STAT410 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Sandra Cerrai STAT410 Anonymous 10/21/2024	I think she is OK for the most part in teaching the material, and I think it's generally interesting, but I have a few gripes about the administration of the class. For one, she gets really frustrated when students don't appear to understand the material. The simple reason is that it's difficult to understand the material while taking notes and listening to her--a lot of us understand it after going back to our notes or to the textbook--but apparently she doesn't realize this. On the first midterm, there was one problem that had unclear wording. Several students went up to her to clarify it, but her clarification did not help, and I actually ended up erasing the correct way of doing it. Another part of the same problem used the expected value for a geometric random variable, which she forgot to derive in class and only realized after the exam.
Yu Gu STAT410 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 10/04/2024	Hard class but the subject is fun. Midterms were brutal. They were worth 20% of your grade, and out of 20 points. So each point you lose is one point off your final grade. Final was 40%. Substantial curve at the end so it was okay. He covers stuff most STAT410 Professors don't: multivariate normal and random vectors, some stuff on Monte Carlo Simulation, and has a very theoretical focus (or so he says). He uses random walks for most of his examples. Exams are designed to test your understanding and are not plug and chug. No cheat sheet. Overall if you think you're smart, take him. He'll give you a better class than most people teaching STAT410.
Lutian Zhao STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/26/2024	The GOAT of the Math department. Highly recommend. He’s the best.
Takumi Saegusa STAT410 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/25/2024	Not a good professor at all. Lectures were incredibly dull with him just reading verbatim off of the lecture slides, which were riddled with errors, including errors in formulas which I only noticed after slamming my head against a wall on a homework problem only to realize the formula HE GAVE was wrong, so maybe double-check the things he tells you to be safe. He paced the entire class incorrectly, as well, so we spent the entire first half of the semester doing the basic foundational work of STAT410, but we never made it to moments, characteristic functions, or limit theorems, all of which I would have liked to learn as a Math major interested in studying statistics. The exams were easy however and you can bring a formula sheet. Not particularly hard professor, but a genuinely awful teacher.
Yu Gu STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/19/2024	Course is hard but rewarding. Enjoyed taking it with him.
Lutian Zhao STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/13/2024	Goat-tian Zhao is amazing. He made me like stat after hating it. He also went way beyond the scope of the course at the end but none of that content was on an exam (since there's no final) so if you're interested in getting a head start on STAT 420 content or just other statistics things, then you can do that. Or you can just come to class and vibe, or not come at all. Very flexible, no mandatory attendance, homeworks did not take that long but reinforced concepts well. Exams, all the problems are given ahead of time with only numbers changed so it's easy to do well but again you still learn the content when you practice the problems.
Dong Quan Nguyen STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2024	He is amazing so nice to everyone.
Dong Quan Nguyen STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2024	The goat... he makes stat410 a very easy and approachable class. he is also a funny guy. for grading there were 5 hws and 1 midterm and a final.
Dong Quan Nguyen STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2024	Taking Dong's section of STAT410 was fantastic -- the workload was light but thorough, and he always gave us ample material to review before every exam. He graded generously and overall seemed very passionate about teaching math as a subject. Highly recommend.
Dong Quan Nguyen STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2024	Best math professor I've had at UMD. Hands down.
Lutian Zhao STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/31/2024	He's so so good, highly recommend!
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2023	Terence is a decent professor with great lectures, lenient grading, and infrequent assignments. His lecturing is great, he's well-spoken and explains everything clearly. The grading is not bad, when you make a mistake only a couple of points are typically taken off. However, he only gave out 4 homework assignments the whole semester. I would've preferred more, and I fell behind at a couple of points due to this. I needed to cram to catch up, but learned all of the material in the end. I'd recommend Terence if you're self-motivated and do well without much structure. He's also a great guy overall, charismatic and personable.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2023	Long is a great professor and has great lectures (the material is straight from the textbook, but I felt I gained a lot by attending lectures because he explained tricky concepts well). Homework assignments aren't too difficult and are problems from the textbook. Exams can be a bit tricky but the practice exams prepare you well and there's a lot of partial credit + opportunities to correct for points back.
Wiseley Wong STAT410 Anonymous 12/20/2023	Zooms through lectures on a chalkboard and didn't really help me understand anything. Exams were totally way too hard and unfair. STAT410 historically is supposed to be a way easier class than it was this semester.
Wiseley Wong STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2023	Wong is a good professor, but his lecture is quite fast. He seems to cover content a little more in-depth than other professors, but it is at the cost of needing to study a lot more outside of class, unless you have seen the concepts before. This semester there weren't any practice exams (which was quite annoying), but that may have be due to Wong never having taught this class before.
Sandra Cerrai STAT410 Expecting an A DenialWhammy 12/16/2023	Not as bad as I was expecting from the previous reviews. Her exams are difficult but fair if you study previous exams (and there are a LOT of them). I won't lie, I just studied off the textbook, which is a little grief for STAT410, but her lectures were pretty solid as long as you ask a ton of questions. There's also a huge curve in the end if you're worried about your grade.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/13/2023	I'll start with the positives: Prof. Long gives good lectures and is a generally nice and chill guy. He's good at explaining things and is very approachable. He lectures by the book and the homework is from the book. Exams are reasonable. The negatives are that grading is EXTREMELY slow. We had a take home quiz in late September and another in early November. Neither have been given back to us or graded yet, and our final is tomorrow. We also have not had our second exam given back to us, and we were promised the grades would be posted two days ago. We are also missing one homework and are waiting on info about exam corrections he let us do. However, he told us that if we wanted to get our grades back, we could go to his office hours the day before the exam. But he cancelled them at the time they were supposed to start. Basically we are waiting to know about 60% of our grade currently and it is the day before our final. Absolutely ridiculous and it is not helpful for learning as we have received basically 0 feedback on our work since October.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/15/2023	Super chill guy. He wants you to succeed and will do everything he can to help you. Also very entertaining lectures!
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 07/22/2023	Danul is a great professor. He lectures well, and if you don't understand the concept, I would either ask him right away in class as he gives detailed explanations and will restate things without hesitation, or I would go to his office hours where he is also very helpful. I went into this class only after taking AP Stats in high school, and if you're like me I forgot pretty much everything after walking out of the exam room. I would say that if you're very new to stats, the course will prove to be a little difficult and first and you might not understand what's happening, but keep on solving problems, asking questions, and eventually you'll get an intuitive grasp. The homeworks are pretty difficult, and if worst comes to worst there are answers online that you can use as reference. For answers that are already written in the back of the textbook, I'm pretty sure Danul is okay with you looking at them, because one day I walked into office hours to ask a question and he said "did you refer to the answer key before coming?" which was kind of funny. He's also a really chill guy and makes occasional jokes that keep the lectures interesting. I remember one time during the finals review lecture, he said "and I'll be grading harshly for the final," and the class fell dead silent. He broke the silence soon saying that exams must have had us pretty stressed out, because obviously that was a joke. So it goes without saying that him and his grader grades homeworks, quizzes, and exams very leniently, and as long as you somewhat get the concept and the calculation, he'll give many many partial credits. There was also a decent curve at the end of the semester. His practice exam "study guides" are very similar to the actual exam, and the final also contains problems of the same caliber. If you can do the homework confidently, undoubtedly you will ace the exams. Even if you find them a little difficult, a bit of studying goes a really long way. The last thing I'm gonna say, is make sure to attend lectures. I don't know about STAT400, but he doesn't record any, and does most of his stuff on the chalkboard. He's a good lecturer, so it's worthwhile going to.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2023	Terence's lectures are straight to the point and directly from the textbook. He goes through the textbook in order and does not deviate from it. He has 5-6 homework assignments throughout the semester which don't take too much time. Midterms are a little bit more challenging; his first midterm in my opinion was more challenging than his practice and was somewhat of a time crunch, but overall exams were fair and grading was lenient. I would take him again if I had the chance.
