STAT 1602

Professor Brown is a goofy guy, I really enjoyed having him as a professor. I took this class J-term with no stat background and finished with an A. 100% recommend taking it J-term because the content is very dense. Brown had no lectures, just assignments and he is not very good at explaining, but he is very comical and fun to be around. Fairly difficult, but pretty easy A. Would recommend.

IMPORTANT: this class is essentially a copy of UC Berkeley's Data 8 class. I'm mentioning this because this class at UVA was awful. From Stat majors I know, Prof. Brown is an awful prof who does not teach. But for this class, we were given a PhD student to be an instructor 2 days before class started. She was rly sweet but was forced to teach this class. There was little to no actual teaching, and I've heard even when Prof Brown is "teaching," it is the same, which is why they got away with giving the class to a PhD student with little experience. Anyways, if you take this class, GOOGLE UCB DATA8. THEIR WEBSITE ACTUALLY POSTS THEIR LECTURES WHO HAVE COMPETENT PROFS/TAs DISCUSS THE CONTENT AND GO OVER EXAMPLES. This class was hell unless you had prior experience cause there was no one to teach you.

Instead of Brown, we had a PhD student, Sydney Campbell, to instruct our class. We also had two TAs. While I can't speak on Brown as a professor, I can somewhat speak about the course.

I had no experience in statistics which didn't help since all the coding you did was based on statistics. Luckily, I was able to work with my classmates, TAs, and instructor whenever I needed help understanding the questions or when I was stuck in the middle of a code. Collaboration is the main reason I did well in this class. You are able to develop both your understanding of Python and Statistics in this course. Reading the textbook is homework. This was the main way I learned about statistics. I found it easier to address the textbook, slides, and lecture code once I was working on the assignment since the textbook sometimes didn't align with the assignment. The code was lowkey difficult, especially with little to no Python experience. It wasn't too hard at the beginning, but making friends with CS students made it so much easier. The TAs were especially helpful since they could explain it in simple terms. Overall, with the right help, you can understand the question, and with the right effort and help (if needed), you can complete the code yourself.

Loved the course and made some great new friends there through collaboration. Oh also we don't use Pandas--not sure what it is, but people kept saying it so thought you should know. #tCFfall22

I really enjoyed this class and would definitely recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in coding or statistics. If you are new to coding and are interested in applications of computer science take this over intro to CS. It's WAY easier and more interesting. Previous knowledge in coding and statistics definitely helps, but is not necessary. I would explain it as coding basic functions in excel with python, but a lot of it was engaging and interesting. As with any class focused on coding, be prepared for some problem-solving and debugging and a few try hards who work weeks ahead.

Class was 15-30 minutes of lecture and then time to work on assignments, attendance was optional and you can leave after the lecture. Sometimes lectures could be a little disorganized/confusing, but were overall okay. Everything was group work (you could do it by yourself, but I highly recommend finding a buddy in the class and working on everything together). Our grade came entirely from homeworks, labs, and projects which were all formatted basically the same as prompts for coding (labs had built in grader checks that checked for accuracy, the other two only had checks for formatting). It's all open note and you can work at your own pace. Depending on your experience, you can get about 75% of the work done in-class if you work the whole time and finish pretty quickly after class if you need to. Other people have said this is a lot of work for a 1000-level class, but I disagree. Maybe the format has changed, but it was very little work beyond the class time.

Taylor Brown is an OK lecturer and can sometimes just ramble on during his lectures. Although the labs and homework were relatively quick and not that bad in difficulty, I felt he sprung many of them on us at the same time and gave us a short notice to complete them. The projects account for 50% of the grade and are pretty long, so I'd recommend starting them early. Again, these were not that bad and were essentially just a longer version of the homeworks. If you're familiar with python or computer science/statistics, this course will be an easy A. Even if you don't have a background in these topics, I think this course teaches useful and interesting skills for basic statistical use.

