18.650: Fundamentals of Statistics

Table of contents

  1. Course Info
  2. Realistic Prerequisites
  3. Subject Matter
  4. Course Staff
  5. Lectures
  6. Problem Sets
  7. Exams
  8. Resources
  9. Grading

Course Info

Class Size 91
Hours/Week 8.7 (37 responses)
Instructors Promit Ghosal
Overall Rating 4.6/7.0

Realistic Prerequisites

  • Probability, or 18.600 is a hard prerequisite.
  • Some students recommended experience with **linear

Subject Matter

  • Students found the course content to be theoretical and useful. The course focused on the theory behind many common statistical models.

Course Staff

  • Students found the course staff to be nice but disorganized.

Lectures

  • Students found lectures somewhat confusing, but referred to the posted lecture slides after class to study.
  • Lecture slides were the most helpful resource to students.

Problem Sets

  • Students did not find lectures helpful for completing the psets.
  • Students found the psets of medium difficulty.

Exams

  • Students found the exams challenging.
  • The exam questions most closely reflected questions from recitations and psets.

Resources

  • Students used posted lecture slides to learn course content.
  • There was no textbook for the course.

Grading

  • Students felt that grading was clear.
  • There was an 85%/75% cutoff for an A/B respectively.