Leonid Koralov STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/25/2023	The course is interesting as the professor does a great job at going in-depth on each topic and answers questions during lecture which include homework problems. The issues are that the textbook is not suited for a proof-based class and the class did not feel organized (no lecture notes, no schedule, and we covered the Central Limit Theorem in the last 15 minutes before the semester ended). Overall, if you want to have a more organized type of class structure I cannot recommend this professor, otherwise if you don't mind this and want a professor who will go in-depth on the material; then, I would heavily recommend him to take especially related to Statistics.
Shalin Parekh STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2023	cares about students, always engages with the class, posts lecture notes, grades EXTREMELY fast (finished midterms over weekend, finals on the day we took it), goes through content at a good pace, very knowledgeable (can ask about stat things beyond the scope of the class, he will have an answer), also exams are very fair (just review lecture examples), only problem is that some homework problems were really hard towards the end of the semester but you can go to office hours or search up the problem online to get insight
Shalin Parekh STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2023	nice pace, fair exams, lenient grading, cares about students best math prof i've had
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2023	Great professor overall. Lecture's are very informative and very helpful in office hours. Practice exams are similar to the real exams, grading is pretty lenient too. Highly recommend!
Leonid Koralov STAT410 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2023	Pros: Amazing lecturer who is engaging, answers questions during lecture, and exams/homework are fair. Cons: Management of course material is lacking which includes the following: having a schedule where we know which topic will be covered each day, homework's on a regular basis, and a proper proof-based textbook or some form of lecture notes. Overall I would recommend him for learning the course material; but, if you want a more structured class you should probably look elsewhere.
Shalin Parekh STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/12/2023	You can tell Dr. Parekh is passionate about what he's teaching and makes sure his students understand the material. His lectures are also very clear, and he is more than happy to answer any questions you have in class. As long as you ATTEND CLASS (which is highly encouraged because the examples he does in class mirror the questions on his exams), you should do completely fine. His homeworks are a bit time-consuming, but they are graded very leniently with flexible due dates (thanks Ying!) Also, he also told us the cutoff for an A was around 200 out of 250 on the exam. Would recommend taking.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/24/2023	Like all the other reviews said, professor is very fair, exams are easy, homework is not too bad, R projects are the only pain tho
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Anonymous 01/10/2023	Danul is a very nice guy. He really cares about the success of his students. The lectures are fine. He is a generous grader on homeworks, quizzes, and exams. His exams are very similar to the practice problems. He will let you make up missed quizzes and gives homework extension if you ask him. He will also release solutions to practice exam problems (which are very similar to the actual exams)- just ask him! The exam average is very high. If you put the required effort, you can really get an A+ in his class. I had a really busy semester, so I could not put more time in this class and still ended up with a B. Take his section for Stat410 if you really want a good grade. Unlike other sections, there are no R projects in his class :)
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/03/2023	Pretty good professor, the grade I got in the end was my fault, but if you do the work you will get the grade you want
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/03/2023	Pretty fair professor for stat
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2023	Lectures were straight from the textbook, and exams were fair. There were around 6 homeworks other than 2 midterms. He may seem unorganized, but I didn't see an issue as long as you were able to keep up with the lecture content (which was all again, straight up from the textbook). Very approachable, flexible and interactive. One of the most easy going experiences with a math/stat class.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2023	Super chill and very approachable. His exams were as fair as they could be. Lectures directly followed the textbook. He may seem 'unorganized' but I don't think there would be a reason to be thrown off as long as you are able to keep up with the lecture content. He seemed to really care about the content that he taught. Overall a great learning experience. Easily made this into one of my favorite math/stat courses.
Sandra Cerrai STAT410 Expecting an A fiftyseven 12/25/2022	I would recommend STAT410 with Cerrai, just make sure you're alright with a class that isn't as easy as STAT400. She teaches very well and I personally liked the style of lecturing - it's taught a bit more like the upper level math courses due to the focus on theory, as the course's name would imply. It might be a bit more difficult for those who aren't into math as she can use some notation and concepts that not everyone will necessarily be familiar with at first. However, she's more than happy to clarify this and did so as-needed when people asked and in the end I found it helped connect it better to other topics and made it better to understand. She follows the textbook pretty well, so if you do miss anything the textbook will be adequate at explaining it. Her exams are pretty fair in my experience, although not always the easiest. On the second midterm, the class generally did rather poorly and she just made up for it entirely by giving a take-home exam. During the exam she's also still receptive to questions, so if you're confused - just ask. There's also a rather large curve at the end. All in all, I'd highly recommend her if you aren't just looking for an easy class to fulfill a STAT4XX requirement.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2022	not organized at all, no online notes or recordings, but exams were very fair. the averages were all pretty high. there were like only 5 or 6 homeworks and they were all from the textbook. and then the grade cutoffs were pretty generous too. 90 was an A.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/23/2022	I was honestly really scared to take STAT410 because of how hard I heard it was compared to STAT400, but Danul (his first name) truly made this an enjoyable experience. First of all, the man actually cares and tries his best while lecturing and you can clearly see that. He really does try to put an emphasis on teaching people to understand the broad underlying themes and concepts of statistics rather than being pedantic on the small technical details which I really appreciate. This is the first time I've taken a statistics course and not felt like it was just another chug and plug math course- I felt myself able to apply the concepts I learnt. The HWs are a little tough, but this is no problem because you can go to his OH and he will help you through it all (I was able to get 100% for most of the HWs this way). Some HW questions are graded only for completion which really helps. Quizzes are pretty simple just review each weeks notes and you'll be fine. The exams are extremely fair and are VERY similar to the practice exams he gives. To top it off, he is very accommodating in general. Whenever the class had a major doubt about one of the HW questions he addressed the problem directly and just gave us an extension. He dropped the number of HWs near finals weeks cuz he knew we were already very busy. Overall, this class does take effort, but it is certainly doable when you take it with this GOAT
