MATH 3100

Dr. Gromoll is an exceptional lecturer - arguably the best I've experienced when it comes to logically and clearly breaking down complex mathematical concepts. His passion for probability is contagious, and his enthusiasm genuinely resonates with students.

However, beyond his engaging lectures, nearly every other aspect of his probability course can be quite frustrating. By far, he is the most disorganized professor I've had. He frequently arrived late to class, lost track of important course materials and priorities, and even once forgot to print enough copies of a midterm exam (causing about a third of the class to take it a week later). The combination of his dynamic teaching style and his chronic disorganization made for an interesting, if somewhat stressful, semester.

In terms of logistics and grading, here's how the course breaks down:

Pre-class assignments: 5%

Homework: 15%

Two midterm exams: 25% each

Cumulative final exam: 30%

There is also a slight opportunity for extra credit through active participation in the discussion forum, but nobody seemed to take advantage of this.

For roughly half of the lectures, there are pre-class videos by Professor Melcher, who is also an excellent lecturer, followed by a short MCQ quiz. Weekly homework sets typically include about 8 to 14 problems.

Regarding exam difficulty and grading: exam averages generally ranged from about 50% at their lowest to around 60% at their highest. Typically, only about 10 to 20% of students achieved scores above 80%. The exam histograms provided by Dr. Gromoll grouped results broadly (0-20%, 20-40%, 40-60%, 60-80%, and 80-100%) so it's hard to say what % of students were scoring 90 or highe. Given that exams constituted 80% of the overall grade, with minimal benefits from extra credit, many students understandably felt concerned. Dr. Gromoll mentioned some end-of-semester grade adjustments, though it was unclear what exactly that would entail.

Personally, I ended up with an 83% raw score that resulted in an A-, and I suspect I was close to the cutoff for an A, perhaps around 85-86%. Without a detailed grade distribution, it's hard to say exactly, but grading appeared quite harsh overall. There's no way he applied a proportional 7-point curve uniformly across the class - far too many students would have failed. Considering my own roughly 7-point adjustment and the fact that I was on the high end of the distribution for each exam, I imagine some students received significantly more generous curves. I might be making a leap here, but if the average student's exam scores were around 55%, perhaps he curved those students by 14-15 points to bring the class average to around a C+. If that's the case, this is easily the toughest probability course the math department offers. Dr. Gromoll probably awarded only 3-4 A's in a class of about 30 students, noticeably fewer than other probability professors. Further, the practice exams written by Melcher felt substantially easier than those administered by Gromoll.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend Dr. Gromoll if grading is a primary concern. It would be interesting to see the official grade distribution and how significantly he adjusted grades to avoid widespread failures. The only scenario where taking Dr. Gromoll's class makes sense is if you're extremely confident in your mathematical abilities and genuinely want to learn deeply. In that case, his amazing lecturing abilities should serve you well.