Okay, so Taylor is like really chill and super cool. The class has a Slack channel so he just answers questions 24/7 in there which is super helpful. The lectures....man, those are so boring. Like 0/10. But learning code was super fun and chill and even though there are a lot of assignments, it's definitely a class that is an easy A if you just spend time on them. I got a 99 in this class just because I was really meticulous with checking all of my work before I submitted assignments. TA office hours are useful to make sure you are coding correctly. The first half of the class is mostly learning basic Python, and the second half is more like learning statistics and then applying it with Python. I thought the second half was really boring but the code overall was fun and I used this class as the assignments I would work on when I was procrastinating on HW from other classes just because it was fun to figure out the code and there was the immediate satisfaction of running tests and passing them. Overall, would recommend if you are interested in learning Python (I am not a CS or stats major)

This course covers both statistical concepts as well as coding concepts so having background in both certainly will help. Professor Brown is not the best lecturer, but he certainly listens to his students. Often times if you ask for an extension or to relook at the grading of an assignment, he will do it. All the exams are open note and the projects are group based. It does require work outside of class, but honestly you can get most of it done during class since he leaves about 45 minutes for work after he finishes lecturing. Class attendance is not mandatory, so if you feel like you don't need the lectures, you can honestly just skip it. This class can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but I must say it may be one of the most useful classes I've ever taken. All of the content we covered in class is stuff that I do everyday at work. I would highly recommend it, but make sure you know what you're getting into first.

Professor Brown is a HORRIBLE lecturer. His lectures are very disorganized and hard to follow. His voice is very low and monotone and it makes it hard to focus on what he's saying. Overall, this class was very confusing and frustrating throughout the entire semester. As someone who came in with no coding experience, Prof Brown did not make it easy to learn. Whenever asking him a question about your code, he basically tells you to "think about it more". There are labs and homework assigned throughout the entire semester and the difficulty level for these is very inconsistent. There were weeks in which labs took me no more than 10 minutes to complete whereas other weeks the labs took me up to a few hours. There are usually 2-3 assignments due every single week. In this course, there are 3 projects that you can work with other people on. I HIGHLY recommend starting the projects early because they are exponentially harder than homework and labs. There is one midterm and one final. These exams are 7 questions and not cumulative. He has a lot of office hours throughout the week but I didn't find him to give helpful guidance. I mostly relied on the demos he uploaded on collab and the internet. He gives us a link to a free textbook but it's not super helpful. His TA's (Kayla) office hours were quite helpful but they were only held ONCE a week which sucked. It would've have been better to have TA office hours more frequently. Overall, I do not recommend this class. The class difficulty was not overly difficult because the coding is very basic however the wording on assignments was very confusing & vague. Prof Brown is a very nice guy but he sucks as a lecturer. On piazza, people frequently complained that for a 1000-level class, the workload was overwhelming and I definitely concur with this statement.

I had a statistics background, but no coding background coming into this class. The first half of the course was mainly coding, while the second half got more into actual statistics. Every class, Professor Brown lectured with a coding demo and then we were given time to work on the assignments for the week. Usually there was a lab and homework every week, but sometimes there could be more (which could be overwhelming). Often the lectures were disorganized, which left me to figure out how to do the coding myself. Even though I went to Professor Brown's office hours every week, he wasn't that helpful in explaining concepts. I did well on pretty much all of my assignments, but it took a lot of work on my own to figure out how to do all of the coding. There were three projects (you could work in groups) and two exams. The exams were only seven questions, which didn't leave much room for error.

Having never taken a statistics or computer science course before, I can say that I enjoyed the information that we learned in this class. However, the class organization itself sucked. Some weeks we would have multiple assignments due within only a few days of each other, it was during these weeks that the class became overbearing. Professor Brown, although he knows his stuff, isn't very helpful. He isn't able to teach in a manner that is compelling and understandable to students, which led me to teach myself most of the coding and statistics knowledge from the course. Overall, I wouldn't say the course is hard, but rather it is disorganized.

An insane amount of work for a 1000 level class. Usually we had 2 or 3 assignments per week. With limited office hours, only one TA, and nearly 100 students who have never taken a CS course before, this honestly made the course's organization incredibly poor and hectic. Without the resources or time to fully comprehend the assignments we were doing, I often felt as though we were racing to complete assignments and code without fully understanding them. I honestly felt like I was drowning in the work load of this class, which is NOT what you want from a 1000 level. Lecture was almost a complete waste of time and not very helpful. The professor was often cryptic about answering questions pertaining to these many lengthy assignments. If you are seeking to learn coding or Python, take another class. This one is not worth it.