Statistics · Columbia University
Professor Gerardo is a very organized teacher and knows in advance what and how he is going to cover in each day's lecture. I thought his style of teaching was very satisfying as a student seeking structure and clarity. However, I did sometimes find that he would be driven too much by his lesson plans and thus proceed in a much faster pace than the students' ability to understand his material. To be fair, he did stop every now and then to explain and clarify certain areas, but I remember many instances where he just seemed to speed through materials. Also, as we got to the later part of the semester, what we were being taught in class, and what was being given as homework were diverging in a very obvious and annoying way. We were able to finish the homeworks through TA sessions and office hours, but expect to study many many hours using multiple texts. Overall, I have to say that his class was a very good one. I thoroughly enjoyed his easy going and friendly temperament, and the entire class experience was that of learning from your "older sibling" if you will. Very informal, yet effective and interactive. A caveat to this review should be to note that our particular class happened to be small (15 students) with all of us being "serious" students. So in many ways the class experience was unique and enjoyable in ways that a larger class could not emulate. As for the exams, we h…
Professor Hernandez is a really nice professor. He truly cares whether you understand the material or not. He tries to make the classes interactive. If you tell him that he's going too fast, he will slow down. He listens to his students' needs. Yes, he is a little disorganized sometimes but that doesn't affect his teaching ability. If you don't understand something, he'll try his best to help you understand. What is said about his accent is ridiculous. While he has an accent, he's fluent and his accent is mild. I would highly recommend that anyone take this class with him. I'm taking another class with him next semester.
Better then average professor. He makes sure the students understand all the examples covered in class. Very straightforward while answering questions and will spend a good amount of time during office hours to make sure the concepts are fully understood. Take his class if you want to get a general idea of the concepts without diving into hard derivations of the formulas etc. He makes it a point on his exams to not have any complicated computations. Tries to ensure everyone has a good chance to get an A.
This is the worst class I have ever taken in my entire life. The professor is completely inept and does not speak English. The homework has absolutely nothing to do with the lectures, and her lectures were filled with mistakes (both gramatically and mathematically). I cannot stress this enough-- do not take this class as an easy way to fulfill the math requirement-- you will get screwed over. Basically this course is designed to confuse and irritate.
This class was relatively easy. Straightforward problems sets and you can use cheat sheets on the midterm and final. I would highly recommend reading the book before lecture otherwise his lectures can be difficult to follow. Also, even though Calc 2 is the only math prerequisite for the class, you will be doing Calc that is not presented in Calc 1 or 2 (double integrals) and not only will he expected you to know it, he won't understand why you don't. I would recommend this class if you are taking it by itself and not as a prerequisite for anything, particularly if you are need it for Econometrics. Since he allows cheat sheets and teaches in an all-together confusing fashion you will come away with an A but not really knowing much, which hurt you greatly when it comes to Econometrics.
Weekly homeworks, midterm, final. All very reasonable. Homeworks may have a couple of very hard questions but if it's too hard he does it in class even. Otherwise, office hours and TA office hours are enough. Midterm and final are like the medium difficulty homeworks.
Gerardo is really nice and understanding. He moves relatively quickly but you learn a lot in the class. He's a really fair grader as well.
This class was adequate. Not bad, not great. Gerardo spent a lot of time at the beginning of the semester going over very basic stuff at length -- really, did anyone need the 30-minute review of PIE CHARTS??? His explanations of more complex topics could be a little confusing, but he was always willing to answer questions at any time. This was both good and bad, because there was an incredibly annoying girl in the front row who asked a lot of inane or irrelevant questions. I have sympathy for those who don't pick up material as fast as the rest of the class, but Gerardo would have better served the 79 other students if he'd asked her to see him after class instead of monopolizing class time. Tests and quizzes were pretty easy -- two pages of notes, sometimes open book, no trick questions. Problem sets weren't too bad, although sometimes he would assign stuff he hadn't really covered in class. My biggest annoyance: at the beginning of the semester he told us we would need graphing calculators. This was not true; unless he's changed the curriculum, save your money.
Nice guy, but I had no idea what was going on in the lectures. I and all of the people I know learned everything from the book after class and doing the homework. I don't know what he could really do differently, but nobody wanted to stop and say "what are you doing?" because we were all beyond the point of having a clue what he was even discussing that day. A few people seemed to know what was going on though. The TA was available for help, but Gerardo's assistance out of class varried. Many people are terrified that we're going to die in Econometrics because we have no idea what the hell we just covered in this class. Nice guy, but I would take the course with someone else if you're really interested/need to know the material in the course. People looking for an easy grade would do well to pick him though.
Standard intro math/stats load. 2 exams (fairly simple) and weekly homework assignments (about 2 hours long)