Sandra Cerrai STAT410 Expecting an A Charl1e1029 12/23/2022	I really liked the ordering of how prof Cerrai structured the content of STAT 410. I also thought her homework’s and exams were very reasonable. Although the averages of her exams were low, she offered quite the reasonable curve and even gave us an extra assignment to boost our grade after the second midterm. Her lectures are quite fast paced, but she interjects quite a bit saying that we can stop her at anytime and ask questions.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2022	The tests were crazy the averages were 90+ and this class was very bearable with him, would recommend.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2022	Very cool guy and standard lectures. Follows the textbook to a tea which is great if you fall behind in lectures or want more examples. Generous cutoffs with A being a 90%+ as well but I often found the lack of practice material before exams not great. Sure there was the textbook but there were plenty of examples that were too convoluted or too simple to show up on an exam. Other than that, Terence was great. If you have the option, take Terence.
Terence Long STAT410 Expecting an A+ ceremonialgradematcha 12/18/2022	i liked long's teaching and he explained everything pretty well, but the class wasn't well organized. there were no notes online, and i missed a week due to covid so it was a bit hard to catch up. also, he never answers emails and would constantly post homework later than he said he would. however, his tests were reasonable. tl;dr pretty good teacher, horrible organizer.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2022	He has an amazing grasp of the content and his lectures were great in my opinion. He is usually very good at answering questions as his understanding and teaching ability are up there with the best I have had here at UMD. Homework is meant to challenge you, but the grading is very generous if you give a good attempt. Exams are much easier and are more closely alike to the more simple examples gone over in class. Looking at the other reviews, definitely expect to spend some time on homework as you usually need a deep understanding to get to the solution, but he often helps. He gives extensions if you ask or enough people ask. Another review said he does not tell you where you are in the book, that may have been true in the past, but this semester he always told us where we were, and if you just ask what example it is he tells you. I assume he doesn't write it on the board every time because chances are most people wouldn't need to know it. Also, I want to give credit to him for being mature about distractions in our class as it was often interrupted.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting an A+ wmy78b 05/25/2022	Genuinely, I would give Prof. Gunatilleka 4 stars but I want to raise his reviews a little bit. He is generous and nice, the sample exams are always helpful. Besides, the exams have average around 80~90, which is decent. The HW is tough but you can always get full scores. I would recommend you guys to take his class. Disadvantages: Not well-organized, you neither know where his examples are from nor which page he is talking about.
Mestiyage Gunatilleka STAT410 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/05/2022	I thought Danul was a fine professor. The lectures can tend to drag on a bit, but he does a good job with making sure people understand the material well. He is good about responding to emails, and he takes pauses in class to ask for questions. One thing I will say is that the homeworks are pretty tough, but the exams do not reflect the difficulty of the homeworks. Not a bad choice for STAt410. Just be prepared to spend about 3 hrs/week on this class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Anonymous 01/23/2022	He was extremely nice and understanding this semester. Lectures could be a bit disorganized but he also has online recordings that cover all the material. Homeworks were tedious, but exams were quite easy and class average was very high.
Scott Preston STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2021	Nice person who seems to care. In class examples at times were hard to connect to homework questions. Reasonable exams and grading.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2021	material is pretty challenging but Jonathan does a really good job explaining it. there's a weekly online quiz that's pretty easy if you just go to class and pay attention, and there are about 8 homeworks the whole semester. the hw's are fairly hard and take a bit of time, but the grading is extremely lenient. exams are also very similar to practice exams that he gives out. hard material but easy to get a good grade if you simply do the work he assigns
Scott Preston STAT410 Anonymous 12/15/2021	This guy does not deserve his current 3.08 rating. The man does not give any definitions in lecture and just goes over examples without context. His notes on the white board are readable but his handwritten notes are so hard to read. Don't take this man's class if you want to have your sanity by the end of the semester.
Scott Preston STAT410 Anonymous 12/01/2021	I truly do not know why Dr. Preston has a decent rating. Nice person, but should NOT be teaching any remotely difficult math courses. Starts writing on the board while rambling without any real explanation, leaving students in the dark during lectures. The only piece of advice I have for someone taking his classes are to stop showing up to lecture and read the textbook instead. It will be a much better use of your time. In addition, the homework problems were unnecessarily difficult and often used tricks not at all taught in class.
Scott Preston STAT410 Anonymous 11/14/2021	He is a nice guy, but his lectures were very hard to follow and were often very unorganized. He never went over definitions, and just did random examples without specifying what he was covering. Homework assignments were long and typically about material not covered in class at all, so it was necessary to self teach from the textbook which lacks examples as is. Lastly, sometimes he was condescending when people asked questions.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Anonymous 07/12/2021	I had Fernandes this past summer for STAT410 and it was his first time teaching the course. Usually students take STAT400 first before STAT410 but this was not the case for me. Fernandes did an amazing job explaining the course material I would say he's just as good as Justin when it comes to teaching. Also if you ever had questions about the homework, course material, or R projects you could do to office hours and he would walk you through it. He turned STAT410 from a difficult to easy course and was extremely approachable definitely easy to get at least a B and with a little bit of extra studying you can get an A.
Scott Preston STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/16/2021	I felt like Preston was an awesome teacher. He clearly cared a lot about teaching students as best he could, and provided a lot of resources to help us do so. Classes were flipped, so the normal lecture time was office hours for those with questions, which was helpful when I had them. The tests and homeworks were fair, albeit a little challenging, but grading was always quick, fair, and transparent. Your worst of the three exams counted for less than the other two and you could drop a homework, which was appreciated, and cutoffs have a 91 count as an A and not an A-, which is helpful too.
Mark Freidlin STAT410 Expecting a B- Anonymous 01/12/2021	Incredibly difficult class and was definitely treated more as a graduate course than something usually taught in undergrand. Things were constantly wrong in the notes and were never fixed, leaving students vulnerable to many mistakes on the exams which had averages in the 40's. I ended up with a B- in the end and I really don't know how, course was near impossible. No electronic presence at all for the course, spelling errors on our official syllabus. Very very disorganized and not to mention the fact that he most times doesn't explain the necessary precursors to the content he's going into. Jumped straight into random walks and brownian motion before even touching distributions like the exponential and poisson. Don't take his courses, they're a living nightmare.
Scott Preston STAT410 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 12/20/2020	I will preface this with that my mental health was not great during the semester, but that improved as the semester hit the end. Dr. Preston is an extremely nice professor and wants to make sure you learn the material. He is a bit of a "tough dad" type, but in the end you can tell he does care. His exams are a bit long (and I'm usually a fast test taker), but he curves accordingly. My #1 advice would be go to his office hours and take an interest in learning the material, you won't regret it. Don't cheat though, he will definitely turn your world upside down if he finds out.
TBA STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/10/2020	Dr. TBA was very knowledgable and responsive and I learned a lot about probability theory in their class. My only issue was that I felt that some lecture material was covered too fast and difficult to follow.
Scott Preston STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2020	Really nice guy who's passionate about statistics. Very fair homework's and exams. Super helpful in office hours.
