STAT 3080

I had Heather as my STAT2120 TA.

She is lazy and unhelpful. All she does is just whine about her depressing life stories. She just sits back in a chair and does nothing while asking her assistants to grade the labs. Heather has no knowledge in statistics. Also, if you ask Heather a question, you would most likely hear, 'I don't know' or 'Do it yourself'. The WORST

This is the worst class I have ever taken at UVA. Before this, I took another 3000 level statistics course and really enjoyed it. But when I took this class, it made me realize why everyone hates the statistics department here. A few of my friends who took it said it was easy, but they had Caitlin Steiner. Also a lot of people say its no work, which is simply untrue if you are new to R.

Here's the run down:

1. Heather Cook is by far the least qualified instructor I have EVER had. She reads straight off slides (when I say straight, I mean she just looks at the slides and reads them word by word). She is NO help during office hours (She will say things like "try it yourself" and "what do you think?"). She seems to have no knowledge of the course at all. I think the only reason she is even teaching this course is because this semester there was a super high demand to get into the course, so they had to find another instructor to make two sections.

2. The notes are no longer posted on collab. This semester, they purposely took out the filled in powerpoint slides, so you have to go to class and take notes. Obviously, this is expected from all classes but some of the slides have blocks of text which make it nearly impossible to write down. (I ended up having to take pictures of half of the lecture notes DURING class, and it was hard as hell to study because my notes were so disorganized - some pictures and some handwritten.

3. The grading is unfair. My friend lost 20% on a project because ONE line of code was wrong. This led to other parts of his code to be wrong, and because other parts were wrong he got 0% on an entire question of the project. I also lost 25% off one of my homeworks because I misinterpreted one of the questions on the homework, did EXTRA work, and plotted one thing wrong (Which was a result of two incorrect lines of code).

This class made me very sad. I'm currently enrolled in the class actually, but it made me so angry that I had to make a review.

I hate her. She makes me hate the entire fucking Stat department at UVA. The Stat department clearly does not screen their teachers. No way she has a teaching permit, no way is she qualified to teach a class. I'm inclined to believe she couldn't teach a group of pre-schoolers, and they don't even need to learn.

I agree completely with the reviews below. This class was suppose to be a great class but Heather Cook ruined it. She has no engagement in the class or her students and the material of the class is way too difficult for students with no introduction to R before. Also, the grading is not fair and completely random. Do not take this course, it is hard, unless, and you will not get much out of it at all. The worst class experience and professor I have had at UVA.

This is by a large margin the worst class I have taken at UVA. It has very difficult subject matter which was covered to quickly. The professor was completely uninterested I helping the students and actively made it more difficult to learn by blanking out the slides. A simple slide deck would have been better than this class. This class makes UVA look very bad and makes you question what you are spending 20k per semester on. It also has arbitrary and random grading designed to be impossible because the instructions are to vague to adequately meet the rubrik. For your own sake, save yourself.

The other reviews do not lie, the is a very sad excuse for a class. It almost feels right just to say this is the worst class ever and leave it, but I'll state my case anyway.

1. Heather Cook is simply an incompetent professor. Period. She seems like a nice enough person and in office hours wasn't terrible, but she could care less about the class. She simply read off the other professors slides during class (and it was clear that this was her first time reading them). She often didn't know details about our assignments and thus couldn't answer our questions, and her lecture style is dry as sand.
2. Grading: I do not know how one could do well in this class. The assignments are vague and not instruction is given on how the assignments are graded. I knew R coming in so none of the material was really new to me, but even I couldn't get past the hieroglyphics that were most of our assignments (and as mentioned above, Heather didn't know anything about the assignments either). The recommended textbook was a savior because a lot of the homework questions came right out of it. Don't expect a good grade in this class regardless of how well you've done in MUCH harder classes. You will lose the most trivial and petty points on assignments and will end up with a mediocre grade for what should be an easy A class.

Overall, this class was immense frustration and I really feel as though I have nothing to show for it. Please don't take this class, regardless of how easy or interesting it sounds.