STAT 2120

This is a weed out course but if you enjoy statistics and data analysis then you will ultimately enjoy the class. Getting used to the coding portion of the class is difficult but you are provided with all the scripts that you need. There is weekly homework on top of bi-weekly labs that take a good while. Midterms are pretty difficult and so is the final. While you may enjoy this class if you like statistics, I would not suggest taking this course if you do not have any interest in statistics or experience with coding.

I'm going to give a fairly lengthy review, and considering that this semester did not go too well, I'm not sure how relevant this will be if he changes the course structure in the future. However, I'll try to throw in some more general information about how to succeed in 2120. To begin, there's a lecture quiz after every lab and lecture, and overall they're not too bad, but they did suck this year because they were 30% of the grade and getting even one question wrong on a quiz gives you an 80%. There's also weekly homework and two labs a week. In my opinion, these were very easy. Ross posts all the necessary code on Collab, so all you really have to do is change the file name and numbers and it should be fine. It never took my group more than 20 mins to complete the labs. HW took over an hour on average but was also pretty doable. For me, the biggest issue with the course was the fact that all the HW and labs are based on python whereas the exams require actual statistical knowledge. The best way to prepare for these is to go over the lecture videos and solution vidoes (2x speed works fine). Even if you dutifully take notes in class, I found that skimming through the recorded lecture videos again before the exam was helpful because Ross would go over things more conceptually. Ross usually tried to be helpful, but sometimes I found him abrasive in office hours, so I also did teach myself some of the content with Youtube videos to make sure I really understood everything conceptually. Ross is VERY BIG on concepts. Also, make use of your cheat sheets. I basically wrote out all the lecture material in very small hand-writing, which made the exams a bit easier. Anyways, to study for exams just go over anything you don't understand 100% and also test yourself by making sure you know what tests to run and which code to use. I like to be lazy, but this is definitely a class that requires more active studying and actual engagement with the course content. The LTAs are okay and the UTAs are pretty useless (they often had no idea how to help and sometimes gave out the wrong information) but they're nice enough. The midterm project is an easy grade boost and the final project was a bit annoying, but still possible to do very well in. Make time to meet with Ross or the LTAs to make sure you don't make any dumb mistakes on the final paper, and you should be able to bet on getting a B+ at minimum and ideally an A. Anyways, this class was annoying mostly because I felt like it was too easy to just copy and paste stuff for the HW and labs and I always felt underprepared for the exams, but I ended up doing really well in the class so it's possible to just teach yourself everything before the exams. People really disliked the exams, but I thought most were very fair, and Ross usually gave everyone credit for the really difficult questions that everyone failed. Even though he seems like a stickler, and sometimes he is, he does find ways to curve and save people's GPAs.

A classic comm school pre-req that unfortunately sinks your GPA. Most recent test had an average of 60 after he curved it. If you want to do well, go to as many P2L sessions as possible and do review far ahead of exams + make an amazing cheat sheet.

Good luck with Richard Ross. Overall, the class is uninteresting, poorly taught, poorly managed. Even the TA asked me if the first midterm would be online or on paper minutes before we had to start the exam, since the professor was late and evidently lacks communication skills with his LTA’s. He says that we do not offer him feedback, which could be very well true, but he is not the most welcoming professor. If this course is a prereq for you, I would advise you spend the bulk of your studying in stats. He rushes through the material and throws together a half baked exam, and according to previous years is vary particular about verbiage, meaning you must absorb this man’s brain waves to get an ounce of an idea of what he wants from you. This is not a review of someone scorned. This is review of someone who has dealt with people of many types and it doesn’t take a conversation to get the idea of what kind of educator RR Is.

This class could be conducted in a way better manner, but unfortunately Professor Ross is a very difficult teacher who doesn't seem to care much for his students. He throws python at you without teaching it at all. He assigns an absurd amount of work every week. He isn't a very forgiving teacher and the grading on exams are god awful. His lectures put you to sleep. The pacing is fast and the material taught for the final exam is rushed and not well explained. Though many students need tot ake it for a prereq just know that this course is not it.

