward and no prior knowledge is needed. Overall the workload in this class was very light/manageable and we only had homework assignments every 1-2 weeks. Project: There is a quarter long project throughout the class that you complete and submit in steps. Each step is just filling out a worksheet and responding to questions about your project so its generally very easy and you dont need to create a report/paper/presentation at all. The professor also provides feedback after every step you know if youre on the right track or not. Exams: Two midterm exams and one final. Every single formula you ever need or come across in the class is all on a formula sheet that she prints out for you for every exam and the formula sheet clearly labels what each formula is for. You get one sheet of notes for each midterm and three sheets of notes for the final. Part of the final is midterm 3 (not cumulative) and the rest of is the actual final (cumulative). She drops your lowest midterm score out of the 3. Overall the exams were pretty straightforward and if you know the material and studied you will do fine. Highly recommend looking at the example calculation problems from the lecture notes when studying for each exam because the ones on the tests are exactly the same you just need to know which formula to use and how to use it. Class averages on the exams were surprisingly low though because each multiple choice problem was 5 points so that affected a lot of peoples grades. Pros: By far one of the most organized professors I've ever had. Every resource you'll ever need is on bruinlearn. She has a hundred page course reader posted with all the formulas and formula sheets that you get on the exams plus practice problems for the exams and etc. The best resource is that she posts all of her lecture notes in a typed out/bullet point document format (no need to look through hundreds of slides) that covers everything. Plus all the lecture notes are organized by week and day (MWF) in a grid and are named by topic so its easy to find what youre looking for. The lecture notes contain many different example calculation problems which I found very important to study for the exams since they were exactly the same. This was largely the reason I stopped attending lectures because I realized everything was posted online and I could learn it on my own. Other pros: light workload, helpful professor, straightforward class Cons: This class was very information dense and that was probably the hardest part about the class. A lot of the concepts introduced are probably familiar to people already but this class dives deeper into them and is very detailed. There are hundreds of formulas and similar types of calculation problems so the biggest thing when studying for this class for me was being able to distinguish what sort of calculation needed to be done. When it comes to the exams it can get a little hard to learn and absorb/memorize everything. Grading: Professor used two grading schemes: one regular as dictated in the syllabus and another curved based on the class' performance and gave you the highest grade from either grading framework. I think the biggest thing is doing better than the other people in this course. I did better than most of the class on both the midterm exams but then performed not that great on the final and project and still ended up with an A in the class from the curve simply because other people did worse than me. Overall: Overall would highly recommend this class as an elective. Pretty interesting and stress free.
Winter 2024 - Took this class winter 2024 as an elective for the stats major. Class attendance: MWF, went to most classes but skipped quite a few near the end of the quarter for reasons listed below. Fridays were generally used as days in class to work on the upcoming homework assignments. Some random days were also used for random in class activities/worksheets that we would then submit as homework. Overall lecture attendance is not really required except if you miss a day where activities/worksheets were passed out and done in person then you would have nothing to submit later on. Homework: Homework assignments were really easy and were either just submitting worksheets we had done in class or doing the labs (done in class on fridays). Labs were just uploading and working with datasets in Stata except she gives step by step instructions for them so its very straightforward and no prior knowledge is needed. Overall the workload in this class was very light/manageable and we only had homework assignments every 1-2 weeks. Project: There is a quarter long project throughout the class that you complete and submit in steps. Each step is just filling out a worksheet and responding to questions about your project so its generally very easy and you dont need to create a report/paper/presentation at all. The professor also provides feedback after every step you know if youre on the right track or not. Exams: Two midterm exams and one final. Every single formula you ever need or come across in the class is all on a formula sheet that she prints out for you for every exam and the formula sheet clearly labels what each formula is for. You get one sheet of notes for each midterm and three sheets of notes for the final. Part of the final is midterm 3 (not cumulative) and the rest of is the actual final (cumulative). She drops your lowest midterm score out of the 3. Overall the exams were pretty straightforward and if you know the material and studied you will do fine. Highly recommend looking at the example calculation problems from the lecture notes when studying for each exam because the ones on the tests are exactly the same you just need to know which formula to use and how to use it. Class averages on the exams were surprisingly low though because each multiple choice problem was 5 points so that affected a lot of peoples grades. Pros: By far one of the most organized professors I've ever had. Every resource you'll ever need is on bruinlearn. She has a hundred page course reader posted with all the formulas and formula sheets that you get on the exams plus practice problems for the exams and etc. The best resource is that she posts all of her lecture notes in a typed out/bullet point document format (no need to look through hundreds of slides) that covers everything. Plus all the lecture notes are organized by week and day (MWF) in a grid and are named by topic so its easy to find what youre looking for. The lecture notes contain many different example calculation problems which I found very important to study for the exams since they were exactly the same. This was largely the reason I stopped attending lectures because I realized everything was posted online and I could learn it on my own. Other pros: light workload, helpful professor, straightforward class Cons: This class was very information dense and that was probably the hardest part about the class. A lot of the concepts introduced are probably familiar to people already but this class dives deeper into them and is very detailed. There are hundreds of formulas and similar types of calculation problems so the biggest thing when studying for this class for me was being able to distinguish what sort of calculation needed to be done. When it comes to the exams it can get a little hard to learn and absorb/memorize everything. Grading: Professor used two grading schemes: one regular as dictated in the syllabus and another curved based on the class' performance and gave you the highest grade from either grading framework. I think the biggest thing is doing better than the other people in this course. I did better than most of the class on both the midterm exams but then performed not that great on the final and project and still ended up with an A in the class from the curve simply because other people did worse than me. Overall: Overall would highly recommend this class as an elective. Pretty interesting and stress free.
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