I really enjoyed this class! Professor Varanyak used a "flipped classroom" where she posted video lectures we had to watch before the class, then reviewed the material in the first thirty minutes of class, and we spent the rest of the time working on group work, short daily classworks based on the material we had learned. SAS was really tedious and irritating to learn, but she gave us more or less all the code we needed. We had "labs" for each unit, basically a larger classwork with material from the whole unit, which was in partners, weekly open note quizzes, and a large final project split up into two parts. To anyone considering taking this class, I say go for it, its not that bad, and focus most heavily on the quizzes, labs, and project - don't slack off. #tCFfall2021

Krista has DEFINITELY listened to reviews and has changed this class for the better. A lot of the complaints listed in reviews from previous semesters have been fixed. Homeworks are optional, there is no busywork, and the workload is extremely minimal. On average, I spent less than 1 hour working on this class outside of lectures. Instead of homework, we have 10 weekly quizzes that are a total of 15% of your grade. She drops the lowest 2, and the last 2 are automatic 100s (for completion). I thought the material was interesting and Krista was super nice and approachable. The bulk of your grade in this class will be from the project (20% for part 1 and 25% for part 2). The rubrics are straightforward, and I found it very easy to be successful in this class.

I think the past reviews of Krista were rather harsh. I think she's changed the format a bit since previous years. There really wasn't a lot of homework most weeks. She uploads lecture videos that we're supposed to watch before class, and they're helpful for the in-class group activities. The lecture video slides are thorough enough that you don't even need the textbook. She spends some time at the top of every class going over the same material as the lecture video which I rarely paid attention to tbh, I'd just get started on the in-class assignment. The in-class assignments weren't difficult, and she basically provides all the SAS code you need so it's fairly straightforward. The "homeworks" were completely optional. Instead, we had weekly quizzes on Gradescope that weren't incredibly difficult either if you looked at the lecture slides. Each unit there would be a "lab" that you'd work on with a partner that was essentially a longer version of the in-class assignments. The most stressful part of the course were the two group projects. Because the day-to-day class activities were so simple, it felt harder to actually apply the concepts we were supposed to learn to the project. My advice is to not procrastinate, get a good group, and go to office hours to ask questions. Krista and her TAs were generally pretty good about answering questions. One other gripe I had with the course was that an A was a 95 which is needlessly high imo

Learned a lot of useful methods for analyzing data and building multiple linear regression or logistical regression models. The grade is mostly based on group work so it is important to pick a good one. There are lots of little deadlines and you don't want to forget about them as their is no late policy.

Krista throws a lot of information and assignments at you- prerecorded lecture videos, daily class meetings, classwork assignments, lab assignments, monthly homeworks, and project deadlines. However, most of this work is really manageable and can actually help enhance your understanding of linear regression if you try on them. The course is an easy A if you use the examples that Krista provides and apply them to your homeworks and labs while changing the numbers. The TA's also really don't know what's going on but they grade easily. The final project can be fun and accomplished pretty quickly if you pick your group wisely. The material in this class is definitely relevant to the real world, let alone a pre-requisite for almost every concentration of the stat major, so I definitely recommend taking it.

Honestly Varanyak gets a lot of unwarranted flack for this class. This class is not difficult as long as you skim the textbook and take notes on the weekly lectures (only like 30 minutes each). Yes, we don't go in-depth to the mathematical concepts - that is outside the scope of this class. You will probably get more out of this if you've already taken STAT 3120. This class advertises basic multivariate regression skills. You will learn to do that.

The grade threshold for this class is a 95, but with how easily most assignments are graded it is not a heavy lift.
The problem sets are easy and are direct applications from the classwork and lectures.

I will concede that SAS sucks, but you can literally just copy and paste code from the provided examples and refit it to your context with extremely limited/no programming knowledge.

Whew. Krista is so difficult. While I will more than likely get an A- only because her grade thresholds are ridiculous, she is so unaccommodating. She expects us to read the textbook, watch pre-lecture, go to class every day and complete classwork (graded for accuracy) have a lab and homework (so long) for every unit, and 2 projects, it is just way too much. Not to mention, she isn't very approachable, does not allow extensions, terrible communication by email, and isn't a good lecturer, and there are barely any drops. If this class isn't a requirement, take an alternative she is such a piece of work and it is not worth your stress. It is unfortunate because I took this class during online learning, so I can only imagine what it is like in person. The only good thing really is that there are no exams, and you work in groups for class work and the projects.

I personally don't like Krista that much, but this class is generally ok. You can easily get A in this class but you won't learn much about the core concepts or the coding. Krista is nice but not a very good teacher for high level classes. She poorly explains the rationales behind concepts and the codes. You will just memorize the whatever things you need to do and correspond them with the codes, while you don't understand why you do this. Another thing is that the class is not organized at all. It has the most disorganized Collab site I have ever seen. It is very confusing with her repeated labels, tedious and not accurate instructions, and redundant resources. She could make it better by keeping the "lecture day tab" and eliminating others because they don't help at all. Homework, classwork, labs and projects take up the grade, but homework problems are not designed very well. Her wording sometimes is difficult to understand (i.e. she uses multiple terms/names to represent the same thing which is confusing ), and also expect a few questions that you never learned in class to appear in HW or lab. She gave different answers to the same type of questions, so you don't clearly know what is the right (or standard) way to do it. Besides the HW, classwork, recorded lectures and stuff, you also have the self-learning SAS lessons which costs you 2 hours per week. On the good side, the classwork is helpful as an immediate practice for what you need to know. She will give answers at the end of the class, so don't miss it. Overall, this class is ok but don't choose Krista if you want some in-depth understanding of the materials. Good GPA pumper.

Horrible teacher. Krista literally sucks. She's not remotely helpful in OH. The way she presents it is so boring. The readings are bearable I suppose. She makes you use SAS, which is really confusing and somewhat hard to use. I got an A-, so I'm not complaining just bc of my grade. I would've had a more enjoyable time if I took it with someone else. Do yourself a favor and don't make the mistake I did. Everyone else here seems to agree, so that should say something.

If you love stats, then go ahead and take this class. I realized that I only thought I liked this class due to the professor in intro, not because of the content itself.

Honestly very surprised to see how negative a lot of the reviews about Krista are, as I had a great experience with her. I took this class over j term so obviously it was at a much faster pace/a little more strenuous than it would be during a normal semester. That said I think Krista did a great job. I thought her lectures and powerpoints were super easy to understand and look back at. Also think that the classworks, labs, and homeworks were completely reasonable and actually helped with learning. Krista is super nice and very approachable and I think made the class a really good experience. I would say this is one of the best stat classes I've taken at UVA and would 100% take a class with Krista again. Not sure why other people dislike her, but I think if you put in a reasonable amount of time and effort the class isn't that difficult and you actually can get a lot out of it.