STAT 2120

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.