If you can avoid taking this course with Professor Kernell, please do it. As someone who struggles with math, this class was already daunting, and she made it considerably harder. Her teaching format made sense (meets on Thursday with Tuesday lectures) but her ability to convey concepts in a clear, concise way was nonexistent. Many classes she would spend walking around the room trying to help everyone who was confused because her explanations were convoluted. She would say "this is really important to understand," and then proceed to explain it in the most roundabout way possible. However, the worst aspect of this course were the exams. Not because they were complex, but because you could never anticipate anything that would be on it. She would give you review sheets and past midterms, just for nothing you studied to be on the exam, with some question about a topic you barely discussed in lecture. I was genuinely angry when I took the final, because she had given us a review, emphasizing things to know, and barely any of those things were on there. Not to mention, she also slipped in concepts we hadn't even talked about. I have no respect for Professors who trick their students like that.

Professor Kernell structured the class so that there were in person lectures on Tuesdays (75 minutes) and virtual lectures in place of Thursday's classes (30-45 minutes). I didn't mind this layout, as it allowed more flexibility for me to learn at my own pace.

However, the virtual lectures were often clearer than the in person lectures and the professor very clearly struggled to explain concepts to students. In response, she would lead us through practice problems but even though she explained each computational step, she didn't quite explain the significance of what we were computing which in my opinion is more important for depth of understanding. A lot of my exam preparation ultimately ended up being from Youtube videos covering basic statistics concepts.

Her grading scheme is split across exams, homeworks, lecture quizzes, and discussion attendance. The homeworks are graded pretty harshly and sometimes without a sufficient reason. The quizzes are easy and fact-based. The exams are mostly free response and are an accurate reflection of the content on the lecture slides. The exams are easy if you've taken Stats 10/AP stats before, but for those unfamiliar with these concepts be prepared to self-study. The final is also cumulative so make sure you refresh on pre-midterm content as she will definitely test you on it. This is a core class for comms so it is unavoidable, but not impossible to ace. You may just have to be prepared to learn the concepts on your own.

The structure of this class was a bit strange. We would have virtual lectures Tue/Thu (they were prerecorded from Covid and 30-50 minutes long each) and we had to watch the lecture and then take a short 3 question quiz to "prove" we watched the lectures. The virtual lectures were okay, pretty simple. Then we had one day of in person class on Tuesdays and discussion once a week (so basically this class met twice a week but had 3 lectures a week...). However, I thought that the one day of week (Tue) that we would have class in-person was pretty hard to understand. We would go through a few practice problems, but it would take so long and the professor would write things wrong on the board and it was very confusing. I often left the class feeling more confused on the topic than before!

The homework assignments were so hard to understand, especially in the beginning, because they were worded so badly and the TA and professor were useless in answering my questions. The TA literally answered one of my questions, I answered that way in my homework, and I got 0 points on that question because "you weren't supposed to answer it that way." SO frustrating. Why couldn't they clarify? On that note, the TA was one of my least favorites :/ I feel like she did not do a good job explaining concepts and would often go in circles and I was left more confused than before I went to discussion. By the end of the quarter, we would just go over the homework and then she would dismiss us - we never got more information about the course content or anything. Also, when we asked questions, she was unable to answer them, or she would answer our questions for the homework, and then I would get the homework back and see that I lost points on all the questions she answered because I did them the way that she said to and then she graded them as incorrect. Finally, I think it was quite hard to understand her through her accent, which I understand is not something easy to change, but it did impact my understanding.

Anyways I know this class is required but I hated it the whole time :(

This class made my life quite complicated- the professor didn't necessarily help. Since it's a requirement for the communications major, I didn't really have a choice whether or not to take it. However, Professor Kernell was stressful and made learning in this class difficult because I had to teach myself everything and if I had a question, I had to resort to asking the TA.

