Student Survey Responses - Unofficial Report

For Spring 2005 course: MATH 3770 B - Statistics& Applications
Instructor: Metcalfe, Jason   CRN: 22286   Class Size: 36   Final Survey

Student Comments about the Class or Instructor

I kind of felt that it was kind of hard for me to keep up with your words and notes at the same time. I found your notes very helpful, but it was also a lot. I was impressed by you being such a dedicated teacher. Thank you.

While some of the knowledge of the meaning of termonology and how to calculate certian concepts are nesessary, the proofs and fundamental basis of the concepts seems unnecessary, perhaps lecturing over them is encouraged but testing them is unnecessary. Also tests were too long, not too long to finish, but definantly too long to check over for mistakes, when is it ever going to be necessary to find the probablilty of getting a bridge hand with cards all of the same suit, in less than a certian amount of time. I found this class to be very frustrating, the harder I studied the worse I did it seemed, I found it hard to know what to study for and this seemed to be the largest detractor from test success. I HATE STATISTICS

Regardless of how well i thought i knew the material in this course, I always found my grade in your tests extremely dissapointing. This completely took away my motivation.

Although the material was not the most exciting stuff, I did enjoy this class and feel like I learned a lot. The professor made it interesting and was always available to help me with questions. Homework assignments were appropriate in length and difficulty and, in my opinion, accurately predicted the difficulty of the tests. Thank you for an interesting and educational class at Tech- it is greatly appreciated.

Overall, the homework/quiz/test procedure was good for the material covered in the class. My main suggestion is more prep material for tests. More of a review or a practice test that would be more difficult than the test. In making the pracitice tests too easy, students are not as prepared for the test. So a practice test of the largest difficulty would be more beneficial, in my opinion, for students.

All in all i think everything was done well. I thought the class went very fast. It was easy in the beginning when the material was easy but later on it got a bit overwhelming. I wish there could have been answers to the hw posted online( or just to the even questions). I think that maybe the student could bring a page of formulas( just formulas not a cheat sheet) for some of the exams with the more involved formulas.

NEGATIVES: Seemed like the class time was spent going as fast as possible to cover all the necessary material. Could hardly keep up with note taking, much less completely understand the material due to the speed of the class periods. Wish I could''ve spent more time learning rather than trying to keep up with notes. I could not keep up with the pace of this class. I spent more time in this class than I did in all of the rest of my classes put together. Was very hard to study for the tests due to the extreme amounts of material covered for each exam. Class notes seemed like the book notes regurgitated. Weren''t as helpful as I was hoping as they were so close to the book material. Was an extreme number of equations to memorize for the exams.Class meeting time too early for a class like this. POSITIVES: Professor had a strong concern for the student and his/her welfare in the class. Office hours were awesome, and made it so that I could get extra help if needed. This was very helpful in this class. Examples given in class that were not in the book were very helpful. Quantity of examples was very nice. Late homework days were very nice. This really shows that the professor realizes we do have other classes we are taking at GA Tech.

I would have liked to have seen more examples worked in class. It was also difficult to do the proofs on the exams, since I had limited experience working proofs in the past. I also think homework should be harder than the exam questions, not vice versa. Thanks for the awesome office hours, and your dedication to the class. It was apparent you enjoy what you do.

Excellent job. One of the best profs I''ve ever had. Although I never came for help, I always knew I could at anytime. The material was covered well, so I felt confident in knowing how to do it. The course organization was amazing.

Only complaint was that an 8am class makes it difficult to learn.

As much as I dislike weekly quizzes, I''ve always found them to be extremely helpful in all my math classes. Statistic, like other math classes, is an easy class to think you know what you are doin, even when doing the homeworks, but in reality one''s understanding of the material is subpar. In addition, statistics is an easy subject to get behind in (as i am sadly speaking from experience), then run out of time to get caught up enough. Therefore, small weekly quizzes would keep the students on their toes w/ studying, practicing, and learning the material, and also give them pleanty of opportunities to get feedback as far as telling them how they are doing in the class to date. Other than that, I think you were an awesome teacher in that you covered all the material in a very organized way, were able to connect well with the students yet ran a ver effective class, and were very available and approachable for students to come and see if they have questions or needed help. I only wish I would have sought help sooner than I did so my grade could have better reflected the time and effort I put into trying to learn, understand, remember, and practice the material (as math has unfortuneatly never been my forte).

Thanks Professor Metcalfe, You were really helpful in the one on one help session. I enjoyed the class, even though its a hard concept to grasp at times. I''m glad I chose the mathematics statistics course instead of the engineering one because proofs are important.

Professor is helpful and very willing to provide assistance -- this is something that Georgia Tech needs more of! He very obviously wants to make sure his students learn the material well. Quizzes could be slightly shorter in length so that the students are able to solve problems and check their work. Personally, I found that for such short quiz periods, studying to regurgitate information would have yielded better results than learning fundamental concepts well to figure problems out on the test.

I found Statistics super boring. This isn''t your fault, I think it''s just the material and maybe the class time. Perhaps if there were some way to liven things up, it would help. I''m not asking for a song and dance but writing 8 pages of notes off the board every class was pretty plain and the example statistics were so random at times that they were demeaning to the material tested on them. I know that this is really dependant on the book and again there isn''t much you can do about it, but I wanted to mention it.

Take longer pauses for questions. Sometimes it''s hard to keep up. Otherwise, (other than proofs on the tests), the class was interesting and well formatted.

Tests required more than what was assigned. Which required more time spent for the class than I had to offer.

My only complaint about this class is that the tests felt too long for the given amount of time. Other than that I was very satisfied with the class.

I think you did an excellent job of covering the course material. A few things would have been helpful, though. Adding more examples would have aided in understanding the material. Additionally, assigning more homework problems for collection would help students stay on track better (you don''t have to grade all the problems, though).

Whenever help is given by the professor, no real guidance is given. The student must provide all questions, but if the student does not know what questions to ask the professor refers the student to the course book, and does not give examples of questions. Giving examples of questions is not a way to cheat the student from knowledge, but rather to guide the student in how to correclty look at the material. During the entire course I felt lost. Having read through over 3/4 of the book, and having done over 3/4 the problems the book has to offer, I feel I''ve learned nothing about the subject being taught in the course. Attending class never helped me. The professor would simply re-expain the text of the course book, and no real insight or direction was ever taught during the course. The professor did maintain a wonderful tool for his class though, a personal website that any student could access to recieve updates about the course. But, the course lacked preperatory tools and supplemental tools: practice tests, practice quizes, personal guidance from the instructor about certain topics, corrected proofs to check worked proofs, ect..

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