Scott Preston

This professor has taught: MATH135, SPHL610, STAT400, STAT401, STAT410, STAT426, SURV410

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Scott Preston MATH135 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/07/2022	Fairly unorganized, and you could get pretty much all the information you needed for the class out of the textbook. Wasn't a great lecturer, but the exams were manageable, and curved when the average was too low.
Scott Preston MATH135 Expecting a P Anonymous 10/03/2022	Extremely disorganized. Your job as a student was to take these rambling, convoluted styles of math problems that were 9 sentences long and form them into complex, multi-step graduate-level math problems (Eigenvectors, Leslie Matrices). He liked to treat them like a puzzle and give you only 30% of the info you needed, expecting you to draw tables and charts and use red yarn to figure out the rest on your own. Then he expected you to set up your own math equation from this bs, then solve it in several steps. This would be like, 20% of an exam grade. The rest were the same way. The book was different than what was on his midterms. The lectures were different than what was in the book. Almost nothing connected, and there's nothing online to help you, and he wrote so fast and jumped around on his slides, that you would be writing notes for the wrong page without realizing it. A total nightmare that almost cost me my mental health. Don't take his class.
Scott Preston MATH135 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/11/2022	He was a very sweet professor and was willing to help when you needed it. However, as others have said, he's very unorganized. Once, he forgot all of his notes and had to leave class for 20 minutes to go get them. His exams always had some sort of issue(but he'd never blame it on us, he'd just get rid of the question or correct it midtest), the workload was also unnecessarily large in my opinion, he wouldn't teach some things in lecture but they'd be on the homework, and his final grading system wasn't correct in ELMS, which isn't bad but wasn't my favorite. However, I got an A easily because he gave me all the resources to succeed. Don't skip lectures, try to show up to as many discussions as possible, and actually do the homework, don't just copy it. He'll make exam questions identical to the homework!!!!!!
Scott Preston MATH135 Anonymous 12/31/2021	Preston was a good teacher as long as you show up to the lectures it should be easy. His exams are somewhat tough but if you go over his notes you should be fine.
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.
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 MATH135 Anonymous 12/06/2021	WORST PROFESSOR I HAVE EVER HAD AT UMD! I REPEAT: WORST PROFESSOR I HAVE EVER HAD AT UMD! While he was sort of a nice guy, he was the worst professor. He gave zero review for exams, his exams were extremely difficult and unorganized, and do not get me started about his lectures. Preston rambles on during his lectures, hoping eventually he will find what he wants to say. He writes out his notes with his sloppy handwriting, and messes up his own examples!!! He makes no sense at all whatsoever. DO NOT TAKE ANY MATH WITH PRESTON!
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 MATH135 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/01/2021	I have very mixed feelings. I did well in this class, but there were some things about this professor that made it hard to do so. Overall, I think he is a nice and funny guy who loves math, but he is quite unorganized. A lot of problems had numerical typos and that made it 10x harder to understand the homework and tests. The tests are also worded in a ver confusing manner. But, he drops an exam and either one or two homeworks. If you go to class and ask for help, it's easy enough to do well. Sometimes his dry humor can come off as condescending, but he is helpful if you really need it. The homework and tests did not need to be as confusing, time consuming, and difficult as they were made to be. Overall, nice guy, alright class, but took up a ton of my time for what should be an easier 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.
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.
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.
Scott Preston STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2020	Had him over Spring 2019 actually and he was very nice with the transition. He is very understanding IMO, and every time I approached him in person he was always friendly. He made a whole website for the class with all the resources on it and I felt that was very nice of him. However, I stopped going to lectures because they were very boring and I didn't really learn much in there, but I think that might just be more of a stat400 problem than his problem. I also remember exams and quizzes were pretty straight forward and weren't like gotcha questions
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.
Scott Preston STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/11/2020	Caught multiple people using chegg during the final and XFed all of them. Wasn't nice at all
Scott Preston STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2020	I found the class incredibly boring and dry. Try your very best to attend and pay attention in lecture. The tests/homeworks/quizzes are super fair and generally easy, and Scott’s pretty understanding. He does a lot of stuff in R and encourages you to use it instead of old methods that the textbook uses. He overexplains the R stuff, and it’s pretty interesting, so I wouldn’t worry about the learning curve.
Scott Preston STAT400 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2020	Good overall professor. Gives fair exams. Lectures can sometimes be a mess, he uses a lot of examples to illustrate new concepts before introducing them, which works for some but not for others.
Scott Preston STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/15/2020	He's kind of a cutie professor, like smart-white-middle age-dad type. His lectures were fine if you could follow (I could but most people couldnt) but he posts the notes online. Or you can just learn from the textbook because tbh he would explain like reasoning behind some of the formulas during lecture and thats just useless. Exams are very fair, he gave a practice test, and theres quizzes every friday. Also he does graded HW on R but also gives you a sheet on how to do the problems. pretty good class overall! HE ALSO DOESNT DO MINUS GRADES! AN A IS 90-97! A+ is 97-100 and so on. he might change this by next semester tho because he just moved here and maybe doesn't realize that Maryland gives +/- grades.