Vadim Kaloshin STAT410 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/24/2020	He mainly reads from the book but gives slightly more in-depth examples. He is extremely disorganized and his primary focus is research. He is a fair grader, however and gave a generous curve at the end.
Mark Freidlin STAT410 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/23/2020	Avoid this professor if possible. He does not use electronic devices, all his material is handwritten, make terrible mistakes all the time, etc, etc. He teaches a concept closely related to Markov Chain before introducing what random variable is. He also has very, very high expectations for students (though he put little effort on helping students meet his standards), so the problems he gives are not solvable if you only look at the textbook and his notes (we have a student pursuing her Ph.D., even she needs to google when doing the hw problems). He could not explain the concepts clearly as well. Everyone is struggling, All in all, don't.
Archana Khurana STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2019	Very standard professor. She's very nice and considerate, but also isn't amazing. She lectured from notes and sometimes it felt like she wasn't as fluent in the theory as the applications.
Jian Lun Xu STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/20/2019	Excellent lecturer and fair exams; they are similar to the ones from previous years. Dr. Xu only works at UMD part-time. He works at NIH as a researcher. He has a lot of interesting stories to tell as well. He does not have a strong accent.
Casey Cremins STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/29/2019	Prof Cremins is the best. He is super nice, funny, and cares about his students a lot! The key to getting a good grade is doing the homework and going to office hours if you have questions! His exams are always SOOO straight forward and from the homework. He is literally the BEST guy!!
Dmitry Dolgopyat STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/04/2019	Can't understand his teachings at all
Jian Lun Xu STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2018	Excellent lectures, very good at explaining concepts (much more than the garbage book that the math department decides to use for STAT410), and gives a strong, theoretical foundation for probability theory, despite his dry lectures. His homework in general was not incredibly difficult, and often pulls test questions from previous homework assignments and examples done in class, so it is not hard to excel if one studies properly. I would say that the class he taught was incredibly dead since it was held from 5-6:15 p.m TuTh, which made it dreadful to go to, which was only made worse with dry lectures. Ideally, he would be perfect at an earlier time, but since he is an Adjunct professor, this is unlikely. Another problem is that he can't hold office house besides ~30 minutes before/after class, but he is excellent about responding to email. I would recommend him to anyone taking STAT410, but to be wary of the options. I think I got more out of this class by taking it with him than people like Friedlin, Dolgopyat, and Kagan, but I feel like better options might exist elsewhere.
Abram Kagan STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2018	His lecture can be boring and hard to understand (due to his accent and handwriting) sometimes, but his exams are easy. If you don't care about learning and all you want is an easy and good grade, definitely go to him.
Abram Kagan STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2018	He seems scary, but he is actually a sweet old man. He is very kind and genuinely cares whether his students learn or not. However, he does tend to go a bit quickly in class. Quizzes and midterms were straightforward. The final was tougher than the midterms, but still very fair.
Abram Kagan STAT410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/30/2018	Kagan, despite what many others have said about his teaching style, is not actually that bad of a professor. (Perhaps he was dry and less good when teaching an (imo) uninspired class like STAT400.) The beginning of the class was rather fast paced, with the first day touching upon content of 3 chapters and what is called the Borel-Cantelli Lemma, which definitely scared some people into dropping that day. However, he slowed down and more comprehensively covered the content in those chapters. I feel that he covers the class at a very reasonable pace. Despite his stern, scary expression he is a very kind man, even if you are perpetually delinquent. If you take 410, he will probably like you by virtue of you showing up every class on time. He is very understanding (as I have seen) of unfortunate situations and wants his students to succeed. Exams are straightforward compared to the content which was taught. If he is in a good mood, he tells you what each question is about! If all the so called "great" professors sections are all filled, he usually has slots remaining. Taking his section is not the worst choice in the world.
Sandra Cerrai STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/29/2018	Don't take STAT410 with her. Exams are hard and it's very difficult to gage what she expects of her students in terms of what needs to be memorized. For example, many students didn't memorize the formula for the PDF for the normal distribution (because we never had to on homeworks) and then it was worth 20 points on one of the exams. She's a smart person but she isn't friendly. She's very intimidating and hard to approach in office hours, and she gets visibly frustrated when the class doesn't know the answer to something that she wants us to know the answer to. I also feel like she thinks Calc 1 and Calc 2 are much more extensive than they are, given she expected us to have obscure gaussian integrals memorized without teaching them to us.
Dmitry Dolgopyat STAT410 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/17/2018	His lectures are useless. You'll basically be learning the material entirely on your own. Also, the average on our final was a 56% and he STILL didn't curve. I urge anyone to take STAT410 with someone else or STAT400.
Leonid Koralov STAT410 Anonymous 05/11/2018	He's alright. Doesn't put a lot of preparation into the course, but he's good at explaining stuff so that somewhat makes up for it.
Jian Lun Xu STAT410 Expecting an A+ dfarias 03/02/2013	To start out, the person bellow is incorrect about attendance not being required. It is very important that you go to his lectures and take good notes on everything he writes down. He explains the concepts quite well, but his accent can really make it hard to understand sometimes. If it weren't for that, I'd probably give him a 5. Dr. Xu is certainly worth it over Cerrai or some other professors that usually teach it. He goes more in depth and teaches the class in a very structured manner, which I appreciate. The exams should theoretically be easy if you consider he gives 2-3 problems from homework or class, and often the other 2 are problems from the book that he did not assign (look in the high end). If you pay attention to what he says will be on the test, and look at his review sheets, you should be able to do very well on the tests. In the end, you will probably learn considerably more than the other professors who teach this class.
Jian Lun Xu STAT410 Anonymous 11/29/2012	The worst thing about Prof. Xu's teaching is that he spends most of the lectures simply going over examples from the textbook, which I found completely unhelpful. By the same token, the best thing about this course is that attendance is not required. If attendance had been required, I might have dropped this course simply due to boredom. Professor Xu is a competent teacher however, though the lectures aren't imaginative or exciting, nor do they provide any kind of deeper perspective on Statistics as a discipline. I did appreciate his anecdotes, though he does try to set a moralistic tone (in his characteristically Chinese way) which may be (perhaps intentionally) intimidating to some students. He does care though, which is very much appreciated.
Dmitry Dolgopyat STAT410 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2011	Though Prof. Dolgopyat is not the best lecturer (he tends to speak very fast or very low) he does make up for it by providing a wide array of problems, and goes over each one thoroughly. Most people in the class earned an A with a couple almost failing because they were a little too cocky (ppl who scored A's on exams) and decided not to do the HW (worth 25% of grade). He did give them a pass but I don't know if he will do that in the future. All in all three exams and HW is not much to stress a person out but be warned, if you can't follow what the prof is writing on the board without listening to them explain it then you will not fair well in his class. As I've said before he doesn't speak clearly.
Mark Freidlin STAT410 Anonymous 12/16/2011	He is not the best teacher. He just write on the board. He does not follow the book. He gives quizzes however when he realizes that everyone did poorly on the first one, he made the quizzes into take home quizzes. His reviews for midterm and final are not helpful at all. However He is not unreasonable. He is very helpful and also He is not a harsh grader. He didn't not fail anyone on the midterm. He allows a formula sheet on the final so it is not that bad. His final and midterm are very much like his take home quizzes and homework. If you know how to do the take home quizzes and homework, you should be fine in the exam and final.