Unnecessary amount of workload for very little benefit. Getting good grades on labs/homework is dependent on your ability to read Ross' mind, as his assignment questions are often open-ended despite him only looking for a certain answer in certain wording. He seems like a nice guy, but it goes to waste as he is unforgiving in exams and labs when it comes to help and curves. (There are no curves) Seeking help from the guy himself isn't very helpful as he often contradicts himself and can leave you more confused than where you started. During our final lab project, for example, the instruction sheet had something that was contradicted by another post by Ross. When he made a second post to clear the confusion, he ended up not only failing to address the initial contradiction, he added more detail for a solution that included material that wasn't taught in the course (and therefore not usable in the final project.) If this class isn't a prereq for you, please take any other stat class.

I didn't particularly enjoy this class, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I learned a lot. Using python for statistics, while confusing at first, was really cool to see. The most frustrating part of this class is that the grading on tests is harsh. Most of the stuff on the tests is conceptual, and you really have to pack in buzzwords in explanations or you aren't gonna get full points. To succeed in this class, I would form a study session with people and collaborate on the homework. Textbook and calc 1 knowledge are not required. Seriously. Also, I found that going to P2L sessions really helped (you'll know what that is when the class starts). Overall okay class, but much is left to be desired.

When most people talk about this class, they either really hate it or are pretty much indifferent. There are weekly homework assignments, post-lecture quizzes, lab assignments, 2 midterms and final, project, and lots of extra credit opportunities. The lectures were recorded and posted on Microsoft Teams, so if you really needed to miss a class or just missed something during the live lecture, they were easily accessible. As for Rich Ross, I would say that he is a pretty straightforward professor, which can sometimes make him unlikeable. But, for the most part, I appreciated this about him; he was clear in his class expectations. I didn't like though that, sometimes, the homework/lecture quizzes/labs could have really ambiguous wording (SO frustrating). I mainly went to TA office hours, and often times, it would just be a bunch of students all confused about the same question. The lab TAs were really approachable and tried to be helpful, but since they don't grade the homework, they didn't always have the answer. Overall, I enjoyed this class, but I also just generally like statistics. I thought the workload was manageable (as long as you don't procrastinate on the homework and try and collaborate with other students - you can miss the smallest detail, which they take off points for), the exams were straightforward, and DEFINITELY DO THE EXTRA CREDIT. In terms of the project, double check your work! Just like the homework and labs, you can get points off for the smallest details, which add up in the end.

I took this class as a pre-req for econ, and I had heard a lot of bad things about it but honestly thought it was fine. It's 2 lectures and 2 labs per week, and the labs are super helpful for understanding the material, and so are the homeworks. The workload really isn't bad - it's just a lot of class time, but outside of class, there's one homework per week and post-lecture quizzes that take 5-10 minutes which you can do just by looking at your notes. I felt very prepared for exams just from labs and homeworks and I didn't have to study much outside of making the cheat sheet - rewriting my notes was enough studying for me. We had P2L for this class, so go to that, especially before exams because they have really helpful practice questions/tests. Also for homeworks, you're allowed to work with people. This class used campuswirse (similar to piazza if you've used that in other classes) and you get extra credit for answering other people's questions, which was great because every time I had a question a bunch of people answered really quickly. He also offers extra credit for exams so that's some easy points you can get.

I think Professor Ross is a great teacher. He explains things very clearly and uses a lot of examples during lectures. I also think he's very fair and cares about his students.

If you don't have any background in coding/python it can be a little hard at first, but the coding is pretty easy once you get the hang of it - he gives you most of the code you need and you just alter it a little for specific questions.

Overall, I thought this class was interesting and a good intro to stats and very doable if you stay on top of things.

How should I put this, let me start with a conclusion: Don't ever take this course if you don't have to. If you are interested in statistics, take a higher level or different stat course cuz the contents is mostly covered in high school. If you have to take this for perquisite, then good luck to you and your GPA.

