Natalia Tchetcherina

This professor has taught: SPHL601, SPHL602, SPHL603, SPHL610, STAT100, STAT400, STAT401, STAT410, STAT430, STAT440, STAT470, SURV410, SURV440
Information Review
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT470

Anonymous
03/28/2024
Exams are hard, and has no relation with practice exam. Do not take her. She makes this class extremely hard. She read from PowerPoint slides without explaining anything. .
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT470

Expecting a W
Anonymous
02/19/2024
Lots of work and classwork is due on every class day. Taking this course with other professor. She is not the best choice for taking the course.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/06/2024
While Natalia seems like a kind person, it was hard to understand her in lectures, and it seems like most people (myself included) stopped attending within the first few weeks because of this. Additionally, this course has an excessive workload in my opinion. There were homework assignments and report submissions due almost every week and classwork assignments due almost every day (and the classwork is really just extra homework, since it's not done in class). There were times when a homework assignment, report submission, and classwork assignment would all be due on the same day. Assignments also seemed needlessly lengthy. I don't think a reduced workload would have hindered our understanding of the material. Another major issue was grading. Homework and classwork assignments were graded relatively fairly, but the grading on reports seemed very arbitrary. Natalia would leave comments on reports and assign a grade, but there was no indication of how many points were lost for what. A simple mistake in one part that caused other parts to be incorrect could result in her giving your group a 60% on a report. She did allow resubmissions, with a 5 point penalty each time. However, even this system was flawed: after fixing all the issues she pointed out and resubmitting, she would point out additional issues that were not mentioned previously. Because of this, we had to resubmit some reports 3, 4, or even 5 times. Finally, some assignments just weren't structured well. Instructions were often unclear, leaving us to figure things out on our own. Also, most of the homework and classwork assignments required using R, but Natalia would just put brief instructions in the assignment. I know other professors in the STAT department provide R Markdown notebooks for assignments, with the instructions and starter code included. This would be much better in my opinion, so we could just focus on writing the R code necessary to solve the problems and writing our analysis. Overall, while Natalia seems like a kind person, the confusing lectures, excessive workload, arbitrary grading, and assignment issues made the class somewhat dysfunctional. While it is still possible to do well in the class despite these issues, I would recommend taking the class with any other professor if possible.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2023
While Natalia seems like a kind person, it was hard to understand her in lectures, and it seems like most people (myself included) stopped attending within the first few weeks because of this. Additionally, this course has an excessive workload in my opinion. There were homework assignments and report submissions due almost every week and classwork assignments due almost every day (and the classwork is really just extra homework, since it's not done in class). There were times when a homework assignment, report submission, and classwork assignment would all be due on the same day. Assignments also seemed needlessly lengthy. I don't think a reduced workload would have hindered our understanding of the material. Another major issue was grading. Homework and classwork assignments were graded relatively fairly, but the grading on reports seemed very arbitrary. Natalia would leave comments on reports and assign a grade, but there was no indication of how many points were lost for what. A simple mistake in one part that caused other parts to be incorrect could result in her giving your group a 60% on a report. She did allow resubmissions, with a 5 point penalty each time. However, even this system was flawed: after fixing all the issues she pointed out and resubmitting, she would point out additional issues that were not mentioned previously. Because of this, we had to resubmit some reports 3, 4, or even 5 times. Finally, some assignments just weren't structured well. Instructions were often unclear, leaving us to figure things out on our own. Also, most of the homework and classwork assignments required using R, but Natalia would just put brief instructions in the assignment. I know other professors in the STAT department provide R Markdown notebooks for assignments, with the instructions and starter code included. This would be much better in my opinion, so we could just focus on writing the R code necessary to solve the problems and writing our analysis. Overall, while Natalia seems like a kind person, the confusing lectures, excessive workload, arbitrary grading, and assignment issues made the class somewhat dysfunctional. While it is still possible to do well in the class despite these issues, I would recommend taking the class with any other professor if possible.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/11/2023
This class requires a semester long group project and if you are stuck with bad group members it is not going to be an enjoyable class. She also implements "class assignments" that are due at 11:59PM the same day she assigns it to make sure people are coming to class. Most of the time it is annoying, but it isn't too hard if you go to class. She often reads from the slides and does not go over examples very often (which I think is pretty important to be able to apply the content). Overall, it isn't a hard class, but it is a lot of busy work and if you don't like group work I wouldn't recommend. There are no exams and she allows you to resubmit the group assignments for a higher grade. She is a nice professor and if you ask questions she will answer. I think the class is a lot of busy work and it shouldn't be too bad if you have a good group for the project
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/21/2022
It can be difficult to understand her because she is not a native English speaker, however, all the slides she provides are straightforward to follow. The homework and classwork can be tedious but for the most part, they are fair and follow the examples she does in class and I think they are good resources that allow you to teach yourself; personally, I taught myself mostly through the work given out. There were times that I felt that the content in class did not completely line up with the homework, but since the homework was WebAssign, it is pretty simple to just quickly read the relevant part of the book that allows you to complete the homework. Since attendance isn't mandatory, it is totally feasible to get a good grade simply by completing the given work and understanding that. As for exams, I felt her practice exams gave you a good idea of what it would look like. There were some tricky parts and things you can easily lose points on (like not using the hat symbol), but for the most part, there were no "gotcha" questions. You are allowed to have a cheat sheet during the test and it becomes essentially a plug-and-chug if your notes are good. For the final, if you get an A, you automatically get an A regardless of what you got previously. I think this is a fair policy that should apply to many classes. Her grading can be a bit picky for Classworks but she is willing to hear you out and give you back points here and there if it is reasonable. From my experience, she is one of the kindest teachers I have had and I would take her again. I feel like if you do all the work she gives, getting an A- for this class is guaranteed. I would take her in the future.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Anonymous
11/15/2022
Assigns a lot of busy work (but it's usually pretty simple). There were no exams in this class, but there was a semester long group project. She mostly taught stuff off the slides while deriving some aspects or going over examples on the board. She has a heavy accent.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/19/2021
She is a really sweet person and makes Stat440 very easy (honestly too easy). There were no exams, but weekly homeworks, "concept checks", and a semester long project. But she lets you resubmit your reports for a better grade. Really great format for the course and a great semester with her.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Anonymous
01/12/2021
Class consisted (online format) of daily assignments, weekly homeworks, and a very long class project that she supports you with. Concepts are not too hard, she teaches them well. Very friendly and cares about her students. Very happy I took this class.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/04/2021
Natalia was a fine professor, and she recorded all of the zoom lectures which was helpful. There were daily classwork assignments at the start of the semester, which were graded pretty harshly, which I found frustrating. She also used WebAssign for homeworks, so there was always at least a bit of work. Tests were fair though, and if you got an A on the cumulative final you got an A no matter how you did before, which felt fair to me.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT400

Expecting an A
cnaka
01/24/2018
Natalia's lectures consisted of her reading slides from a board. She has difficult to understand and I absorbed very little of the material from her, the only reason I went to class was due to her attendance requirements. (I do not believe she made the slides) The homework was the most challenging parts of the course and did a good job expanding on what was done in class. The exams deviated very little from the practice exams, so while some of the questions should have been challenging, they were not.
Natalia Tchetcherina
STAT440

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/01/2018
The exam and final were fair. She taught by going over slides she created and posted on elms and working examples on the board (not posted anywhere else). She was a good teacher overall and I found going to lecture very useful. Homework is tedious, but not very difficult. She has a very strong accent, but I had no difficulty understanding her after the 3rd lecture. The final project was fun, but very long. Interesting class and good professor.