His lecture is dull and unhelpful. You can learn this course by reading the lengthy PowerPoint every week. There are four really difficult quizzes and one final exam (difficulty is manageable). Since the average for quizzes is low, it's important to get extra credits by going to TA's office hours and giving pre on additional problems.

Wainwright kinda just felt like he was ripping off Swenson the whole quarter. When he was out for a week for Covid at the beginning of fall quarter, he literally just gave us Swenson's prerecorded videos instead of using his own. For this class, going to TA office hours are basically a must, as his notes are long-winded and sometimes confusing.

Professor Wainwright was a great professor but talks a lot during lectures. The course material was difficult but not impossible, and the homework was pretty easy. Tests and quizzes are very fair. Loved listening to his stories during class!

Pretty easy grading scale. Section attendance, fair midterm and final. Dont have to put too much work in to pass, put in an average amount of work and get an A. Lectures are okay, but I appreciate Dr. Wainwright, probably best professor to take 120a with.

Lectures are only focused on the main topics and easy questions that will help you understand but not solidify the material. He doesn't give you studying material for any exam at all so you must find other ways to study beyond the weekly homework. The textbook is at the library and is essential for studying, tests make or break your grade.

Hardly gives you anything to prepare and study for midterms. Final exam was incredibly difficult and we weren't given anything to prepare for it. Lectures are very slow, examples aren't always concise. He's a good guy but not a good professor for this class. This class requires you to understand coding which is ridiculous, it's a statistics class.

This class was so easy.

PSTAT 5A was a difficult course. Wainwrights lectures were no help in learning the material. I spent most of my time reading the textbook for this class and teaching myself concepts. There are very limited resources to help you study for exams, which entirely make or break your grade. The final was insanely hard. 0/10 recommend.

Midterm consists of 5 problems with 4 subproblems each. Expects us to finish in 50 min (actually less than that because he ended it earlier than he was supposed to). Idk about others but I could only finish 4. Even if you perfectly know how to do them all, the time was simply not enough.

As someone who has never learned to code before, this class was the best way for me to learn to code. If this is your first time coding, take this first! The lecture slides have everything you need to know to get As. Quizzes are tougher but doable. 90+ is an A which helped. Go to section and understand how the code works if you want to succeed.

2 mandatory lab sections/week graded solely on showing up. Isn't 100% the best prof, but definitely cares about students and wants them to succeed: no A-, B-, etc (90-99 = A). Midterm/final VERY fair and straightforward/reflect practice problems and are mostly on R/SQL coding syntax. Little workload and easy to catch up, but quizzes are hard :/.

Lectures were pointless since he reads off the slides. Going over the slides and studying async is more worth the time to passing. Also do recommended book problems to do well on progress checks in class since that is a large chunk of your grade!

I thought it was hard at first, but if you pay attention to the lectures and worksheets with some practice, you will be good in this course. The professor is kind, and TAs are really helpful.

Crazyyy final

Wainwright is a good prof who really cares about his students. Lecture is not mandatory, but is EXTREMELY helpful. I agree with other posts regarding the weekly check in quizzes -- I would have done better on a couple of them if it weren't for the 10 minute time limit. One TA held review sessions for both exams which was essential to doing well.

Very clear and relatively generous grading criteria, 35% labs which are free points, 20% weekly check in quizzes (can be tricky), 20% midterm (very technical and specific, average was in the 70s) and 25% final (haven't taken yet but assume it's like midterm). 90%+ is an A so that's nice. Lectures not mandatory, can learn through section.

He's a pretty good explainer tbh. Teaching alone, he would've gotten a 4/5. However, the weekly quizzes are the definition of STRESS. They are 4 question quizzes with a 10-minute limit worth 20% of ur grade. It's really easy to accidentally misread the q carelessly cuz of time limit and be punished severely; meant to spread class grade distribution

By far the worst aspect of the class is the weekly check-in assignments. These four-question weekly quizzes account for 20% of your grade. They target the most minuscule and impeccable details imaginable and it is really easy to mess up. These should not be graded so heavily...or at the very least mix in easy questions with hard ones.

great professor

Brian was an okay instructor. The material is fairly complicated and he was able to break it down somewhat simply. 50% of your grade is final and midterm. Four HWs were challenging and you could work on them with a partner. Midterm was incredibly difficult and the final was take home and much fairer.

He mumbles in class which makes people sleepy. The textbook is much more helpful than him

It was an average class where you take it to meet the pre-req and get out. The class does take up a good amount of time. I didn't think the professor was bad as what some of the other reviews said. If you do all the homework problems, then the exams are very reasonable in difficulty. Show up to all the labs and discussion and it's 30% of the grade.

The class wasn't a breeze, but for an online math class it was not too bad. The professor covered most of the relevant information and equations in his slides and the TA sections helped to show a wider variety of examples. 30% of your grade is for just being present at TA section and the tests should not be too difficult for someone who has studied

I wouldn't take this class again if you offered me $10000000000. Prof does not help you with anything, whether it's learning the material, asking for help, or needing some sort of flexibility. very sucky class