I would not recommend this class if you do not have to take it (precomm). Although Gretchen seems like a pretty good person, she structures the class in a frustrating way. There are weekly homework assignments that take a while, once a week individual lab assignments, once a week group labs, and a semester-long group statistical study. There are two midterms and a final exam, all of which have average grades in the high 60's/low 70's because the questions are completely different from any of the homeworks and labs. She doesn't curve because she says it isn't necessary considering how well everyone usually does on the other factors in your final grade. Although I did end up with a pretty ok grade and what she said held true, it was a very stressful semester of studying very hard, not doing well on exams, and having no idea how my final grade would turn out.

When it comes to recommending this class, the fact is you probably have to take it as a pre-req or you aren't thinking about taking it. I found the material not extremely hard but there is definitely some tricky stuff. There is a problem set each week, participation via an online system, two midterms, and a final. Then for the lab there are two assignments a week, one group and one individual but you are still with your group, then there is a statistical study where you do your own study (survey). I had Chenyi Pan as my TA for lab and she seemed to help much more with the labs by showing answer sheets and grading kindly. As for Prof. Martinet, the notes were helpful and I think she's a good professor. There is just a lot to get through and some of it can be annoying and difficult. As I said, you probably have to take this class, if you study a good amount it shouldn't be too awful but many people do struggle. If you don't have to take this class, you do learn many interesting things and it may still be good to take.

This class was my least favorite by far. Having never taken statistics before, the material was confusing from the start and Martinet had a "this should be pretty obvious" attitude which didn't help. I had to learn literally everything by myself. Lab was a pain and my TA graded far harder than the others did, which hurt since Martinet assumed lab would boost our grade (my group got a C+ on the stat study). Test averages were usually around 70%. At the end of the course I ended up with an A- due to a pretty decent curve (who knows how she applied it though, since she never said anything about it).

Statistics SHOULD be a relatively straightforward class. After all, you're just dealing with numbers and averages- numbers don't lie, right? WRONG. This class is the mother of all of those tricky, bitchy classes that you have to carefully navigate through during the semester if you want to even have hope of finishing with a good grade. It certainly is the Comm School weedout for host of reasons. First of all, Gretchen was a pretty bad lecturer, mostly reading off of PowerPoints 90% of the time- someone who went to class wouldn't have much of a better clue of what the hell was going on than someone who didn't. The labs are set up pretty horribly and extremely confusing- not to mention I had a TA who couldn't even speak English right (Bo Yang). The homeworks are hard to do because you don't really have any idea of what's going on in the first place, so you have to BS your way through most of it. Finally, the tests are literally designed to trick you- it seems as if every other question is a trick question. Don't take this course unless you need to. You have been warned.

Martinet gets a bad rap mainly because the class is difficult (which is because it is a weed out for the COMM school), but she really isn't that bad. The test are going to be ridiculously hard with whatever teacher even if you understand the material. Overall I would not take this class if you don't have to for COMM school because it is not fun and pretty hard.

I actually really liked Professor Martinet. She was laid back, helpful, and willing to work with her students with whatever issues arose. Her lectures weren't the easiest way to learn statistics, but I think that she did as good of a job as anyone could have in a stat lecture. You don't need to read the textbook - just go over her powerpoints - and do all the assignments and you're good. Her grading is pretty lenient as well, which makes up for the difficulty of the exams.

So, Professor Martinet is very nice who clearly means the best for her students, and effectively gives us a lot of work in an attempt to make us understand the material in addition to padding our grade. In essence, she wants us to earn our curve, and that is something that I don't want to particularly complain about. Both the homework and the labs help to understand the material, yet, for some indescribable reason, something strange happens on the tests. One could be getting hundreds in the labs and homework, yet have inordinate difficulty on the test. It's just something that has to "click" with people and the problem just falls into place. She teaches all the material, but, for some reason, the test never seem to reflect what I imagine is a fair number's ability in being able to actually do the material. Could be worse, but could also be a lot better

Prof. Martinet is a nice lady, but OMG she is a very bad professor!
She just reads her slides and stands there for an hour, then after showing easy examples she asks if anyone has questions. Later on her labs have no meaning other than just to sit there and fill out easy information and get credit for it.
However, when tests come around shit gets hard really fast real quick. The questions make you wonder if its introduction in statistics or not. Furthermore, the average for the tests are in the D range and no curve because apparently easy homework and labs are supposed to work as a curve.
I honestly think that she means no ill, but her logic of teaching has many flaws. She expects you to catch on all of material on your own. Overall, avoid this class at all costs unless you really have to take it, and even if you do take it with some one else.

