Math-Stats

[u/Pastel-Delphinium]

Hi, I wanted to know what the Math-Stats major is like. Is the stats department and its undergrad classes as bad as everyone says? And is it possible to keep a good GPA in the major? Thank you.

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[u/Better-List-7740]

imo stats classes are not that bad in terms of content (about the same as math courses), but there is a bigger risk of getting a bad prof (i.e. they are a bad teacher), and you have to be careful about courses as many of undergrad 4000 level courses are cross-listed with master's courses, meaning you only see the 25 people in the 4000 section but not the 150 master's students who are also in the same class (they just register for the 5000 section). A good professor may be able to still teach well to 175 students, but big class + big professor can be terrible.

i have taken 6 stats classes (4203, 04, 05, 06, 07, and 4541); 2 had bad professors, and 1 was a giant class (unfortunately also with one of the two bad profs). I'd say with the right scouting the major will probably be fine; the department tries to offer one undergrad-only / smaller section of each of the main courses, and usually offers more sections of courses than math (e.g. there is usually only one section of modern analysis 1 and 2, but there are probably 2 or 3 sections of the main stats courses and usually 2 of most electives).

[u/andrewqwerty12345 → u/Better-List-7740]

How was 4541? Debating whether to take 4541 or 4771 in the cs dept.

[u/Better-List-7740 → u/andrewqwerty12345]

I think that the two probably cover similar material. In favor of the stats class I would say that its probably a bit more relaxed -- both because of it being a smaller class and because the professor who teaches 4541 does not curve, he's perfectly fine with a bunch of people getting As (so long as you put in the work). In favor of the CS class I would say that if you're not a 100% AI coder, learning to implement the algorithms is very important and we only did a bit of that in 4541 (i assume in 4771 that is a larger focus).
Ultimately I think either one is okay because if you're interested in ML (not just trying to get reqs done) then I think both classes will give you a suitable base for more advanced coursework. Here I would say that the COMS department might slightly win out, since they have more diverse ML offerings, whereas with STAT they have more ML classes but I believe that each of those (unsupervised learning, advanced ML, applied ML, etc.) is cross-listed with the master's program, meaning the class size is guaranteed to be 100+. So if 4771 is better for future COMS ML classes, then you may just want to choose 4771.

[u/Pastel-Delphinium → u/Better-List-7740]

Thank you for your reply! Can I ask besides the instructors’ teaching, are the classes graded fairly and are grades curved?

[u/Confident_Shop_6484]

the other comment is pretty much the real answer: prof choice matters a lot more than the department label. full disclosure i built lionplan.org, and it pulls course + instructor ratings together so you can compare the different sections before registration. i'd still talk to a couple math-stats majors though since the site can't tell you the department culture or how hard it is to keep a specific GPA