Sandra Cerrai
STAT410

Anonymous
10/21/2024

I think she is OK for the most part in teaching the material, and I think it's generally interesting, but I have a few gripes about the administration of the class. For one, she gets really frustrated when students don't appear to understand the material. The simple reason is that it's difficult to understand the material while taking notes and listening to her--a lot of us understand it after going back to our notes or to the textbook--but apparently she doesn't realize this. On the first midterm, there was one problem that had unclear wording. Several students went up to her to clarify it, but her clarification did not help, and I actually ended up erasing the correct way of doing it. Another part of the same problem used the expected value for a geometric random variable, which she forgot to derive in class and only realized after the exam.

Yu Gu
STAT410

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
10/04/2024

Hard class but the subject is fun. Midterms were brutal. They were worth 20% of your grade, and out of 20 points. So each point you lose is one point off your final grade. Final was 40%. Substantial curve at the end so it was okay. He covers stuff most STAT410 Professors don't: multivariate normal and random vectors, some stuff on Monte Carlo Simulation, and has a very theoretical focus (or so he says). He uses random walks for most of his examples. Exams are designed to test your understanding and are not plug and chug. No cheat sheet. Overall if you think you're smart, take him. He'll give you a better class than most people teaching STAT410.

Lutian Zhao
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/26/2024

The GOAT of the Math department. Highly recommend. He’s the best.

Takumi Saegusa
STAT410

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/25/2024

Not a good professor at all. Lectures were incredibly dull with him just reading verbatim off of the lecture slides, which were riddled with errors, including errors in formulas which I only noticed after slamming my head against a wall on a homework problem only to realize the formula HE GAVE was wrong, so maybe double-check the things he tells you to be safe. He paced the entire class incorrectly, as well, so we spent the entire first half of the semester doing the basic foundational work of STAT410, but we never made it to moments, characteristic functions, or limit theorems, all of which I would have liked to learn as a Math major interested in studying statistics. The exams were easy however and you can bring a formula sheet. Not particularly hard professor, but a genuinely awful teacher.

Yu Gu
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/19/2024

Course is hard but rewarding. Enjoyed taking it with him.

Lutian Zhao
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/13/2024

Goat-tian Zhao is amazing. He made me like stat after hating it. He also went way beyond the scope of the course at the end but none of that content was on an exam (since there's no final) so if you're interested in getting a head start on STAT 420 content or just other statistics things, then you can do that. Or you can just come to class and vibe, or not come at all. Very flexible, no mandatory attendance, homeworks did not take that long but reinforced concepts well. Exams, all the problems are given ahead of time with only numbers changed so it's easy to do well but again you still learn the content when you practice the problems.

Dong Quan Nguyen
STAT410

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/10/2024

He is amazing so nice to everyone.

Dong Quan Nguyen
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2024

The goat... he makes stat410 a very easy and approachable class. he is also a funny guy. for grading there were 5 hws and 1 midterm and a final.

Dong Quan Nguyen
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/08/2024

Taking Dong's section of STAT410 was fantastic -- the workload was light but thorough, and he always gave us ample material to review before every exam. He graded generously and overall seemed very passionate about teaching math as a subject. Highly recommend.

Dong Quan Nguyen
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/08/2024

Best math professor I've had at UMD. Hands down.

Lutian Zhao
STAT410

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
03/31/2024

He's so so good, highly recommend!

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/22/2023

Terence is a decent professor with great lectures, lenient grading, and infrequent assignments. His lecturing is great, he's well-spoken and explains everything clearly. The grading is not bad, when you make a mistake only a couple of points are typically taken off. However, he only gave out 4 homework assignments the whole semester. I would've preferred more, and I fell behind at a couple of points due to this. I needed to cram to catch up, but learned all of the material in the end. I'd recommend Terence if you're self-motivated and do well without much structure. He's also a great guy overall, charismatic and personable.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/21/2023

Long is a great professor and has great lectures (the material is straight from the textbook, but I felt I gained a lot by attending lectures because he explained tricky concepts well). Homework assignments aren't too difficult and are problems from the textbook. Exams can be a bit tricky but the practice exams prepare you well and there's a lot of partial credit + opportunities to correct for points back.

Wiseley Wong
STAT410

Anonymous
12/20/2023

Zooms through lectures on a chalkboard and didn't really help me understand anything. Exams were totally way too hard and unfair. STAT410 historically is supposed to be a way easier class than it was this semester.

Wiseley Wong
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2023

Wong is a good professor, but his lecture is quite fast. He seems to cover content a little more in-depth than other professors, but it is at the cost of needing to study a lot more outside of class, unless you have seen the concepts before. This semester there weren't any practice exams (which was quite annoying), but that may have be due to Wong never having taught this class before.

Sandra Cerrai
STAT410

Expecting an A
DenialWhammy
12/16/2023

Not as bad as I was expecting from the previous reviews. Her exams are difficult but fair if you study previous exams (and there are a LOT of them). I won't lie, I just studied off the textbook, which is a little grief for STAT410, but her lectures were pretty solid as long as you ask a ton of questions. There's also a huge curve in the end if you're worried about your grade.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/13/2023

I'll start with the positives: Prof. Long gives good lectures and is a generally nice and chill guy. He's good at explaining things and is very approachable. He lectures by the book and the homework is from the book. Exams are reasonable. The negatives are that grading is EXTREMELY slow. We had a take home quiz in late September and another in early November. Neither have been given back to us or graded yet, and our final is tomorrow. We also have not had our second exam given back to us, and we were promised the grades would be posted two days ago. We are also missing one homework and are waiting on info about exam corrections he let us do. However, he told us that if we wanted to get our grades back, we could go to his office hours the day before the exam. But he cancelled them at the time they were supposed to start. Basically we are waiting to know about 60% of our grade currently and it is the day before our final. Absolutely ridiculous and it is not helpful for learning as we have received basically 0 feedback on our work since October.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/15/2023

Super chill guy. He wants you to succeed and will do everything he can to help you. Also very entertaining lectures!

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
07/22/2023

Danul is a great professor. He lectures well, and if you don't understand the concept, I would either ask him right away in class as he gives detailed explanations and will restate things without hesitation, or I would go to his office hours where he is also very helpful. I went into this class only after taking AP Stats in high school, and if you're like me I forgot pretty much everything after walking out of the exam room. I would say that if you're very new to stats, the course will prove to be a little difficult and first and you might not understand what's happening, but keep on solving problems, asking questions, and eventually you'll get an intuitive grasp. The homeworks are pretty difficult, and if worst comes to worst there are answers online that you can use as reference. For answers that are already written in the back of the textbook, I'm pretty sure Danul is okay with you looking at them, because one day I walked into office hours to ask a question and he said "did you refer to the answer key before coming?" which was kind of funny. He's also a really chill guy and makes occasional jokes that keep the lectures interesting. I remember one time during the finals review lecture, he said "and I'll be grading harshly for the final," and the class fell dead silent. He broke the silence soon saying that exams must have had us pretty stressed out, because obviously that was a joke. So it goes without saying that him and his grader grades homeworks, quizzes, and exams very leniently, and as long as you somewhat get the concept and the calculation, he'll give many many partial credits. There was also a decent curve at the end of the semester. His practice exam "study guides" are very similar to the actual exam, and the final also contains problems of the same caliber. If you can do the homework confidently, undoubtedly you will ace the exams. Even if you find them a little difficult, a bit of studying goes a really long way. The last thing I'm gonna say, is make sure to attend lectures. I don't know about STAT400, but he doesn't record any, and does most of his stuff on the chalkboard. He's a good lecturer, so it's worthwhile going to.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/27/2023

Terence's lectures are straight to the point and directly from the textbook. He goes through the textbook in order and does not deviate from it. He has 5-6 homework assignments throughout the semester which don't take too much time. Midterms are a little bit more challenging; his first midterm in my opinion was more challenging than his practice and was somewhat of a time crunch, but overall exams were fair and grading was lenient. I would take him again if I had the chance.

