Review:
Carlin is a great guy, very very intelligent and very easy to talk to. Though he does speak softly and does confuse concepts at times, this class does not require a major understanding of the material. I received an A in this class without reading one page of the textbook (which wasn't even used), and simply showing up to every lab, doing what was required, taking good notes and making sure that the question sets were done properly. The final at the end is a huge portion of the class, but there are perks: twice along the way in the semester he offered chances for bonus points on the final, and I got 7 (others ranged from 1-8). Also, he does two major review sessions during class in a game-type format, of which the winner of both days receives a 100 on the final and an exemption from taking it. Furthermore, ALL FORMULAS are provided for you during the final, AND he lets you bring in an 8x11 sheet of paper on which you can write ANYTHING you want (I typed mine up single-spaced, 8 point font etc).

Truly, if you go to lab every week, partner up with some intelligent people and work hard, it is not difficult to get a 97 or a 98 lab average. Then, work with others on question sets. That way, once you get to the final, you will have such a high average that you would only need to get a 65 or a 70 on that final to get an A- in the course. That's what happened to me, and besides the weekly labs and occasional question sets, I hardly did any work for that A.

Workload:
Weekly labs that get more difficult as the semester progresses (but you get to work with others AND you get a good amount of help from Carlin and the TA), three or four question sets that you have ONE FULL WEEK to complete (and you can work with others on this too), but no actual assigned textbook reading (it's not even worth buying the textbook unless you intend to use it as reference for stuff that isn't clear in both the actual classroom explanation and a one-on-one explanation from Carlin outside of class - I would recommend trying to understand the material through either or both of those methods and use the textbook as a last resort.)

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Michael Carlin | PSY031 - STATS FOR BEHAV SCI | Psychology

2005-01-01

Review:
Carlin is an extremely nice person. He certainly knows everything there is to know about his subject, and he is always helpful and encouraging and very dedicated. I appreciated that although no one in the class had any idea what was going on, he never made anyone feel stupid, and he never lost enthusiasm. He is, however, an extremely bad lecturer. He knows statistics so well that he throws new vocabulary and complicated explanations around casually, assuming we understand. He never fully realized that beginners need far more repetition and simplification than he provided. Since everything mentioned during lecture was vital, there was no time to do anything but take notes, so it was very difficult to process any information during class (and therefore ask questions), which led to general confusion.

The class itself was extremely poorly organized. The recommended book was not only organized in a completely different order than the course, but Carlin and the book didn't use the same terms or notations and they differed on many explanations and definitions. Also, the only test given was the final (worth 30% of your grade). The other grades given were on weekly labs and 3 problem sets. Labs were always completed in groups with heavy TA/professor involvement, and problem sets were also usually done with outside help. Therefore, absolutely no work was done alone save the final, and almost nothing was actually learned. No one except repeat statistics students understood any concepts.

I've heard from a lot of people that Stats is a very easy class, but, the way this class was set up, it's almost impossible to do well.

Workload:
Three hour weekly labs were awful, but almost no other work.

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Michael Carlin | PSY032 - Experimental Psychology | Psychology

2004-11-30

Review:
I first would like to offer a review of Professor Carlin. He is an excellent professor. He is always willing to help in the case of confusion or any other problem that may exist. He is very thorough; he also gets to the point and makes things relative so that a student can grab the concept. Experimental Psychology is an ok course though. It is a lot of tedious work, you do learn a lot about the experiment aspect of psychology, at times maybe too much. But all in all it is definitely the course that is needed to get through the upper level courses in psychology. It is a mandatory course for those who are general psychology majors, but my advice to you is to write down everything Carlin says because it is VERY important. With him the midterm exam is worth 10% of your grade the same for the final exam, but it is the experiment APA papers that are worth more and you will get better at writing them as the course goes on. Good course...tedious but informative.

Workload:
There was a lot of work. You have a lab every week; you must also run your own experiment. There are about 4 or so APA papers that are written within the semester.

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Michael Carlin | PSY031 - STATS FOR BEHAV SCI | Psychology

2004-10-23

Review:
Although I feel that Professor Carlin has great enthusiasm for the course (he learned all of our names and he comes to a total of 12+ hours of lab a week), he does not do a very good job actually teaching the material. He speaks softly at times. It's easy to miss something. He knows what he's talking about, he's a very bright man, and he's willing to listen and help. But he does not go by a textbook, material is presented in class too fast, and the class is structured in a fashion that we don't know our real progress. 50% of our grade is labs, 20% homework, and the remaining 30% is a final exam. Since you can get helped on labs and homework, it's hard to constantly be preparing yourself for a big final looming at the end of the semester.

Workload:
In addition to class, there is THREE+ hours of lab a week. You won't get out of this. You may need to devote a lot of time just understanding the course material. A textbook is supplementary. Homework given maybe every other week. Big exam at the end of the semester.

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