STAT 3080

This class is a bit of grinder but is an easy A- (A is 95%) if you're willing to put work in. Material is SUPER useful, especially in 4000 level stat classes since many use R, not python. I recommend going to OH every week to get your homework checked; they have OH four days a week at multiple times so it's really flexible! I never got below a 97% on the homework by doing this and homework accounts for 40% of your grade. Participation is 10% so you have to go to class to get clicker points but Martinet said the buffer is low enough that if you go most of the time you should get full points on that. Quizzes are 15% and a bit difficult but I wouldn't super duper worry about those to be honest if you just review a little the night before. Practicing writing the code by hand helped me prep for the quizzes than just squarely looking at the R script. The project is 35% but if you follow the rubric then you shouldn't have an issues whatsoever. Definitely would recommend if you need a Stat elective. Martinet is super nice and understanding! Of course class is boring but it's nothing a little coffee and work for another class can't solve : )

This is probably the best stats class I've taken so far at UVA. Prof. Martinet is great. She is super helpful on work if you go to office hours, and she is willing to answer all of your questions. Homeworks could be long, but not too difficult (especially manageable if you went to office hours). There are three handwritten programming quizzes; they are difficult but are only a small part of your grade. Project wasn't too bad. There are clicker questions and extra credit opportunities as well. The grade breakdown is: Programming quizzes 15%, Clickers 10%, Homework, 40%, Project: 35% (Part 1: 10%, Part 3: 25%).

This class was super chill. Honestly put in minimal effort for it and still ended up with an A. The homeworks were a bit tedious, but definitely doable. There are no exams, just programming quizzes. I tanked those and still did fine!

I would definitely recommend this course with Professor Martinet! The notes are easy to follow, she's super nice and always willing to help. The programming quizzes are the hardest part of the course but tbh you don't need to do well on them to get an A-/A in the class. The majority of your grade is based on the homework assignments. There's one due every Wednesday each week. For the most part, they weren't overly difficult because the R script corresponds well. Office hours are really helpful for any homework help and would 100% recommend going to them! There is a final project but as long as you follow the rubric, they're not hard. Martinet does have clicker questions so you'd have to go to lecture. Most of the time, people would do other work in lecture since all R scripts are uploaded on collab and you can download & learn it for yourself.

Unless you hate flipped classroom, I would recommend this course (especially during online learning). Before every class there is a 30 minute video to watch and then you come to class to do a daily assignment in a group of 5 that only takes about 40 minutes so you always "get out" early (the group doesn't change all semester so getting a good one helps a lot). There were no exams only 3 programming quizzes that people typically don't do great on because time is very limited but she ended up curving 2/3 quizzes. Every Wednesday (at 9am) there was a homework assignment due that took anywhere from 1-3 hours to complete. There was 1 project done in 2 parts: first part was mainly graphs and your classmates grade that one and then the second part is a statistical test which the Professor grades. Martinet was very friendly and helpful for anything we needed during class or in OH. If you need a stat elective, I would highly recommend this one!

The course has a clear structure, and there's a straightforward solution to doing well. I was a little intimidated at first, because this was my first time with R. And I took a while to get used to it. But once I did, this class became very easy.

The grading is largely homework (40%). We also had Daily Assignments (15%), Programming Quizzes (15%), and a Final Project (30%).

The 3 Programming Quizzes were HARD. No point in lying. I was rushed for time and a little lost on where to start for the problems, and I epically failed the first one. However, she gives a moderate curve, and the quizzes aren't worth much in the end. Lastly, the quizzes are only in the first half of the semester.

The homework is very easy if you follow her lecture script. At the end, I was literally copy/pasting the script into my homework, and changing numbers around. I had a good group (from the Daily assignments), and we would go over our solutions together. This helped, because they noticed things that I didn't, or got better answers.

Daily assignments are also group work, and follow similarly to the homework (with the copy/pasting). You get half of the points for just answering the questions, the other half is based on correctness. These are computational, but reveal the conceptual aspects of the topics, and were quite interesting.

The project wasn't even really mentioned until the last month and a half. The first section (of 3) was to look at a data set of our choosing, and was peer reviewed based on some rubric. The next part was to conduct a significance test of our choosing. It really depends on how good your data set is, so choose a good data set.

Overall, this class is very doable, if you know how to do this class. Here's my advice: 1) Get a good group, or at least be active. They can help you with the homework. 2) Review her R script. They're what you will be doing for the semester, so get familiar with it.

This class is pretty useful and isn't a ton of work. The homework were reasonable and didn't take a ton of time most weeks. The most annoying things were the daily assignments (I think she usually does clicker questions when the class is in person), but they just took awhile and weren't really helpful. Overall, not a bad class, if you already know R it will be super easy.

#tCF2020

This course was not particularly difficult, it was just impossible to have a clear understanding of the grading. For example, she took 10% off of my final project for something that was "missing" despite it having been explicitly included. Lectures were done asynchronously, and each one came with a daily assignment. Most daily assignments made reference to material which was difficult to find explanations for and had questions which were unclear and graded pretty strongly without any real feedback (right/wrong was all I received). Homeworks were actually the best part about the course imo; some weeks they were interesting to work on, and the feedback was more helpful for improving. The programming quizzes were not too bad, so if that's your primary concern, don't worry about it. Feedback was not given on these either, you really only got "partial credit", "less partial credit", etc as the feedback. Several "explanations" Martinet gave about things in R which were fundamentally flawed in CS terms, which is particularly irritating. A lot of the other reviews for this class say Martinet is a really great professor, so maybe I just didn't vibe with her personality or something but I absolutely could not be happier to be done with this class.

Really mixed feelings here. Pre-recorded lectures were terribly boring, simply just had to watch her code. Daily assignments were also pretty awful in my opinion. Make sure you have a good group -- mine started out with 6 people, all of whom either dropped the class or got the answers from their friends in earlier sections. I struggled with the daily assignments, but ended up getting full credit for them at the end of the semester. I would also suggest making friends for doing/checking HW. I had R experience, and they still took me a really long time. Definitely go to office hours for those, the TAs will tell you if you're right or wrong. Everyone did pretty badly on the programming quiz, I think I got an A, B, and C on them. They don't end up mattering as much as you think they will in the end, so don't stress about them. I really ended up enjoying the project, you can pick whatever dataset you find interesting and it's easy to get help from Martinet/TAs if you get stuck. You'll learn R, but probably won't have fun doing it.

Martinet is not really that good a professor, but I would say it's still one of your 'easy A' classes. There are no exams, but instead a research project that you work on throughout the semester. This is supposed to be an introduction to R class but I will say I've learned a lot about the code. The code she gives you is incredibly basic, and I spent a lot of time googling more rather than looking through the scripts she gives. There is a pre-recorded lecture that goes through the code before each class. Class time is spent working on a daily assignment that is more code-focused and not really conceptual with a group. Most times they were pretty easy to get through but towards the last two scripts they were a lot harder. She loves running monte-carlo simulations. Don't worry about the daily assignments. At the end of the semester, this was the cutoff for an A with the daily assignments (which is really easy to get so long as you answer every question): "There were 399 total daily assignment points throughout the semester. The threshold for 100% is 315 points. If you earned less than 315 points, your percentage is your number of points divided by 315." The homeworks were okay - you can knock them out in a few hours, especially if you have a friend to review them with. The homeworks were where I spent more time googling the code rather than looking through what she gives because it didn't help that much. Stack overflow was a great resource for this class! No readings were required. A pretty simple and straightforward class; not much to stress on here. Just make sure you take it with a friend or two, but could be done on your own as well! #tCFspring2021