Leonid Koralov
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/25/2023

The course is interesting as the professor does a great job at going in-depth on each topic and answers questions during lecture which include homework problems. The issues are that the textbook is not suited for a proof-based class and the class did not feel organized (no lecture notes, no schedule, and we covered the Central Limit Theorem in the last 15 minutes before the semester ended). Overall, if you want to have a more organized type of class structure I cannot recommend this professor, otherwise if you don't mind this and want a professor who will go in-depth on the material; then, I would heavily recommend him to take especially related to Statistics.

Shalin Parekh
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/19/2023

cares about students, always engages with the class, posts lecture notes, grades EXTREMELY fast (finished midterms over weekend, finals on the day we took it), goes through content at a good pace, very knowledgeable (can ask about stat things beyond the scope of the class, he will have an answer), also exams are very fair (just review lecture examples), only problem is that some homework problems were really hard towards the end of the semester but you can go to office hours or search up the problem online to get insight

Shalin Parekh
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/19/2023

nice pace, fair exams, lenient grading, cares about students best math prof i've had

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2023

Great professor overall. Lecture's are very informative and very helpful in office hours. Practice exams are similar to the real exams, grading is pretty lenient too. Highly recommend!

Leonid Koralov
STAT410

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/17/2023

Pros: Amazing lecturer who is engaging, answers questions during lecture, and exams/homework are fair. Cons: Management of course material is lacking which includes the following: having a schedule where we know which topic will be covered each day, homework's on a regular basis, and a proper proof-based textbook or some form of lecture notes. Overall I would recommend him for learning the course material; but, if you want a more structured class you should probably look elsewhere.

Shalin Parekh
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/12/2023

You can tell Dr. Parekh is passionate about what he's teaching and makes sure his students understand the material. His lectures are also very clear, and he is more than happy to answer any questions you have in class. As long as you ATTEND CLASS (which is highly encouraged because the examples he does in class mirror the questions on his exams), you should do completely fine. His homeworks are a bit time-consuming, but they are graded very leniently with flexible due dates (thanks Ying!) Also, he also told us the cutoff for an A was around 200 out of 250 on the exam. Would recommend taking.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/24/2023

Like all the other reviews said, professor is very fair, exams are easy, homework is not too bad, R projects are the only pain tho

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Anonymous
01/10/2023

Danul is a very nice guy. He really cares about the success of his students. The lectures are fine. He is a generous grader on homeworks, quizzes, and exams. His exams are very similar to the practice problems. He will let you make up missed quizzes and gives homework extension if you ask him. He will also release solutions to practice exam problems (which are very similar to the actual exams)- just ask him! The exam average is very high. If you put the required effort, you can really get an A+ in his class. I had a really busy semester, so I could not put more time in this class and still ended up with a B. Take his section for Stat410 if you really want a good grade. Unlike other sections, there are no R projects in his class :)

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting a B
Anonymous
01/03/2023

Pretty good professor, the grade I got in the end was my fault, but if you do the work you will get the grade you want

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/03/2023

Pretty fair professor for stat

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/03/2023

Lectures were straight from the textbook, and exams were fair. There were around 6 homeworks other than 2 midterms. He may seem unorganized, but I didn't see an issue as long as you were able to keep up with the lecture content (which was all again, straight up from the textbook). Very approachable, flexible and interactive. One of the most easy going experiences with a math/stat class.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/03/2023

Super chill and very approachable. His exams were as fair as they could be. Lectures directly followed the textbook. He may seem 'unorganized' but I don't think there would be a reason to be thrown off as long as you are able to keep up with the lecture content. He seemed to really care about the content that he taught. Overall a great learning experience. Easily made this into one of my favorite math/stat courses.

Sandra Cerrai
STAT410

Expecting an A
fiftyseven
12/25/2022

I would recommend STAT410 with Cerrai, just make sure you're alright with a class that isn't as easy as STAT400. She teaches very well and I personally liked the style of lecturing - it's taught a bit more like the upper level math courses due to the focus on theory, as the course's name would imply. It might be a bit more difficult for those who aren't into math as she can use some notation and concepts that not everyone will necessarily be familiar with at first. However, she's more than happy to clarify this and did so as-needed when people asked and in the end I found it helped connect it better to other topics and made it better to understand. She follows the textbook pretty well, so if you do miss anything the textbook will be adequate at explaining it. Her exams are pretty fair in my experience, although not always the easiest. On the second midterm, the class generally did rather poorly and she just made up for it entirely by giving a take-home exam. During the exam she's also still receptive to questions, so if you're confused - just ask. There's also a rather large curve at the end. All in all, I'd highly recommend her if you aren't just looking for an easy class to fulfill a STAT4XX requirement.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/24/2022

not organized at all, no online notes or recordings, but exams were very fair. the averages were all pretty high. there were like only 5 or 6 homeworks and they were all from the textbook. and then the grade cutoffs were pretty generous too. 90 was an A.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/23/2022

I was honestly really scared to take STAT410 because of how hard I heard it was compared to STAT400, but Danul (his first name) truly made this an enjoyable experience. First of all, the man actually cares and tries his best while lecturing and you can clearly see that. He really does try to put an emphasis on teaching people to understand the broad underlying themes and concepts of statistics rather than being pedantic on the small technical details which I really appreciate. This is the first time I've taken a statistics course and not felt like it was just another chug and plug math course- I felt myself able to apply the concepts I learnt. The HWs are a little tough, but this is no problem because you can go to his OH and he will help you through it all (I was able to get 100% for most of the HWs this way). Some HW questions are graded only for completion which really helps. Quizzes are pretty simple just review each weeks notes and you'll be fine. The exams are extremely fair and are VERY similar to the practice exams he gives. To top it off, he is very accommodating in general. Whenever the class had a major doubt about one of the HW questions he addressed the problem directly and just gave us an extension. He dropped the number of HWs near finals weeks cuz he knew we were already very busy. Overall, this class does take effort, but it is certainly doable when you take it with this GOAT

Sandra Cerrai
STAT410

Expecting an A
Charl1e1029
12/23/2022

I really liked the ordering of how prof Cerrai structured the content of STAT 410. I also thought her homework’s and exams were very reasonable. Although the averages of her exams were *low*, she offered quite the reasonable curve and even gave us an extra assignment to boost our grade after the second midterm. Her lectures are quite fast paced, but she interjects quite a bit saying that we can stop her at anytime and ask questions.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/22/2022

The tests were crazy the averages were 90+ and this class was very bearable with him, would recommend.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2022

Very cool guy and standard lectures. Follows the textbook to a tea which is great if you fall behind in lectures or want more examples. Generous cutoffs with A being a 90%+ as well but I often found the lack of practice material before exams not great. Sure there was the textbook but there were plenty of examples that were too convoluted or too simple to show up on an exam. Other than that, Terence was great. If you have the option, take Terence.

