Professor
Robert Gould
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - Gould seems like a teddy bear when he talks and looks like a super nice professor when you go into that first couple of lectures... but beneath the "cuteness" there's the EVIL that lies within him... - SOOOOOOO much work for a class... every week he makes us do a homework assignment with like 15 problems and ONLY GRADES 5 RANDOM QUESTIONS which means that if the ONLY 5 you did wrong are the only 5 he chose, then your grade is screwed!!! - His wording in exams is waaaaay harder than in the homework problems in the textbook... and watch out for the WRITTEN problems in the midterm (all is multiple choice but 2 questions and they grade them HARSHLY) -We asked him for practice midterm and he was like "it takes me a long time to write a midterm, why should I take that much extra time to also write a practice midterm..." He literally wrote the textbook and cannot give us a practice midterm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...? -Also participation with clickers (which cost 60$) is only ONE (1%) PERCENT OF THE WHOLE GRADE.... like ARE YOU KIDDING ME..... -His T.A.'s did not speak english and their lab and discussion sections are SOOOO useless cuz they cant communicate well....... -And the worst part was that there was a group project in which RANDOM students gave you your grade and you can never understand it and how the system works its HORRIBLE.... People who took this class with other professors did waaaay better so I do reccomend Tsiang
Fall 2017 - Gould seems like a teddy bear when he talks and looks like a super nice professor when you go into that first couple of lectures... but beneath the "cuteness" there's the EVIL that lies within him... - SOOOOOOO much work for a class... every week he makes us do a homework assignment with like 15 problems and ONLY GRADES 5 RANDOM QUESTIONS which means that if the ONLY 5 you did wrong are the only 5 he chose, then your grade is screwed!!! - His wording in exams is waaaaay harder than in the homework problems in the textbook... and watch out for the WRITTEN problems in the midterm (all is multiple choice but 2 questions and they grade them HARSHLY) -We asked him for practice midterm and he was like "it takes me a long time to write a midterm, why should I take that much extra time to also write a practice midterm..." He literally wrote the textbook and cannot give us a practice midterm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...? -Also participation with clickers (which cost 60$) is only ONE (1%) PERCENT OF THE WHOLE GRADE.... like ARE YOU KIDDING ME..... -His T.A.'s did not speak english and their lab and discussion sections are SOOOO useless cuz they cant communicate well....... -And the worst part was that there was a group project in which RANDOM students gave you your grade and you can never understand it and how the system works its HORRIBLE.... People who took this class with other professors did waaaay better so I do reccomend Tsiang
Most Helpful Review
Gould is very tough. He crams a lot of material into a 10 week period. I easily spent more time on his class than on my other classes combined. His lectures are good and he makes himself available outside of class. Unfortunately, his exams are brutal. The labs were annoying, as they didn't seem to be teaching us anything at all. If you take the class, be prepared to work hard and attend your section.
Gould is very tough. He crams a lot of material into a 10 week period. I easily spent more time on his class than on my other classes combined. His lectures are good and he makes himself available outside of class. Unfortunately, his exams are brutal. The labs were annoying, as they didn't seem to be teaching us anything at all. If you take the class, be prepared to work hard and attend your section.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - I loved taking Stats 13 with Professor Gould! There's some busy work with this class (weekly homework assignments and coding labs), but it's fairly straightforward and relatively easy for a five unit class. He posts videos going over all of the textbook concepts before lecture so the structure of the class is really helpful for learning the material (especially for slow readers like me who usually don't use textbooks). Because of the way Gould teaches this class, you end up feeling extremely prepared by the time exams come around! If I didn't already have my heart set on medicine, I would totally love to major in Statistics because this class was just so interesting to me. 10/10 would recommend!
Fall 2020 - I loved taking Stats 13 with Professor Gould! There's some busy work with this class (weekly homework assignments and coding labs), but it's fairly straightforward and relatively easy for a five unit class. He posts videos going over all of the textbook concepts before lecture so the structure of the class is really helpful for learning the material (especially for slow readers like me who usually don't use textbooks). Because of the way Gould teaches this class, you end up feeling extremely prepared by the time exams come around! If I didn't already have my heart set on medicine, I would totally love to major in Statistics because this class was just so interesting to me. 10/10 would recommend!