Listen to me carefully. Martinet is a very nice lady who tries, but unfortunately for her, she fails, miserably. She literally stands there and reads the slides (which are available on collab) making coming to class almost pointless. However, she does Learning Catalytics so you may want to come to class... Or, you can stay home and do it seeing that the answers are relatively easy usually. The textbook saved me, cause I actually read it, which was the only way I passed.. With a C+. The labs were not very difficult in my opinion, however they did take me about 1-5 hours sometimes. The homework is relatively easy, but not so much so, but you get like 30 attempts per question. Now here is my problem with the class. It's a severe case of "In class: 1+1=2... On exam: Johnny has four apples and gives away 1, calculate the mass of the sun". NOTHING you do in class is even slightly reflective of the exams. The questions are very tricky, and the exam is takes some time to do. Also she thinks she doing us a favor by giving us a formula sheet, however we use excel for basically everything besides exams, and she doesn't teach us calculator functions, so you have to use the ones on the formula sheet... And that's IF you know which formula is for what. There is also a lot of useless information to throw you off as well. I do not recommend this class. The average for the final was a 67. The lowest grade was a 25. Highest 100 (people who probably took over the class). Please stay away.

Before I start railing this class overall, I want to say that I think Professor Martinet is a very nice lady, who does try to seem accessible to students and has been very courteous when I emailed her with questions about the class.

That said, this class is truly dreadful. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone for a few different reasons. Honestly, the main sticking point for me was the fact that the exams were absolutely nothing like any of the work that she gives you throughout the semester. And trust me, I did plenty of work throughout the semester as it was.

The homework was annoying, but is helpful because it does basically require you to learn the material. I liked this, sort of. The cool part of the homework is that she gives you thirty attempts for usually 15-17 of the 20 problems assigned! And, typically, if you still can't get it, she'll give you more attempts. This is really helpful too as most of these problems have multiple parts to them and it will show you which part is right and will give you partial credit! The problem lies in those other 3-5 problems. The things that were cool about the other problems don't exist with these. You get four attempts, which is admittedly fair for the usual multiple choice/TF questions that they are. But there is no partial credit, and it won't tell you if you got them right or not. Not to mention that on many occasions I spotted some questions that blatantly contradicted the notes. That's annoying as sin. Luckily, Martinet drops 2 of the 12 homework grades, so it is a little forgiving.

Next are the labs. My Statistical Study group was quite fantastic, I must say. I really enjoyed my other two partners as they were very competent and really helped me understand the material sometimes (my lecture was a day behind theirs). Really cool people. We ended up getting great grades for the work that we did together, and I felt that this was a really satisfying part of the course. However, my TA was not. Heather Cook was a mixed bag. I do think she cared but I think everyone got a really bad feeling about her at the beginning. It was mostly little stuff, but I felt uncomfortable with my grades with her. There were several occasions where the grades on my papers didn't match what was on Collab, and that's a really scary thought at the end of the semester when you're not getting the paper submissions back anymore.

The individual labs were very difficult, I thought. They typically took me about 4-7 hours to do overall, and I think that's a bit overkill.

Learning Catalytics was fine. Also, it appears that a lot of people did start skipping because Martinet changed the grading scale for that part of the final grade. The Learning Catalytics part was fair, albeit a tad bit useless.

Also, as I said before, the exams were ungodly hard at times. The final was especially hard. Honestly, even after I did every homework set and did every lab, I didn't have a clue what I was doing on the final even though I should have already done everything throughout the course and gotten really good grades. I think this stems from the fact that Martinet specifically chooses to teach you to use Excel, and then takes it away on the tests. She gives you the functions in the back, but then gives you a bunch of distractor functions as well. That's not fair in the slightest. If it says anything, the average for the final exam was a 67.

I think I've said enough. Overall, if a friend asked me if I recommended this course, I would definitely say no. This class was awful.