Terence Long
STAT410

Expecting an A+
ceremonialgradematcha
12/18/2022

i liked long's teaching and he explained everything pretty well, but the class wasn't well organized. there were no notes online, and i missed a week due to covid so it was a bit hard to catch up. also, he never answers emails and would constantly post homework later than he said he would. however, his tests were reasonable. tl;dr pretty good teacher, horrible organizer.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2022

He has an amazing grasp of the content and his lectures were great in my opinion. He is usually very good at answering questions as his understanding and teaching ability are up there with the best I have had here at UMD. Homework is meant to challenge you, but the grading is very generous if you give a good attempt. Exams are much easier and are more closely alike to the more simple examples gone over in class. Looking at the other reviews, definitely expect to spend some time on homework as you usually need a deep understanding to get to the solution, but he often helps. He gives extensions if you ask or enough people ask. Another review said he does not tell you where you are in the book, that may have been true in the past, but this semester he always told us where we were, and if you just ask what example it is he tells you. I assume he doesn't write it on the board every time because chances are most people wouldn't need to know it. Also, I want to give credit to him for being mature about distractions in our class as it was often interrupted.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting an A+
wmy78b
05/25/2022

Genuinely, I would give Prof. Gunatilleka 4 stars but I want to raise his reviews a little bit. He is generous and nice, the sample exams are always helpful. Besides, the exams have average around 80~90, which is decent. The HW is tough but you can always get full scores. I would recommend you guys to take his class. Disadvantages: Not well-organized, you neither know where his examples are from nor which page he is talking about.

Mestiyage Gunatilleka
STAT410

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/05/2022

I thought Danul was a fine professor. The lectures can tend to drag on a bit, but he does a good job with making sure people understand the material well. He is good about responding to emails, and he takes pauses in class to ask for questions. One thing I will say is that the homeworks are pretty tough, but the exams do not reflect the difficulty of the homeworks. Not a bad choice for STAt410. Just be prepared to spend about 3 hrs/week on this class.

Jonathan Fernandes
STAT410

Anonymous
01/23/2022

He was extremely nice and understanding this semester. Lectures could be a bit disorganized but he also has online recordings that cover all the material. Homeworks were tedious, but exams were quite easy and class average was very high.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/21/2021

Nice person who seems to care. In class examples at times were hard to connect to homework questions. Reasonable exams and grading.

Jonathan Fernandes
STAT410

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/20/2021

material is pretty challenging but Jonathan does a really good job explaining it. there's a weekly online quiz that's pretty easy if you just go to class and pay attention, and there are about 8 homeworks the whole semester. the hw's are fairly hard and take a bit of time, but the grading is extremely lenient. exams are also very similar to practice exams that he gives out. hard material but easy to get a good grade if you simply do the work he assigns

Scott Preston
STAT410

Anonymous
12/15/2021

This guy does not deserve his current 3.08 rating. The man does not give any definitions in lecture and just goes over examples without context. His notes on the white board are readable but his handwritten notes are so hard to read. Don't take this man's class if you want to have your sanity by the end of the semester.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Anonymous
12/01/2021

I truly do not know why Dr. Preston has a decent rating. Nice person, but should NOT be teaching any remotely difficult math courses. Starts writing on the board while rambling without any real explanation, leaving students in the dark during lectures. The only piece of advice I have for someone taking his classes are to stop showing up to lecture and read the textbook instead. It will be a much better use of your time. In addition, the homework problems were unnecessarily difficult and often used tricks not at all taught in class.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Anonymous
11/14/2021

He is a nice guy, but his lectures were very hard to follow and were often very unorganized. He never went over definitions, and just did random examples without specifying what he was covering. Homework assignments were long and typically about material not covered in class at all, so it was necessary to self teach from the textbook which lacks examples as is. Lastly, sometimes he was condescending when people asked questions.

Jonathan Fernandes
STAT410

Anonymous
07/12/2021

I had Fernandes this past summer for STAT410 and it was his first time teaching the course. Usually students take STAT400 first before STAT410 but this was not the case for me. Fernandes did an amazing job explaining the course material I would say he's just as good as Justin when it comes to teaching. Also if you ever had questions about the homework, course material, or R projects you could do to office hours and he would walk you through it. He turned STAT410 from a difficult to easy course and was extremely approachable definitely easy to get at least a B and with a little bit of extra studying you can get an A.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/16/2021

I felt like Preston was an awesome teacher. He clearly cared a lot about teaching students as best he could, and provided a lot of resources to help us do so. Classes were flipped, so the normal lecture time was office hours for those with questions, which was helpful when I had them. The tests and homeworks were fair, albeit a little challenging, but grading was always quick, fair, and transparent. Your worst of the three exams counted for less than the other two and you could drop a homework, which was appreciated, and cutoffs have a 91 count as an A and not an A-, which is helpful too.

Mark Freidlin
STAT410

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
01/12/2021

Incredibly difficult class and was definitely treated more as a graduate course than something usually taught in undergrand. Things were constantly wrong in the notes and were never fixed, leaving students vulnerable to many mistakes on the exams which had averages in the 40's. I ended up with a B- in the end and I really don't know how, course was near impossible. No electronic presence at all for the course, spelling errors on our official syllabus. Very very disorganized and not to mention the fact that he most times doesn't explain the necessary precursors to the content he's going into. Jumped straight into random walks and brownian motion before even touching distributions like the exponential and poisson. Don't take his courses, they're a living nightmare.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
12/20/2020

I will preface this with that my mental health was not great during the semester, but that improved as the semester hit the end. Dr. Preston is an extremely nice professor and wants to make sure you learn the material. He is a bit of a "tough dad" type, but in the end you can tell he does care. His exams are a bit long (and I'm usually a fast test taker), but he curves accordingly. My #1 advice would be go to his office hours and take an interest in learning the material, you won't regret it. Don't cheat though, he will definitely turn your world upside down if he finds out.

TBA
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/10/2020

Dr. TBA was very knowledgable and responsive and I learned a lot about probability theory in their class. My only issue was that I felt that some lecture material was covered too fast and difficult to follow.

Scott Preston
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/23/2020

Really nice guy who's passionate about statistics. Very fair homework's and exams. Super helpful in office hours.

Vadim Kaloshin
STAT410

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/24/2020

He mainly reads from the book but gives slightly more in-depth examples. He is extremely disorganized and his primary focus is research. He is a fair grader, however and gave a generous curve at the end.