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Class was pretty easy. If you showed up to discussions and put in a bit of effort you should be able to get a 90+ in both labs and homeworks. The final project worth 30% wasn’t too bad as long as you put the effort in the prof gave out 100s with a bonus question (the presentation were pretty good to be fair). Prof was a pretty engaging lecturer just a bit ambiguous I’d say when it came to grading. There was a participation grade based on how much you talked in an online discussion platform called campuswire, but the grading was not really discussed and kind of hidden away in the syllabus. The class average for the participation was 0.2/5 for this section which is kind of crazy. I also think the amount of talking you’d have to do for a 5/5 is pretty unrealistic and even the most active people only got 2/5. This accounts for a quarter of your participation mark worth 5% of your grade. The exam wasn’t too bad to be honest it was just very condensed being about 50 minutes so I messed up pretty bad on one question and it dropped my exam mark by like 12%. All in all I’d recommend it.
Fall 2023 - Class was pretty easy. If you showed up to discussions and put in a bit of effort you should be able to get a 90+ in both labs and homeworks. The final project worth 30% wasn’t too bad as long as you put the effort in the prof gave out 100s with a bonus question (the presentation were pretty good to be fair). Prof was a pretty engaging lecturer just a bit ambiguous I’d say when it came to grading. There was a participation grade based on how much you talked in an online discussion platform called campuswire, but the grading was not really discussed and kind of hidden away in the syllabus. The class average for the participation was 0.2/5 for this section which is kind of crazy. I also think the amount of talking you’d have to do for a 5/5 is pretty unrealistic and even the most active people only got 2/5. This accounts for a quarter of your participation mark worth 5% of your grade. The exam wasn’t too bad to be honest it was just very condensed being about 50 minutes so I messed up pretty bad on one question and it dropped my exam mark by like 12%. All in all I’d recommend it.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - This is by far one of my favorite Stats classes so far. Professor Gould is an incredible person and instructor. He was able to explain everything incredibly well and was tremendously active on Campuswire and answering emails. I personally enjoyed his use of participation in the class, it helped me from going insane to have some personal interaction with others during the Spring 2020, COVID-19 quarter. However, if you are anxious about these type of zoom breakout room activities, perhaps this class isn't for you because they happen almost weekly. (Prof gould would put us into breakouts and we'd explore the dataset he gave to us and do regression on it and stuff). The homeworks were pretty easy and didn't require a lot of R knowledge. It is a lot of repetition in terms of the looking at model adequacy and running lm() tests on data. There was not a final exam but rather a final project where you and a few other people (i was in a group of 2) investigate a dataset on your own and right a research paper (about 5 pages) on the topic. The project was easy and fun if you choose a fun topic that you're actually interested in. Grades were never a worry in the class, and was strongly right-skewed throughout the course. Even still, Prof gould curved the class on top of this distribution to ensure no one got lower than a C. I can't wait to take another course with him!
Spring 2020 - This is by far one of my favorite Stats classes so far. Professor Gould is an incredible person and instructor. He was able to explain everything incredibly well and was tremendously active on Campuswire and answering emails. I personally enjoyed his use of participation in the class, it helped me from going insane to have some personal interaction with others during the Spring 2020, COVID-19 quarter. However, if you are anxious about these type of zoom breakout room activities, perhaps this class isn't for you because they happen almost weekly. (Prof gould would put us into breakouts and we'd explore the dataset he gave to us and do regression on it and stuff). The homeworks were pretty easy and didn't require a lot of R knowledge. It is a lot of repetition in terms of the looking at model adequacy and running lm() tests on data. There was not a final exam but rather a final project where you and a few other people (i was in a group of 2) investigate a dataset on your own and right a research paper (about 5 pages) on the topic. The project was easy and fun if you choose a fun topic that you're actually interested in. Grades were never a worry in the class, and was strongly right-skewed throughout the course. Even still, Prof gould curved the class on top of this distribution to ensure no one got lower than a C. I can't wait to take another course with him!
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - The best professor I've had in the UCLA stats path, however I can acknowledge why people don't like the pacing of his classes. For both Stats 10 and 101A he used a mini midterm system which I personally really liked, and kept the content relevant, making it hard to fall behind. He explains concepts really well, and I was excited to go to lecture. If you like the midterm system then he's a 10/10 prof.
Spring 2022 - The best professor I've had in the UCLA stats path, however I can acknowledge why people don't like the pacing of his classes. For both Stats 10 and 101A he used a mini midterm system which I personally really liked, and kept the content relevant, making it hard to fall behind. He explains concepts really well, and I was excited to go to lecture. If you like the midterm system then he's a 10/10 prof.
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