APMA 3100

If you have the choice to take the course with fulgham or snider take it with snider. People from fulghams class would come to our lectures because snider is better at explaining things. The tests are straightfoward from the homework and quizzes.

Professor Snider is a tough cookie. She cares about your understanding and progress of the course. I give my upmost respect to her for fully caring for each student. She gives all the resources to know the concepts effectively. The lectures that Fulgham taught when she was away were the ones that the class did the worst on during exams, go figure. Go for the understanding with Snider as Probability is a ruthless course sometimes. The tests are tough with tricks and proofs, but everything was fair. Snider bumps borderline grades if you do the Webwork. She wants to see that you are practicing and trying the problems. Students do fail this course and repeat it with her just a warning on that. It was tough, but fair. I respect her teaching as I learned a lot but it was sometimes a high-blood pressure cooker.

WebWork is optional, written homework is due every week, there is a quiz every week, and there are three exams. The work expected of you is consistent, so you can't ever fall behind, which can be good and bad. She makes up for the amount of work with the difficulty of her quizzes and exams, which are 100% fair and I felt totally prepared for all of them.

Snider is terrible. She isn't a horrible lecturer but has quizzes on Friday and doesn't do anything electronically, which means homework has to be turned in manually, grades aren't posted online, and she doesn't even have lecture slides. Absolutely lazy, and this class sucks for that. Laptops, cellphones, and food aren't allowed in class, and she takes attendance. It's advanced high school. Work isn't too difficult, and your lowest two quiz and hw grades get dropped, which is good. But other than that, a very boring class with a patronizing professor.

I don't believe mean is a good way to describe Professor Snider... She's kinda strange to me, and doesn't have a patient bone in her body.

I hated her the first week of school, when she snapped at multiple students with her signature saying: "It's just algebra!" But then I went to her office hours. I mean, she was still snippy and condescending, but she was also helpful and genuinely wanted to get to know her students. So I think she actually has no social skills and doesn't understand what's appropriate to say to other people. (I've seen her make snarky remarks towards other people, not just students.)

As for her teaching, it's pretty simplistic compared to the textbook. She likes to use easy examples when explaining concepts in class, which makes learning straightforward and sensible, but then she'd pick the hardest problems for homework. Assignments took ridiculously long, so I wouldn't wait until the night before. I would save my questions for her office hours, where she would be less likely to make me feel like a fool, and she doesn't budge on her no-late homework acceptance policy. Also, be there every Friday for her quizzes - which suck.

The exams were pretty much compilations of the easy/moderate homework problems, so as long as you reviewed your notes in advanced you were good. I think our class had averages above 80 for each test.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend Professor Snider to just anyone, because I think you've got to have thick skin to deal with her. She most certainly isn't the pleasantest, but for the most part, she knows what she's doing. Make sure you put in enough effort, and you'll do pretty decent.

Yeah this class is some butt. Snider isn't as bad as some of the old reviews to be fair, but the class, book, and way it's all taught still sucks. Would not recommend, take it through the college or don't if you can.

Snider is some ass; however, she's not that bad. The past reviews make her sounds like a spawn of the devil himself. I think it's pretty unfair to view her that way. She's actually a pretty good lecturer. She teaches the material in such an intuitive manner and her exams are beyond fair. Her quizzes are straight-forward. They're usually kind of tricky because it's given the week of the homework. The homework problems from the book range from easy to extremely difficult. I would say it takes around 4-6 hours per week if you took good notes during lecture. There's no webwork. The remaining 80% of your grade is determined by your 3 exams and the final. The exams are beyond fair. The first one was kind of hard because you're still getting used to the class... but the last two were literally recycled from homework and quizzes. (the easy-med problems from the hw) I didn't do very well, but I can say for a fact that the class was fair. The final was definitely trickier than her 3 exams, but it wasn't bad. Snider also rounds your grades up, which was really clutch for me.

I would definitely encourage the course because Snider is a pretty good lecturer. I expected the worst for Prob, but it was actually way better than expected. Probability could be much more difficult... just be glad Snider is not bad. But my review would only be fair if I explained the cons of Snider. It's really easy to see why people hate her. She's just a horrible person. She's very mean to her students and has no tolerance for anything at all. She consistently defends herself and becomes very aggressive quickly. She "cares" for her students, but really doesn't give a shit about you. But to be fair though, I did learn a lot of probability . My advice: don't be late to lecture, take good notes, and avoid communication with Snider after her official lecture is over. She teaches pretty well, so with a bit of studying, you can easily pull off a good grade. Just don't talk to Snider or she'll be extremely condescending and you'll feel like a turd.

She's absolutely terrible at explaining concepts. However, you can get through the class if you take time to read the textbook and follow the examples they give. It's not a fun class so only take it if it's required.

I was initially horrified of Professor Snider because of the reviews on here and because of my first impression of her, but she is not as bad as people make her out to be. She has a lot of nit picky class policies most of which are fine except for the fact that you're not allowed to go to the bathroom (dafuq is this middle school?). She also really is quite condescending some times when people ask questions, but I just thought it was kind of funny.

All that said, she is a clear lecturer and you can absorb almost all of the material if you just show up and take notes (which you're not allowed to use your phone so you might as well pay attention you scrub). There is a quiz every Friday and most of them with a few exceptions were very fair, and easy to do well on if you just review the notes from that week for like twenty minutes. The exams are also fair and about 95% directly from concepts in the class notes.

The weekly homework is kind of a pain in the bum. The textbook kind of blows because there will be a problem assigned from a particular section with concepts not covered in that section. So sometimes the homework problems will be hard af and easy to spend a lot of time on. What I realized though is that she rarely graded the hardest problems so you can just finesse some attempt at solving it and get a good homework grade still. There were also a number of times where she strongly disagreed with the textbook and I was wondering why we don't just use a different textbook. And it's like $200 and all we really need it for is the homework. Other than that the class was fair if you can stick to her strict rules and spend a little time every week reviewing the class notes.

She teaches well, and the structure of her class is pretty good. She most definitely isn't the kindest professor I've ever met, and I vividly remember and have nightmares about her yelling at me during a test for asking a question, but she explains things well and the tests are very true to the homeworks. The weekly quizzes definitely suck, but I think she really values effort, so as long as you attend class, pay attention, and do the homeworks, you should be fine.