I would say no doubt that Ross is a knowledgeable instructor that is more than capable of teaching this course. However, he is not a good professor nor a good educator. Many of the course's content is covered throughout your high school whether you studied IB, AP or even A level statistics. He often makes simply content way harder for students to understand by explaining and using a method that is much harder for students to learn well and understand. The workload for this course is heavy but understandable, given the fact that it is a 4 credit course. However, Rich Ross is the most nitpicking and weird tempered instructor that I have ever met. Not only his exam grading procedures are extremely nitpicking (removing all points for a tiny partial error), he also set his exams to have weird and confusing questions that completely differs from the quizzes and homework we have done throughout the course. His homework and lab questions are worded really bad where you don't know what he is asking, this was even agreed by his TAs when we seek help trying to understand the question, and the TA told us to just "Do the best you can since I am not sure either." Ross isn't reasonable either, as a person or an educator. Ross gave us opportunities to earn extra credit on midterms by posting review questions on campuswire, while ignoring the fact that campuswire could not handle questions and answers that is too long. When approaching Ross and tried to work out some solution around this uncontrollable technology error that prevents many students from earning their extra credits, he simply replied "We will grade all posts made to Campuswire that meet the conditions for grading. It is each student’s responsibility to ensure that their submission is visible on Campuswire. To deviate from this would undermine the equity of opportunity that I offer to students." While Ross thinks he is ensuring "the equity of opportunity" that he provides to each student, he is discriminating unfairly against those students that faces an unavoidable technology error where it is completely not their fault.

Ross is more than worthy of teaching at UVA with his expertise on statistical knowledge, but maybe not a introductionary course that has more than 400 people.

This class isn't too difficult content-wise, but it's pretty time-consuming. There are 2 labs per week that you do with your group of ~4 people; the class time given to complete the lab is 50 minutes, but if you don't have a great group, it usually takes about 20-30 extra minutes to finish the labs (the labs are fairly long). There's one homework assignment per week; I worked through the homeworks fairly efficiently, but it still took me about 2 hours on average to complete it. I also went to his office hours every week to clarify homework questions that I was unsure about, which was helpful. Although Professor Ross doesn't give you practice exam questions, which makes it difficult to know what to expect, his exams are fairly straightforward and he also offers 2-4 extra credit points. #tCFfall2021

To put it simply, this course is a lot of work. You have lecture twice a week and lab twice a week (my lab was online which wasn't ideal but obviously not a fault of Ross) and homework due almost every saturday, so you're doing some sort of work for this class almost everyday. The first two weeks are chaotic because you don't have a consistent lab group until add/drop ends and because you are simultaneously having to learn how to use Python outside of lecture on top of stats content. That said, Ross does give you some leniency - he offers a decent amount of extra credit opportunities and your 2-4 lowest scores on lecture quizzes, HW, and labs are dropped depending on the type of assignment. I felt that lecture was sufficient in teaching the information, and the textbook is 100% optional but some people like having it. While this class is definitely doable and you can do well in it, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are really interested in stats or need to take it as a pre-req - if you're just looking to fulfill a gen ed I would not recommend taking this course due to the workload. If you have a little bit of time before taking this course, I would recommend trying to familiarize yourself with python a little (nothing extreme, just the basics of how the program works) so you aren't caught completely off guard at the beginning of the semester.

Professor Ross and the TAs were not very helpful. This is a course with a LOT of content and units. There was an extremely large disparity between students with and without coding backgrounds that was not justly accounted for. Professor Ross did not receive constructive criticism well (when it came to technical issues of virtual exam formatting) and was quite hostile in response to many students.

Richard Ross was better than I expected. That being said, my expectations, from what I was told before taking his course, were very low. He is a genuinely nice dude and gives opportunities for extra credit. However, the amount of work he sends is ridiculous. The homework each week takes at least 2 hours to finish and thats apart from the group labs he sends. His lectures are alright, and its helpful that he allows us to use our class notes and resources during the exam. But honestly, the TAs are the worst part of the course (At least some of them). They all seem in a rush and rather give you a wrong answer or advice just to get it over with. Some were helpful though, but most sucked tbh. The project was fine, just not explained at all.

I personally recommend the book if you can find it at a good price because the powerpoints and lectures weren't enough for me to fully understand the material, if not the resources he provides are enough. He gives opportunity for extra credit like posting on campuswire (up to 2% I think) so it's not like he's unforgiving. This is a class where you're going to have to put a lot of time and effort in (like A LOT of time) but overall it's not the worst. I had to take this as a pre-req for something else, but if you're genuinely interested in stats I don't think that this class should be that bad. My advice is to go to OH more if you have any questions because most TAs will check over your homework answers before you turn it in to see if they're right if you ask. Calc 1 is recommended for this class but honestly it wasn't ever used so if you haven't taken calc before I think you can still take this class.
#tCFspring2021

this class is so much freakin work. You truly never get a break. the exams are hard cuz theyre nothing like the labs and homework you've spent so much time on. if you're like me u had to take it for mcintire so you don't really have any options but just go in knowing this class takes up a bunch of time. OH also -- textbook is not necessary at all.