Do not take her unless you have to. She was very rude and condescending the first week which made her unapproachable. I would dread coming to this class every time I had to. She took of points for pointless things that she could have explained better, with the in-person or online lecture. The quizzes were okay and not that bad but the assignments were often very long and absolute pain. I hated the exams, especially the second half. We used a textbook for the first half and then she gave us this new textbook PDF which made it harder to read. Don't waste your time reading it because you won't get tested on it. If you were like me and had no choice but to take in your last semester, good luck.

I was really nervous coming into Comm 150 because I had heard a lot of negative reviews in the past, but honestly I was pleasantly surprised. It's basically a repeat of Stats 10 (but easier) with more focus on interpreting the data and what it actually means. Professor Kernell is super accommodating, she had an online option for students to zoom into our weekly lecture (but I believe you actually had to be sick to do that) and instead of two, two-hour lectures per week like we were scheduled to have, she did two asynchronous lectures and one, one-hour live lecture every week. Personally I liked that format a lot, she always kept class succinct and to the point. The readings are important at the start of understanding the material (except the textbook which IMO is irrelevant) and for exams so I would recommend doing them - it's nothing too crazy, very reasonable workload. Overall this wasn't my favorite class, but I thought the tests were extremely fair (and curved), Professor Kernell was helpful, there was no final project which was a plus, and Prof. offered 2% extra credit for various surveys which was easy and rewarding.

Saw my girlfriend take this class and it was disgusting how rude she was and unaccommodating. I imagine it would be hard to pinpoint who could be writing this terrible review because this is a common theme. Georgia went out of her way to make sure my girlfriend did not succeed and went about doing incredibly shady things like outright lying to organizations and twisting the truth to CAE and the heads of relevant departments and violating accommodation terms. Absolutely do not take If you have disabilities or need any form of accommodation. Shockingly unprofessional and vile to an unimaginable degree. I PERSONALLY have a problem with HER, in addition to the academics, as a human being. Lectures are dense and often times off-track. Being from Columbia does not entitle you to being a total douchebag.

I took this class with Kernell after hearing all the bad reviews about the other professors who taught this class. Honestly, I don't think she was any better. If it weren't for the TAs, I would have definitely done much worse in this class. This professor only relies on her slides and in her office hours, she is SO condescending. I am already not great at stats, but the lack of communication between the professor and the TAs made this class near impossible and SO frustrating. There were so many ridiculous requirements in this class and it was such a headache. Even the TAs seemed visibly frustrated with the Professor's teaching style and her condescending nature. I am sure she means well, but this class was honestly so hard and I feel bad for anyone who has to take it.

This class is practically useless. Honestly, all this course does is reiterate Stats 10, so I don't understand why that class is a prerequisite to this one. Personally, I have taken 2 stats classes prior to this one and thank god I did because this professor is not a good communicator. She is extremely reliant on her slides (once when the projector didn't work she kept having to refer to computer as if she didn't know her own curriculum) and also makes concepts much more complicated than need be. Often I would sit in class and think of different ways I would teach the class one of our concepts. When Professor Lamberson was a substitute lecterer, his classes were so concise and straightforward the convoluted teaching style of Kernell really became apparent. Kernell also caters to the lowest common denominator -- she takes so many questions in class that really should be directed towards office hours if people still don't get a concept. She also assumes everyone in the class is super slow and reiterates very very basic concepts/definitions way too many times. The expression beating a dead horse definitely comes to mind when thinking about her teaching style. This is even represented in the homeworks Kernell creates where she would make us calculate the standard deviation of a data set that is over 100 observations -- this is a skill I didn't even have to do by hand in AP Stats and most likely would never do by hand outside of this class. Also I never felt particularly comfortable asking for help outside of class. I once asked her a question after class because I didn't understand a homework problem and she was kind of condescending that I couldn't get the answer right away and put me on blast for having to say I don't know. I will say though that Kernell does create fair exams and (on average, excluding monotonous questions) the homeworks do help prepare you for the exams.

Selling course reader. Prices negotiable. **********