STAT 4260

For those that took STAT 3250 with Professor Holt, this class is structured very similarly, but with catastrophic differences that warrant the negative review. This class was great for learning MySQL, which is actually useful in the data science world. Getting to learn about how databases work fundamentally was also a plus. But, and this is important, Professor Steiner is honestly one of the most disorganized and uninspiring professors I have ever had or seen at UVA. It seemed as though she was switching up her plans halfway through the semester, and instead of going into more complex concepts in SQL she decided to move on to lesser-known (and probably more useless) programs like MongoDB, Neo4J, and others where half the class couldn't even install them, let alone use them properly. She would even admit that she didn't know how to properly install some of the programs that we used. It really just added unnecessary stress to the whole class. Grading was also inconsistent. I would get points taken off on some assignments I was sure I had all right and get full points on other assignments I definitely did not complete correctly. All in all, I'm very glad to be done with this class. If the STAT department ever offers this course again (hopefully with a different instructor), just put in the work and get the easy A/A-. The MySQL that you learn (mainly on your own) is worth it, in my opinion.

This course could have been great but Professor Steiner really ruined it. The class is good for an easy A/B+ but that's only because Steiner basically copied and pasted the homework form other actual sites. She read off of the slides each class and didn't challenge the students. I understand that sometimes we need a class that isn't challenging but this is on another level of 'easy'. All of our homework had to be submitted through Collab, meaning we NEVER even opened a database. I can't even load data in some of the databases, so can I really say that I learned anything? I would have learned more if I had just googled some quick tutorials for each language.
But with that being said, Professor Steiner is leaving the university next semester, so this class will be passed onto another professor or merged with another class. In that case, as long as Holt, Rodu or Martinet teach the class, I would recommend taking the course because they teach statistical languages really well.

The other review is somewhat accurate, but this class was NOT an easy A. The cutoff for an A was a 95, an A- 93, and a B+ a 90. As you can see, the grading scale is very harsh, and messing up one assignment could prevent you from getting an A. That being said, the assignments were not hard and not thought provoking, but she was very strict on the grading on some. For example, adding an alias to a query without her explicitly saying so, could get you 0 points. (The query would provide the exact same results, so it does not seem to make a lot of sense) Steiner does not seem to have much empathy for her students based on her grading. If you really want to learn SQL, you are better of teaching yourself or doing research for a professor.

To the person who said, “Steiner basically copied and pasted the homework form other actual sites” and said it was an easy A/B+, you are a moron. Thank you admitting that the only reason it was easy for you was because you cheated on the homework assignments that were 90% of our grade. This class is not easy and is mostly because Steiner is just horrible at her job. She comes to class, sits down in the front, and reads off her computer in the most dull, painstaking way possible. This women clearly hated her job and that is evident as to why she won’t be coming back to UVA. Every student in the entire class cheats on every single homework assignment. When homework is 90% of your grade and you specifically say a 92.99 will be a “B+” and not rounded up to an A-, what else do you expect? Yes, you read that correctly. 92.99 is a B+ in this class. She will try to teach you a ton about a brand new programming language every week for the last month in the class and will say, “Don’t worry it’s just like R guys and it has all the R functions” or “Yeah this shouldn’t be hard, it has a Java base”. Well guess what you stupid idiot, there are people in the class who have never used those languages before. If you think they should, make it a specific prerequisite on the syllabus. Not to mention, she can’t even dress nicely to show up to class. (This is a professor of a 4000 level stats class, keep it mind) She would show up every day in skinny jeans, skater shoes, a white tank top, a flannel, and have a snap-back hat tied around her jeans. I would say I am unsurprised by her blatant lack of professionalism, but as to the semester came to an end you could tell she hated her job. Thank you, Tony Hawk for ruining a very important class at UVA!

I was very excited to take this class but it turned out to be pretty useless because Dr. Steiner certainly didn't even understand the DB languages she was teaching us so I didn't learn anything. All the homeworks (worth 90% of your grade) could be found online and in response to the person who said this is cheating, the syllabus said you could use online resources. I agree it didn't feel great but as the semester went on and it was clear Dr. Steiner didn't care about the class I was happy to get 100's on the assignments without having to pay attention in class. If Dr. Steiner really cared about her students and wanted them to learn SQL, dyplr, etc. she would actually put in the effort to do her job and write the questions on her own instead of find the first pdf of a textbook online that has practice questions and answers. Additionally, I really don't know what Dr. Steiner expects given the harsh grade cut offs it makes sense that students would default to finding the solutions online especially given that she is a horrible professor. Literally none of these reviews matter because Dr. Steiner is leaving so to anyone interested in taking this class your experience will be far different than previous students.