Hamid Al-Saqban

This professor has taught: STAT400

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Hamid Al-Saqban Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2022	Really cool dude, but his lectures are not good lol. He pulls from the textbook directly so there’s no difference in reading the ~8-10 page chapter on your own time (which i did) rather than spending almost an hour sitting in a lecture hall at 8am. Homework is also 40% which is great bc they’re easy and hold your grade up after exams.
Hamid Al-Saqban STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2022	Hamid knows a lot about statistics and his knowledge shows in the enthusiasm he had every time a new topic came up. If you actually sit through the lectures and pay attention to what he's saying, I think you will definitely understand statistics. He does go based off the book so if reading is more your style of learning I would suggest that. But his exams were very similar to the homework problems (you walk through the week's graded homework in discussion) so doing those really prepared me for the exams.
Hamid Al-Saqban STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/16/2022	As a professor, Hamid is clearly passionate and cares for the subject, but unfortunately he is a subpar lecturer. For the few weeks that I did go to lecture, he was basically reading out of the textbook, but sometimes failed to convey the important parts of the lesson, or misspoke and used the wrong terms or variables which caused a lot of confusion. He also hardly answered questions in lecture, as he was fixated on lecturing without stopping and when he did answer questions sometimes misinterpreted them or answered them awkwardly, without really giving a satisfying answer. While some may say the proofs that happen in class were unnecessary, I'd say this is a 400 level course so they may expect people to understand the concepts they wrote instead of just memorizing formulas, which would be fair. Despite the complaints, I'd give him some leeway for this as he seems new to lecturing in the first place and seems to be lecturing here spontaneously (this section was supposed to be taught by Scott Preston but changed only a few days before semester started). Besides that, in terms of how he runs the class, it is very manageable and not time consuming. There's a small workload, giving only weekly homework problems from the textbook, and besides that only 2 midterms (no quizzes or extra coding assignments that were tedious). The discussion sections were very valuable as they reviewed the content of the past week and went over the homework problems which made the workload of the course even easier. Sometimes the exams/homeworks cover questions that seemed irrelevant to what was being taught (I distinctly remember an infinite sum for a function which didn't have to do with anything we were taught in lecture), and this caused the grades for some assignments to be really low (the first midterm average was a 78%, the second had a 65% average). However, for the final grade of the midterms and finals, it seems to be maximized in many ways (final replaces a lower midterm grade, or if final is lower it could be averaged with the lower midterm grade if it helps), so overall it seems like he takes a fair and reasonable method to manage grades and assignments. STAT400 with Hamid is not terrible as a course, but as a lecturer he leaves a lot to be desired.
Hamid Al-Saqban STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2022	Extremely understanding and passionate professor. Work in discussion prepares you very well for exams.
Hamid Al-Saqban Expecting a B Anonymous 04/20/2022	He's a good guy, legitimately. He's so passionate and knowledgeable about the class, but holy ****, his lectures were complete garbage. He verbose taught out of the book OR spent hours rambling off on irrelevant proofs that never appeared on exams. The exams themselves were definitely mid-tier, but required so much studying, and had really low class averages. Its possible for my semester he was bad because UMD literally switched my professor the week before classes started, so he had no chance to prepare, but still.