Some technical notes and personal experience:

The premise of this class is that you prepare a report by analyzing data that the professor collected before. You're mainly supposed to use SPSS software, which takes a while to download and the WiFi in the classroom is too slow to download it there, so download it at home.

The professor divided everyone randomly into groups of 8-10 people based on where they were sitting. While initially having a large group felt divisive, it ended up being nice to have a larger group of students to bounce ideas off of (this is a good thing). I know there were some groups that had people stop showing up mid-semester, which is not good and brings me to my next point...

The professor acknowledges that there are people who grade-grub, skip class, etc. He would spend up to 30 minutes at the beginning of each class threatening those students with grade deductions, which felt informative and effective at first but after the fifth class in the row of him going off on students who probably aren't even in the classroom to hear it, it started to feel redundant.

A lot of students in the class are prehealth, but some are also taking this as part of their data science minor capstone. The professor likes to assume that everyone is prehealth, and also likes to assume that everyone already knows everything a health sciences student should know. He often would throw out a trivia question about healthcare, pressuring everyone in the room with questions like, "Does anyone know...? Come on, you guys are going to be doctors!" even though 1) not everyone knows everything and 2) some of the students are not prehealth. So either learn your trivia or don't make eye contact with him. For students who were able to answer his question, he would get very happy and kind of use them as an example of how "Everyone should be like them!" which was kind of favoritism and kind of felt like a family reunion where everyone's aunts and uncles are just comparing their children to each other.

Regarding the coursework, the HW, which is usually just a few straightforward questions that you type your answers to in a doc, felt separate from what was taught in class at first but in retrospect very vaguely aligned with the things we were taught in class. For example, we would learn health study methodologies and then our first HW would be to explain how we would set up a health study on a scenario that the professor provided us, that kind of stuff. Really needed you to apply the concepts, not a lot of handholding, do look at the slides, but it was related. The thing is that he apparently uses the same questions each semester, so people who knew someone who took the class previously had an easier time doing the HWs and midterms than others who didn't.

For the final presentation and report that each group had to do, the professor provided examples from previous years that you can take inspiration from. As a result, on final presentation day, every group showed up with identical presentations. Literally, because the professor assigned each group to present on the same topic: air pollution in Kathmandu. The only difference between each group was their chosen independent and dependent variable. I think even the professor got bored because halfway through he started doomscrolling on his phone instead of listening to the presentations.

Speaking of being on his phone, the professor throws a lot of responsibility to the one undergrad TA. If he's done lecturing, he'll sit on his phone in class. So direct all your questions to the TA.

Overall the class is an easy A. The grading is very straightforward: you either do everything correctly and show you understand what's going on, or you don't. There were just some frustrating moments inbetween as noted above, but otherwise you just have to show up to class.

This class is super low commitment and an easy A. Dr. B is pretty funny and always cracking jokes and he's always there if you need to ask a question. Class was supposed to be around 2 and a half hours, but lecture usually ended around an hour and he gave us the rest of the time to work on our group project with our team.

Grade breakdown: 3 homework assignments – 30% | 1 take-home midterm – 25% | Group Report – 15% |Group project and self-reflection report – 10% | Participation in class – 20%

Dr. B would give us about 1-2 weeks to complete our homeworks and midterm and the content of the assignments itself wasn't too bad at all and should only take about an hour. Beware he is VERY strict on submitting things on time, even a MINUTE late and he will give you an F, even if you try and explain. I also think he's doesn't grade too harshly as most people got A or A- on the assignments. Lecture itself is pretty chill since he usually just reads off the slide and people in class usually just do their own thing... The most time consuming part of class is the group project, but even then the group paper is split amongst so many people in your group it's very manageable! There isn't any readings or writing assignments due every class which I appreciated.

I will say, if you're looking how to use SPSS beyond the basics or how to write a research paper, this class may not teach you all that. But overall definitely recommend this if you want something to fit into a busier, course heavy schedule or if you're PHS major and need it for methods!

LOVE DR B. He is excellent. Class meets once a week from 6-8:30 but he always ended class at around 7 and had us stay after until we completed the weekly assignments with our groups (which were never too bad). Everything is super straightforward and he is super funny which makes the class entertaining. I also really liked my group which helped me get through the semester. Required class for PHS majors and I totally recommend to anyone interested in the major!