berkeley has GREAT professors

<p>Auroux is absolutely the ****.
He teaches the material extremely well, has awesome and interesting homework problems, gives fair tests, and even incorporates good humor in lectures.</p>

<p>He took a week off for a conference and when he came back everyone was applauding.
When he said there was no lecture on Thursday because of Veteran’s day he got a crowd of “Aww…”</p>

<p>Having said all of this, he’s actually a professor at MIT haha and currently on leave in Berkeley.</p>

<p>Brian Harvey is also an awesome teacher and he’s at Cal.</p>

<p>I feel like we’ve talked about this already in a different thread and the discrepancy of the scores. Ratemyprof is an easy source to use, but it does not say whether Berkeley professors are any better/worse than ones at MIT, etc.</p>

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<p>My intention is not to appear as a ■■■■■ but to point out that Ratemyprof is a stupid source for data. Neither am I saying Berkeley profs are terrible. But there’s no need to post this data as its so misleading and pointless.
Its nothing but a site for people who have the need to whine about their “subpar” profs or maybe rank obsessed students who give good ratings to increase their schools position. I don’t believe in public survey among common students.</p>

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<p>Why? He’s right, RMP does not provide data that is concrete and trustworthy. Rating websites rely on people to volunteer information. Like batman said in a previous thread, only those who were upset about their grade/the professor or those who were extremely happy with it/them would submit information and ratings. The majority of individuals in a given class do not fail or ace said class and they have no real motivation to rate or comment. Would you really trust a research study where only (or a large majority of) participants who actively sought to be a part of the study were assessed? The logic that this is trustworthy data that can have conclusions drawn upon it is a fallacy and shows a misunderstanding of basic statistics. This information is not “statistically significant” as you put it because the data that was obtained is not usable. To go even further, I would guess that the correlation that Berkeley professors are highly rated does not imply causation that they are “better” than ivy professors.</p>

<p>The trend has no validity and the claim that “berkeley has great professors” (when compared to those of top institutions) is flawed.</p>

<p>Berkeley has great professors is definitely not showed by this data, but what is showed is that if you pick a random student in Berkeley and a random student in MIT, then the random student in Berkeley is more likely to like his professor more than the random student in MIT would.</p>

<p>lol meh does it matter which college has a majority of kids who like their professors more? In the end, all that matters is what YOU the individual think. Although I normally never say this, when it comes to the educational experience, screw statistics and just ask YOURSELF whether or not you like what you’re experiencing in life. Forget what others think. I personally am enjoying my professors and I don’t care whether students in other universities or at Berkeley are enjoying theirs. It’s all a matter of perception and only your mind decides whether it likes or dislikes any external stimulus (which in this case is the proficiency of your professor).</p>

<p>MrPrince:

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<p>that wasn’t what I have comprehended from your first post on this thread. My understanding is that - you dislike when someone from Berkeley post positive reviews about Berkeley and you equate that with Berkeley pimping or “putting it on a pedestal”, as you said it. for you, posting good news about Berkeley is synonymous to equating Berkeley with the ivies. </p>

<p>based on that comment, I think it’s clear to me who’s insecure. LOL…</p>

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<p>I agree that this is not a statistically sound test and therefore you cannot judge the intrinsic quality of Berkeley’s professors based on it. However, the data is arrived at the same way for each school. Couldn’t the difference between the ratings of each school be arguably significant? I assume that students at each school on average would grade professors in the same way.</p>

<p>Sadly, some of those great professors are jumping ship :(</p>

<p>the other fact you have to think about is the number of professors listed. IIRC, MIT only has 300 whereas Berkeley has over 2400. Hopefully, people know where I’m going with that stat. And yes bull, some professors are leaving (some because of money last time I heard) smh</p>