<p>Would anyone know which course would be the easier (meaning less homework, papers) to balance out a challenging schedule for a freshman year? The course choices are either:
36-201 Statistical Reasoning or Intro to World History.</p>
<p>No idea about Statistical Reasoning, but I know Intro to World History is a class whose quality was heavily dependent upon the professor teaching it. You’ll find most of the Intro To XYZ humanities classes to be that way.</p>
<p>Is there a website to help figure out which instructors/courses are good? The ratings on the CMU website seem fairly useless (unless they are very high or very low), plus there are no comments.</p>
<p>?? What makes you believe that a nonmajor course or any course would be <em>easier</em> than the <em>difficult</em> course??</p>
<p>It depends on what you’re better at. Intro to W. Hist is primarily a writing class from what I’m told, and revolves less around history as it does interpreting historical events and then writing long, long essays about them.</p>
<p>Statistical Reasoning is more of a math class. I had a look at the syllabus the other night, and it seems like fairly typical coursework you’d find in the first semester of an AP Statistics course. I dunno how much homework and papers are given out, but if you don’t like writing essays, this might be a better option.</p>
<p>Try RateMyProfessors.</p>
<p>You might need to dig a few years back in the FCEs. Look up by professor’s name instead of the course number (occasionally course numbers get changed while the course content remains relatively constant). The only times I remember professors not having many reviews were times they were brand new faculty.</p>
<p>I know FCE response rates have dropped significantly since they went to online-only instead of the former paper-based-on-the-last-day-of-class, so that might be why it’s a bit harder to find comments.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information, that is all very helpful. Will check those out. And LongPrime, if you would actually read my question, I was asking about 2 specific courses, not saying that nonmajor courses are “easier”.</p>
<p>I did read your question, many times. You are requesting, which course of the 2 is easier and knowing that you also may have a <em>challenging schedule</em>, meaning challenging courses. You could also mean conflicting class scheduling which would mean that both of your two courses do not conflict with time schedule, but then why would you ask about <em>easier</em>?</p>
<p>FIW, I seem to remember that DS got a, <em>B</em>, for a core statistic class. He only got a 3 or 4 classes with a <em>B</em>, graduating on dual ME and HCI majors, highest honors equivalence.</p>