Tufts University: Michael Carlin - Psychology - Professor ratings, reviews and much more | JumboAccess
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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