STAT 2120 is a lot of work. Do not take this class at the same time as other difficult classes. I took it with managerial accounting and it was a bad decision. The first two weeks are especially stressful because you have to do an online Python course IN ADDITION to all the regular class responsibilities and assignments. The main issue with the course is that so much content is covered in such a short amount of time, arguably to a fault. The class as a whole does badly on exams, so I suspect people aren't learning as much as they should be due to how crammed the content is. Professor Ross is also not amazing at explaining advanced concepts. Labs help so much because they take his vague and awkward descriptions and make sense out of them through application. Professor Ross is generous with the grading distribution, however, and you do end up with a better grade than you'd expect.

Ross is a decent professor. I think he seems to get more hate/criticism than is deserved. He probably won't be the greatest professor you ever have, but certainly for an intro class like this, he does what is necessary. He also tends to keep his lectures short which is nice. I for one appreciated the class in the sense that it strayed away from more theoretical material and made sure we applied the things that we were learning to real and practical data. Instead of memorizing boring theorems and such, we were taught several important tools for inferential statistics that are actionable. I would say to not be discouraged from taking this class just because Ross is teaching it.

This was Professor Ross' second full semester and he did a decent job for his experience. Don't get me wrong there were some portions I wish he would've listened to student feedback for but overall he did his best to be a fair grader within reason. This class was a lot of work and your experience depends a lot on how good/bad your lab group is as you have to do 2 labs a week and then a final project with them as well. If I had one piece of advice it would be to learn python ahead of time if you can help it- he only gives you a week to learn it essentially. Make sure you take good notes and prepare for exams by making sure you understand how every piece of code works and when to use it. Python is your best friend or your worst enemy in this class.

If you don't read anything else, just read this: there are not that many office hours each week compared to other introductory level classes I've taken, but they are super helpful to ask questions about topics or the labs and homework and they will help a ton. just go you won't regret it!
This course is a lot of work: two labs and a homework due each week at the minimum. However, the course is not as hard as the amount of assignments indicate. As long as you put in the work, your grade should be fine. Something nice Professor Ross did was to provide all of the labs/ homework/ lecture videos far in advance, so it was easy and helpful to work a few days ahead. I made a habit of starting the weekly homework a week in advance, which helped with managing the course load. We used an online question forum website, and students could get up to 2% extra credit on their entire grade for effective participation there. I highly recommend answering your classmate's question there. We had permanent lab groups (~4 students) the entire semester. Regardless of how good your lab group is, I HIGHLY recommend previewing the lab before meeting with your group. If every member reads through the lab questions beforehand and starts answering questions they know how to do, your lab group will be much more productive. Only 50 minutes is allotted for lab time, which in my opinion is not enough for most of the labs, so looking over it beforehand makes those 50 minutes count more. Prior coding experience (this course uses Python, but any language works) is very helpful because teaching Python is not a focus of the class and can save time.
I don't like that the final project was crammed into the last < 2 weeks, but office hours were super helpful for clarifying the abundant unclear instructions. I don't think this is a very enjoyable class for most students, but there is a lot of information taught. I was unsure whether to go into statistics before taking this course, but I spent a lot of time and learned a lot in return and am overall much more interested in statistics.

This class may have been better before it went online, but it wasn't very enjoyable for me. Professor Ross' lectures were not super clear, making it necessary to learn the topic on your own, and if I didn't have prior coding knowledge in python this class would have been a lot harder. The structure of the class was really what I didn't like though, as Professor Ross crammed everything into the last two weeks, although this may have been because of the short semester due to COVID. Overall, it wasn't awful especially if you have already taken a coding and/or a stats class, but it isn't super fun.