Mark Freidlin
STAT410

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/23/2020

Avoid this professor if possible. He does not use electronic devices, all his material is handwritten, make terrible mistakes all the time, etc, etc. He teaches a concept closely related to Markov Chain before introducing what random variable is. He also has very, very high expectations for students (though he put little effort on helping students meet his standards), so the problems he gives are not solvable if you only look at the textbook and his notes (we have a student pursuing her Ph.D., even she needs to google when doing the hw problems). He could not explain the concepts clearly as well. Everyone is struggling, All in all, don't.

Archana Khurana
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/24/2019

Very standard professor. She's very nice and considerate, but also isn't amazing. She lectured from notes and sometimes it felt like she wasn't as fluent in the theory as the applications.

Jian Lun Xu
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/20/2019

Excellent lecturer and fair exams; they are similar to the ones from previous years. Dr. Xu only works at UMD part-time. He works at NIH as a researcher. He has a lot of interesting stories to tell as well. He does not have a strong accent.

Casey Cremins
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/29/2019

Prof Cremins is the best. He is super nice, funny, and cares about his students a lot! The key to getting a good grade is doing the homework and going to office hours if you have questions! His exams are always SOOO straight forward and from the homework. He is literally the BEST guy!!

Dmitry Dolgopyat
STAT410

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/04/2019

Can't understand his teachings at all

Jian Lun Xu
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/24/2018

Excellent lectures, very good at explaining concepts (much more than the garbage book that the math department decides to use for STAT410), and gives a strong, theoretical foundation for probability theory, despite his dry lectures. His homework in general was not incredibly difficult, and often pulls test questions from previous homework assignments and examples done in class, so it is not hard to excel if one studies properly. I would say that the class he taught was incredibly dead since it was held from 5-6:15 p.m TuTh, which made it dreadful to go to, which was only made worse with dry lectures. Ideally, he would be perfect at an earlier time, but since he is an Adjunct professor, this is unlikely. Another problem is that he can't hold office house besides ~30 minutes before/after class, but he is excellent about responding to email. I would recommend him to anyone taking STAT410, but to be wary of the options. I think I got more out of this class by taking it with him than people like Friedlin, Dolgopyat, and Kagan, but I feel like better options might exist elsewhere.

Abram Kagan
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/17/2018

His lecture can be boring and hard to understand (due to his accent and handwriting) sometimes, but his exams are easy. If you don't care about learning and all you want is an easy and good grade, definitely go to him.

Abram Kagan
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2018

He seems scary, but he is actually a sweet old man. He is very kind and genuinely cares whether his students learn or not. However, he does tend to go a bit quickly in class. Quizzes and midterms were straightforward. The final was tougher than the midterms, but still very fair.

Abram Kagan
STAT410

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
11/30/2018

Kagan, despite what many others have said about his teaching style, is not actually that bad of a professor. (Perhaps he was dry and less good when teaching an (imo) uninspired class like STAT400.) The beginning of the class was rather fast paced, with the first day touching upon content of 3 chapters and what is called the Borel-Cantelli Lemma, which definitely scared some people into dropping that day. However, he slowed down and more comprehensively covered the content in those chapters. I feel that he covers the class at a very reasonable pace. Despite his stern, scary expression he is a very kind man, even if you are perpetually delinquent. If you take 410, he will probably like you by virtue of you showing up every class on time. He is very understanding (as I have seen) of unfortunate situations and wants his students to succeed. Exams are straightforward compared to the content which was taught. If he is in a good mood, he tells you what each question is about! If all the so called "great" professors sections are all filled, he usually has slots remaining. Taking his section is not the worst choice in the world.

Sandra Cerrai
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/29/2018

Don't take STAT410 with her. Exams are hard and it's very difficult to gage what she expects of her students in terms of what needs to be memorized. For example, many students didn't memorize the formula for the PDF for the normal distribution (because we never had to on homeworks) and then it was worth 20 points on one of the exams. She's a smart person but she isn't friendly. She's very intimidating and hard to approach in office hours, and she gets visibly frustrated when the class doesn't know the answer to something that she wants us to know the answer to. I also feel like she thinks Calc 1 and Calc 2 are much more extensive than they are, given she expected us to have obscure gaussian integrals memorized without teaching them to us.

Dmitry Dolgopyat
STAT410

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/17/2018

His lectures are useless. You'll basically be learning the material entirely on your own. Also, the average on our final was a 56% and he STILL didn't curve. I urge anyone to take STAT410 with someone else or STAT400.

Leonid Koralov
STAT410

Anonymous
05/11/2018

He's alright. Doesn't put a lot of preparation into the course, but he's good at explaining stuff so that somewhat makes up for it.

Jian Lun Xu
STAT410

Expecting an A+
dfarias
03/02/2013

To start out, the person bellow is incorrect about attendance not being required. It is very important that you go to his lectures and take good notes on everything he writes down. He explains the concepts quite well, but his accent can really make it hard to understand sometimes. If it weren't for that, I'd probably give him a 5. Dr. Xu is certainly worth it over Cerrai or some other professors that usually teach it. He goes more in depth and teaches the class in a very structured manner, which I appreciate. The exams should theoretically be easy if you consider he gives 2-3 problems from homework or class, and often the other 2 are problems from the book that he did not assign (look in the high end). If you pay attention to what he says will be on the test, and look at his review sheets, you should be able to do very well on the tests. In the end, you will probably learn considerably more than the other professors who teach this class.

Jian Lun Xu
STAT410

Anonymous
11/29/2012

The worst thing about Prof. Xu's teaching is that he spends most of the lectures simply going over examples from the textbook, which I found completely unhelpful. By the same token, the best thing about this course is that attendance is not required. If attendance had been required, I might have dropped this course simply due to boredom. Professor Xu is a competent teacher however, though the lectures aren't imaginative or exciting, nor do they provide any kind of deeper perspective on Statistics as a discipline. I did appreciate his anecdotes, though he does try to set a moralistic tone (in his characteristically Chinese way) which may be (perhaps intentionally) intimidating to some students. He does care though, which is very much appreciated.

Dmitry Dolgopyat
STAT410

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2011

Though Prof. Dolgopyat is not the best lecturer (he tends to speak very fast or very low) he does make up for it by providing a wide array of problems, and goes over each one thoroughly. Most people in the class earned an A with a couple almost failing because they were a little too cocky (ppl who scored A's on exams) and decided not to do the HW (worth 25% of grade). He did give them a pass but I don't know if he will do that in the future. All in all three exams and HW is not much to stress a person out but be warned, if you can't follow what the prof is writing on the board without listening to them explain it then you will not fair well in his class. As I've said before he doesn't speak clearly.

Mark Freidlin
STAT410

Anonymous
12/16/2011

He is not the best teacher. He just write on the board. He does not follow the book. He gives quizzes however when he realizes that everyone did poorly on the first one, he made the quizzes into take home quizzes. His reviews for midterm and final are not helpful at all. However He is not unreasonable. He is very helpful and also He is not a harsh grader. He didn't not fail anyone on the midterm. He allows a formula sheet on the final so it is not that bad. His final and midterm are very much like his take home quizzes and homework. If you know how to do the take home quizzes and homework, you should be fine in the exam and final.

Reviews for STAT410