APMA 3100

Professor Li is one of the best professors I've had at UVA. She did a great job of explaining the material, despite its complicated nature. Her sections performed the best on all of the exams (by quite a bit) and she was very accommodating to student needs, be it changing the structure of her course due to student feedback or hosting a three hour review session before the final exam. Quiz questions were essentially homework problems with numbers changed and most tests were very similar to the homeworks. Basically, if you actually do the written homework (which not many people would, since it's group work and only one person actually needs to do it), you've basically seen the quizzes and tests. She gave extra credit at the end of the semester just for doing all of the assigned webworks as well as giving an optional quiz to replace your lowest quiz grade. All in all, the probability professors at UVA all seem to have low ratings, and I don't know if they are accurate, but a low rating certainly doesn't do Professor Li justice.

Professor Li's course will be almost exclusively self-taught. While it is evident she understands the material, lectures and office hours are of practically no use in learning the material. They often only serve to confuse students even more. Homeworks often have very little to do with what has been covered, but the textbook will be helpful in solving those. The two projects have nothing to do with the class and require vast knowledge of concepts to do with CS and other classes. Overall, not a terribly difficult class but one of the most frustrating ones I have taken.