Ah, Richard Ross. What a man. My main gripe is that he curved the first exam with like 10 points so we thought we were all set for the rest of the year, but tragically, he ended the final with a 76 mean. Also he's just the worst at wording. On the final project, we were APPARENTLY supposed to provide the general form of an equation, but the instructions just said "model," so many of us provided only the model specific to the problem and lost like... 10% on the final project. Luckily for us, our TA was nice enough to let us know what was up beforehand, but most of the class was not so lucky. Richard Ross refused to give people points back which was an unsavory move. The same thing was true of the post-lecture quizzes and the homework.

For Fall 2020, each week had two prerecorded lectures and two synchronous labs. The lectures were pretty to the point and Professor Ross was an effective teacher. The labs were basically problem sets you completed with a group of 2-3 other students. They were pretty enjoyable if you had a good group. The course also had weekly homework, two midterms, a project, and the final. All of those had a reasonable difficulty. The course used Python for all calculations, so it helped to have some prior programming knowledge although isn't necessary.

Love this guy! I think this year was his second year teaching this course and although it was online due to covid, I really enjoyed it! It was a synchronous lecture with a synchronous lab. The lectures were very engaging and the PowerPoints on the material was explained really well. Many people are worried about the coding portion of this course but DO NOT WORRY YOU WILL CATCH ON! Professor Ross doesn't expect you to be a coding wiz so just take good notes and pay attention to what he says and you will be good! There are 2 midterms and a final (all very under a time crunch so be prepared) in this course along with a weekly homework assignment which took me about 3 hours to complete and labs 2x a week where you work in a group and complete exercises with aid from TAs. It's not that bad at all. #tCF2020

Professor Ross is hands down one of the most empathetic and sincere professors I have ever had. He always goes out of his way to make students feel welcome and makes an effort to take everyone into consideration. HE'S SERIOUSLY THE BEST such a nice and genuine person. I seriously can't find anything bad to say about him-- definitely gonna miss having him as a professor.

Although the Fall 2020 semester isn't over yet, I just wanted to write a review on my experience in this course so far. I was quite nervous coming into this class, but after you get a hang of it, it really isn't too bad. At first it is quite overwhelming since there are many different platforms used in this class, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I would say that the biggest thing people complain about for this class is the use of Python/coding, but it really isn't that bad because Professor Ross provides us with the code for most/if not all concepts. Professor Ross states in the beginning of the course that he provides all the resources for students to do well, which I completely agree with. Professor Ross is very organized and gives us a "to-do list" of things for each class, which is really helpful. A tip that I would give for anyone taking this class is to utilize Campuswire! Also, Professor Ross is a super understanding professor and he is very considerate of his students. Due to COVID changes, many people struggled on the first exam with technical difficulties, which Professor Ross handled very well and was super open to suggestions on how to improve the class. He is also very considerate of many other things in general (he's very woke, for lack of better words), and you can just tell he is a genuinely good guy. I really loved having him as a professor.

For me personally, the only thing that I didn't particularly enjoy with this class were the labs, but it's just something that is required with the course anyway. I do agree with other posts that the class is kind of a lot of work, but I would say it's pretty easy to get a good grade in this class because many of the lowest grades are dropped so it's worth it in the end.

Lots of work, don't take this class unless you are prepared to have 2-3 hours of work for it every day. Do not take unless you have sufficient experience in coding.

Because of the labs and lectures, this class takes up a lot of time in one's schedule. There's very little beginner instruction about Python, so be prepared to just kinda learn the basics on your own; however, it's not too bad, because Ross posts his scripts, so you can just copy and paste them into Spyder to run. The material is pretty standard of an Intro Stat course, but exam difficulty was super inconsistent -- the first exam was pretty easy, the second was super hard due to the time constraint, and the last one was pretty in the middle. The grade breakdown is split between homework, exams, lab reports, a final lab project, and participation. Honestly, it's quite a heavy workload even though it's a 4 credit class. There's extra credit available for posting in the discussion forums. Ross is a decent, understanding prof and is very helpful during office hours if you go, but I also disapproved of his sudden change of exam policy which is mentioned quite a bit in the other comments. Although it can't excuse everything, it's important to remember that this was Ross's first year teaching this class, so hopefully, it gets better and more organized from here out. However, overall if you need to take STAT 2120 for a requirement, then Ross is a pretty good choice based on his personality, but get ready for some inconsistencies.

This comment will probably be downvoted by all the Ross haters from Spring 2020, but this is a honest review of the professor and the class.

