IEOR W4150

It is like a 6-credit course but will give you a very strong fundamental to take Stochastic course in the following semester.

Relatively easy homework in the beginning with permutation, but begin to get terrible when you realize you don't learn much in class, and that poisson distributions are not easy to grasp. Easy midterm, horrible final.

A lot if you do what he asks. Very little indeed if you're wise enough to only prepare for his exams, which cover 1/100 of the material.

Weekly Problem Sets (40%), two midterms and final (20% each, open book)

Homeworks each week of varying length (anywhere betweeen 15-30 problems) which include computational and theoretical (proof based) problems. 1 insane midterm and an even more insane final. Homework 30%, Midterm 30%, Final 40%.

We had 5 problem sets. In the beginning they weren't to bad, but they got more difficult later. Also, he fell a little behind and had to squish a lot of material in at the end. The last problem set had as many problems as the previous 3 combined, and they were only given to us about a week before the exam, so it required some serious cramming. Unless your good at tricky math problems that require you to see shortcuts, the tests are very hard. The averages for the midterm and the final were about 60%, but it was curved up so the average was in the B+/A- range. This was reasonable, because Professor Juneja prefers to give you problems that really make you think rather than questions that are simply obvious if you know the material. If you think you did awful on the exam, don't drop the class until you find out the average.

Pretty Light, but be prepared for the final or it'll bite you in the

Professor Gallego looks to be a very nice person and a decent instructor. Everything he teaches is really at a very basic level and so is his homework. His exams were quite straightforward and did not require a high-level mathematical or calculus ability but a very deep understanding on Probability and Statistics. At a glance his exams look very easy but they are not. His exams are very similar with previous years exams but not with the two last years which he gave in class. If you can gain access to a series of his previous 5 years exams (final and midterm), those are the only things that are relevant with his exams. The textbook "Introduction to Probability and Statistics" by Stephen Ross is not quite relevant with his exams. Do not study from the homework taken from that book because they definitely will not come out on the midterm/final. Except some additional problems from him (usually in a LaTeX pdf). Materials that are relevant with his exams: 1. Last 5 years exams (if you somehow can gain access to those). 2. Formula derivations in his class notes. The very part that is worth studying is when he discuss about tables and derivations in his notes - others are not quite relevant. So, when you see some tables and some derivation, you should really understand those or try to derive them manually. 3. Sample exams he gave in class. Never expect that they will come out 100% bu…

Michael Schnaidman is not a jerk...but he is not a good professor. His lectures were always confusing, and he usually focused on theory. There were many cases were the material was difficult to comprehend, but he did little to clarify. He also went out of the country for about two weeks and left us in the hands of a grad student. The book is more for the proof lovers(good for some, bad for most). If you take this class, I recommend referring to a free online pdf stat book for actuaries: http://grove.ufl.edu/~fass/Exam%20P%20Study%20Guide.pdf The class was ridiculous...

He can't teach, he can't be bothered posting accurate, up-to-date homework assignments on time. His practice exams do resemble the actual exams, and are extremely important to doing well in the class, but good luck understanding his badly written (often massively incorrect) solutions until the review session, which he likes to schedule a few days prior to his exams. Other reviewers have written that doing the homework is important to doing well in the course. I disagree. Just study the solutions to practice exams in the 24-72 hours that he gives you to do so. Good luck if you have back to back exams in that time window. Overall, he's a typically incompetent stats instructor, and like most of his ilk, will continue to bring pain, misery, and hatred of stats to students the world over.