STAT GU4001

I learned multiple ideas of probability and statistics with strong foundational concepts through the course. The process of learning from the the beginning of the field's development, such as cardano's definition of probability and the deviance of the field from that definition, definitely played a huge role in my success to understand the more challenging concepts of conditional probabiltiy and random variables as it provided a logical step forward avoiding any confusions.

Distributions Statistics It is a good course to take. You would defintely learn a LOT

Calculus through multiple integration and infinite sums. A calculus-based tour of the fundamentals of probability theory and statistical inference. Probability models, random variables, useful distributions, conditioning, expectations, law of large numbers, central limit theorem, point and confidence interval estimation, hypothesis tests, linear regression

I learned about probability and stats. I learned about pdfs and cdfs. We used calculus to manipulate random variables. We also learned about statistics and hypothesis testing.

30% Homework Assignments - Best 10 out of 14 counted. Remember that assignments that go missing count as a 0. 30% Midterm Exam 40% FInal Exam The average on both exam was around an 80. When preparing for the exams, don't waste your time trying to actually understand the material at any level of depth. Simply make sure you know how to do the practice problems she distributes beforehand, as the exam mostly consists of the exact same problems with different numbers,

25%: 4 HW assignments that could quite reasonably be completed in just a couple days before they're due, which is something I'm sure I was not the only one doing 25% Midterm: fairly difficult, but not for any good reason. The problems seemed somewhat trivial but it was hard given how little Mark Brown prepares you for his tests 50% Midterm: same as midterm but cumulative Generous curves ensure that very few if any students get below a B-. I got a 43 on the midterm curved to a 70, a 52 on the final curved to an 80, and maybe like 85 on the hws, and i got a B+.

THIS MAN IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE. I WASNT EVEN IN THE CLASS FOR THE FULL SEMESTER I WAS THERE DURING ADD DROP PERIOD AND SO SO SO GLAD I DROPPED. FIRST WEEK HE ASSIGNS US A PSET AND I LITERALLY SPEND MY WHOLE SATURDAY 7 HOURS ON IT. DO NOT BY ANY MEANS TAKE THIS CLASS. HIS TEACHING IS ABSOLUTELY HORRID AND DOESNT KNOW HOW TO TEACH AND TEACHES US UNECESSARILY HARD SHIT. I SWITCHED INTO THE OTHER CLASS AND IT WAS 10X EASIER AND BETTER .

Psets due every other week or more infrequently that were fairly easy (but a little long) usually took ~1-2 hours, one extremely easy midterm (93 average), one major project where she was flexible with the deadline, and in-person participation in the form of in-class problems that she randomly collected and graded (very flexible grading). Overall one of the easiest classes I've ever taken at Columbia, with the majority of the workload coming from the end-of-semester project (groups of 1-3, 6-8 page single-spaced paper as deliverable). Class experience may vary based on the quality of the randomly assigned group for in-class participation grades, but I got lucky with a good group.

Max {10% HW + 2 MT (25% each) + 40% final, 10% HW + 37.5% (higher scoring MT) + 0% (lower scoring MT) + 52.5% final} 1 pset every 2 weeks

Homework: homeworks are LONG. There are a lot of questions. Distributed on bi-weekly basis. But I think they are important for learning the tricks, although they are typically not conceptually interesting. It is advised that you do all these homeworks because the exams are under non-trivial time pressure (~17 problems, counting all the sub-questions that should really be an independent question, under 90min). You want to be very familiar to be able to ace each problem <5min and to actually finish the exam in time (I think he designed the exams so that students are NOT expected to finish). Why is 5min a significant time pressure? For some reasons, he really likes throwing out computationally cumbersome problems... Grading: Generous curves--if you are above the median, you get an A-. <= 1~2 A+s. I think he's been toning down on the exams over the years. There were some very hard questions in earlier years' exams, but this year most questions are reasonable. However, the problems proliferate in quantity. So again I suspect that the challenge going forward is to finish the exam... Overall I think there's no need to worry about grades. The class tends to have bi-modal distribution so that the exam median is always somewhere around 55%. Which means if you can keep up with the class you will do fine and get an A.