Professor Ross got a bad rep this semester because he initially gave us 48 hours to complete the final, but reduced it to the standard 3 hours a week before the final. He did this because some people cheated in the second midterm and giving people more time would only give them a better chance to cheat. Many students had a problem with this (because the second midterm took a long time to complete). However, the final was not as intense as the midterm, and 3 hours was more than enough to complete it.

Other than that, Prof Ross is a great professor. He's new, so I was hesitant to take his course at first. Regardless, it was a good decision because he was a very chill guy. The transition to online teaching was very handled, and there were very little hiccups (except for the first lab, the rest went well). There are always tons of TAs to help during labs, and Prof Ross and the TAs host a lot of office hours for students to ask questions. If you have any questions, going to office hours is extremely beneficial. We also get extra credit if we answer our peers' questions about statistics on the Collab discussion page. Prof Ross said he'll give everyone 1% extra credit if 90% of the class filled out the course evaluation but less than 90% did it (I believe it was very close to 90 though), and he gave us extra credit anyways. As for the course, I wanted to only major in commerce when I started this course, but I'm also interested in majoring in statistics now. That's how interesting the course can be (if you're even a little interested in statistical analysis). The course is quite challenging, so be prepared to dedicate much more time to it than your other subjects.

Professor Ross is a wonderful professor who is very understanding and super helpful if you want help. If you dedicate time to this class, there is no reason you won't get an A.

To begin, yes, STAT 2120 with Ross will be a time-consuming course and I personally wouldn't recommend taking the class unless it's required for your major and school (which it is required for many majors i.e. econ, comm, etc.). There are two lectures and two labs a week and you will always have: two post-lecture online quizzes each week, two labs (in groups) per week, one homework assignment a week, and a form of participation clicker questions during lecture. There are 3 exams and a final project as well. The work is doable and it is permitted to work in groups for a lot of it (not quizzes or tests, obviously) but it's really important to start working on assignments as early as you can. Also, the TA grading can suck because it was pretty inconsistent a lot of the time but you can submit regrade requests for most things. The issue with the course were the exams because although the content was fair, it felt like we were never allotted enough time except for the final (which was a fiasco in itself as im sure others have mentioned below). Ross is a good professor, he knows his stuff, makes himself available, and seems like a nice person. He did go over time in lectures though which I suspect he will get better at going forward. Possible to get an A or A-, but this is a class that you will have to prioritize.

Okay so the reviews I've seen for Ross are super harsh, which is why I feel compelled to write this review. For what it's worth, I am not a stats major and this class wasn't even a prerequisite for me, but I thought it would be useful to learn the content. First off, this class is a lot of work, but I think that's just the design of the course and not a fault of Ross. You have lab twice a week and homework around once a week, lectures twice a week, and post lecture quizzes twice a week. None of the work is actually that hard and nearly all of it can be done in groups. I would say that even though I hated going to lab sometimes, it really does force you to learn the material so I never thought I was behind on material and honestly knew the content better than the rest of my classes. Ross is SO nice, he really cares about students learning and put in way more effort during the transition to online by holding extra office hours, being available over email, and responsive on discussion boards. You have the opportunity to earn 2% extra credit by answering questions from your peers, he offered 1% extra credit for filling out course evals, and each midterm is only worth 10%. It's super doable, as long as you keep up with the workload each week. I think that utilizing office hours is also super helpful, especially TA office hours to check HW. So overall, I would totally recommend taking this class with Ross if you have to take 2120. He is approachable, makes his classes really easy and predictable, and the format of the course is just really easy to work into your schoolwork routine once you get the hang of it. The slides are straightforward and the content just isn't that hard. The downsides: TA grading is super annoying, I would get different grades than my friends sometimes even when we all worked together (which is allowed). I submitted regrade requests and eventually my grade would go up, but this is just annoying and needs to change next semester. Also, the midterms were super rushed. I didn't think the content was hard at all and the questions were fair game, but I just was rushing through them so quickly. It kinda sucked because I feel like they tested speed more than content mastery, since I could've done much better if I had more time to think on the problems. As for the finals thing....yeah Ross said we would get 2 days, then changed it to 3 hours after the CR/NC deadline which was really annoying but he definitely made up for this by making the final exam VERY doable for the 3 hour period, so I guess I forgive him, he really did the best he could do. Overall, though, as this was Ross's first semester teaching I think he did a phenomenal job, this was a huge class to take on for a first timer, and he did it nearly flawlessly. He is also super receptive to student feedback so I am guessing he will read these reviews/take his course evals really seriously to improve next semester. Overall, I expect to get an A in this class, and I didn't too hot on the midterms because of the timing issues, and this is a non-math person speaking. I just felt like I should give this lengthy review if you are anything like me and really concerned about this class, because I really think that Ross is great and this class was good, no regrets taking it with him! Edited to add that this class also uses Python which was really intimidating at first but honestly it is just used as a glorified calculator to compute output, you don't actually really learn any code. He provides the scripts for you and explains how to use them, you're not coding anything yourself. Background in Python is definitely not necessary and he doesn't expect you to be good at it, just be familiar with the commands he runs in class, but it's super easy. It might make more sense if you already understand Python, but is by no means necessary, and learning basic Python functions in this class is honestly useful! TLDR: Take this class with Ross, he's super nice and understanding, very fair/predictable course, this is coming from someone who is very obsessive with schoolwork and needs consistency in a class. Even though the material can just be kind of boring sometimes, this is more of the fact that it's statistics. Ross does a good job at making this a good course for any kind of student. The worked examples he does in class are really useful at reinforcing the material and I felt like the skills learned really built on each other in an easy to learn way.

