<p>I have read a few comments on other websites and people say this is the class that they dread. I have no choice but to take whoever i can get since class space is limited. I'd like to know how bad the class really is considering I am a serious student willing to put all the effort I can in. Also in the worse case scenario if I end up with a difficult professor what would be thing to do besides seeing him during office hours? Thanks</p>
<p>sign up for CLAS first week because I understand if you don’t sign up for it, you miss your chance. The tutors there will have taken it and will be able to help you. I don’t know this specific course though, so hopefully someone else will be able to speak more directly to that.</p>
<p>I am enrolled in Pstat 120B right now (we are one week from the final!). The course is best described as “statistical calculus.” The material is different than 120A, as the course focuses on statistics rather than probability, but 120B is not difficult if you try to understand, rather than memorize. The coursework gets easier as the quarter goes by, so do not be disheartened if the material initially seems difficult.</p>
<p>For the first few weeks, you do a lot of calculus, as you learn how to transform random variables (if you’ve studied linear algebra, this is analogous to a linear transformation). Nothing ridiculously difficult, assuming that you don’t have Hinkley as your professor. Once you get to the main material, estimators, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing, calculus does a disappearing act and you’re left with algebra, terminology, and a bit of intuition.</p>
<p>Read the book if you are having difficulty (right now it is DeGroot’s Probability and Statistics). We roughly cover chapters 5-9, in addition to the parts of chapter 3 that deal with random variable transformations. Ignore anything that involves the word “Bayesian,” as Bayesian topics are reserved for 120C.</p>