STAT 2120

This was one of the most disorganized classes I've ever taken. Although the professor makes herself available online, the TAs were extremely unhelpful and the quizzes never failed to include those "gotcha" questions that hinge on one word or are purposefully confusingly worded. If you don't have to take this class for a requirement, avoid it.

This is the worst class I've taken so far. Professor Tomas tries hard to explain the concepts, but the class is designed really badly. The practice webworks are too easy and the tests are extremely hard. She doesn't give adequate resources or practice to prepare us for the tests. There's too much course load per week. Overall - it's a really bad class.

TA's for this class graded labs super inconsistently... I worked on labs with other people in the class who had different TA's, and we showed the same work/solutions/answers, but when we got back our grades, they varied from 10/20 to 20/20. I believe this is very unfair. Also, the lectures were terrible. They didn't cover problems anywhere near as challenging as the ones on the tests, and Professor Tomas was boring and ineffective as a teacher. I stopped going to lecture after the first midterm (which I did terribly on) and started teaching myself during the time I would be in class and ended up getting an A on the second midterm.
Additionally, this class was extremely unorganized. The quizzes, HW, labs, and lecture material were never aligned. I HATED this class.

This is, unquestionably, the worst class I have taken at UVA. It is one thing to design a "weed out" course for pre-comm students; however, this course is taught very poorly and is extremely disorganized. Your grade for certain assignments (labs) is totally arbitrary. Depending on which TA you get, you could get a 100 on a lab or an F, with the same work. Don't even bother asking them what you did wrong or why you didn't get the same grade as someone else with the same work, as they either can't speak English, or are unwilling and unenthusiastic about making sure you understand the material.

Questions on the quizzes and exams are not designed to see if you understand the material. Rather, they are full of ambiguous questions, "gotcha" questions that try to trick you, or involve using something that was very briefly taught and not emphasized in lecture or the textbook.

Finally, I'd like anyone reading this to know that your final grade is at the whim of the professor at the end of the semester, and she can arbitrarily decide to not use the curves on the midterms that she announced and that everyone was counting on. She blatantly misled everyone into thinking that the midterms would be curved, as she sent out emails with cutoffs for certain grades (i.e. "a 12/22 would be considered a C-"). Well, despite the class average for the second exam being a 68%, at the end of the semester she felt that the scores were too high to curve, so everyone got screwed over.

I really, wholeheartedly do not think this class is designed to see if the student understands the main statistical concepts taught. Instead, the professor misleads you, the quiz and exam questions try to trick you, and your final grade is extremely arbitrary. This course needs a major overhaul.

All of the negative reviews about this class are spot on. The teacher was absolutely horrible; just read off of powerpoint slides in front of the huge class. I went to every lecture out of fear that I would miss something important if I didn't, but there was not much going on, and I should have skipped to study the textbook on my own. Amber does not care whatsoever about her students. She does not respond to emails unless you email her more times than once in the same day, and at the end of the semester, she decided to not curve/CURVE DOWN even though she implied all semester that she would curve everybody's grades at the end of the semester. Nobody understands why she did this, and if you try to ask her, she will not respond to you and ignore you. The amount of BS work that is done in this class is over the top. The exams are ridiculously difficult... even if you grasp the concepts, study, practice, and consider yourself a decent "statistician" you still probably won't do well, because the questions on the exam are extremely difficult/out there, and then they won't curve your results, so your GPA will take a HUGE hit. PLEASE do NOT take this class, unless your life depends on it or unless you have to for your major. If you have to take it; good luck, it won't be fun.

Amber Tomas is the worst professor I have had at this university. Only take this class if you have to. If you need just any statistics class, take the introduction class. Amber has the most pointless lectures in the world. I went to every single one because I was scared that one day she might miraculously say something helpful and I'd miss it. Going to class was a huge waste of time. The tests were very difficult and only 20some multiple choice questions, making it easy for your exam grade to fall quickly. The exam grades weren't worth a lot but there was also a huge fiasco where she sent out an email telling us that if you got 20 correct, then that was equivalent to an A. However, after the final exam when our grades were posted, none of the exams had the curve that the entire class was under the impression that we would have. She is a poor communicator and stubborn (she got over 200 emails about the "miscommunication" and still planned to do nothing about it).
In the end, my grade was a B, I know that is not good, but with the tiny amount of the material that I actually understood, the grade shouldn't have even been that high.

Honestly lucky to have had tomas instead of martinet who i've heard was way, way worse. The class is hard it didn't really surprise me

Simply the worst teacher a student could ask for, an utter shock she was allowed to teach at UVA. She was unknowledgeable and unapproachable during office hours, often seeming put out by the fact she had to help students. She would often go through an example in class for 20 minutes only to backtrack saying that she'd been doing the wrong distribution and say its fine we'll figure it out later. What she said varied consistently from the textbook, often providing two explanations and multiple solutions for a given problem. On answer keys and study guides and even lecture slides she would have the wrong information up and would be constantly corrected by students. The problems with this class for ten-fold. AVOID AT ALL COSTS, take any other stat class but this one. Dozens of hours a week are assigned for homework assignments, lab assignments, quizzes, tests and readings, and that's without the optional practice problems which are requisite to even hope for a passing grade in this woefully unorganized and scattered class. No less than 10-15 hours a week will be spent on this class, often with far longer hours that that. I cannot begin to truly explain the incompetency of Professor Tomas and the class itself. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this class

This course was not as difficult as I expected it to be, but I have to admit Professor Tomas was a bit disorganized during lecture considering this is her first time teaching this course at UVa. The labs are also very disorganized and pointless because you have to teach everything yourself because the TA cannot teach. The workload is manageable; there's a webwork due every week as well as a lab and a statistical study you do as a group. There are 2 midterms and one final which weren't too difficult in my opinion. Since there are many components that contribute to your final grade and it's not just exams, I would say you can easily manage to get a B+/A- in the course.

Amber was really sweet during office hours and was a huge help there. Strongly recommend taking advantage of office hours, because there is just way too much material to cover in the short lectures.