This was Ross's first semester teaching and it showed. Lectures ran over almost every single class with the most important material rushed at the end. He punished the entire class for the actions of a small group of cheaters, presumably to set the tone and give himself a tougher reputation. Please don't believe any review that says this class was organized because it was far from it. Office hours are a the best way to make an afternoon disappear, because thats how long it will take to get your simple question answered. The 2nd midterm and final were a mess and a lot of it was self-induced. Prof Ross is passionate about stats and he did his best though, so don't worry about taking the course with him. If you show up, have a good lab group, and make friends with people that know python, you will get an A or A-. I think he knows he kind of screwed this semester up, so he gave us an extra 1% on the course grade and made the final very reasonable. It is hard to put the blame completely on him because the weird circumstances this semester, but know that you should not worry about taking with professor ross.

Ricky D. Ross seemed like a pretty cool, knowledgeable guy until about half way through the semester. First exam=easy. 2nd exam= hard as [....] and not nearly enough time. So, he decides to give us a 48 hour window to work on the final with open notes. Wow! My grade and the entire class' grades are saved! Nope. He changes it not even a week before the exam and after we select credit/no credit. Why did he do that? About 5% of the class cheated on the last exam. So now, instead of just punishing them, we have to take a final that will easily take over 5 hours to complete in 3 hours! Makes a lot of sense Lil Boy Richie! Thanks for screwing the entire class over despite knowing this class is a prerequisite for tons of schools/majors.

As for an actual day to day class rating, he was okay. Far from the most interesting but just enough to keep you awake. Homework, labs, and lecture quizzes weekly- they aren't too bad. Homework can be rough at times, but in lab just get a good group who knows python. Seemed like an overall decent guy; just screwed me on my final grade last second and has very poorly thought out grading policies. I would try to take with someone more chill. Peace out Richmond Ross. $$$

Rich Ross is a great guy and he’s very willing to help you during office hours as well as through his online discussion board. However the class itself was quite tedious, with 2 labs and 2 lectures a week as well as quizzes after every lecture, graded questions in lecture, and bi-weekly-ish homeworks. Sometimes I felt the lectures were too short as the professor would be a bit rushed towards the end and I felt like I wasn’t getting all the info I needed. Overall the material was not too bad, I went in with no statistics knowledge but managed to understand the concepts just by doing practice and doing labs/hw. Something that helped me a lot was taking CS 1110 beforehand so I had a solid grasp on python and the coding portion wasn’t as bad. This class is pretty coding heavy and if you don’t know python you’re going to have to learn on the go, despite the lessons they make you do at the beginning of the semester. Thankfully the professor posts his scripts so you can just copy them, but it’s very helpful to understand what the code is actually doing. I wouldn’t recommend this class unless you have to take it, just because of the amount of time it takes up and that it’s not like it’s that fun, for most people at least.