18.615
Table of contents
- Course Info
- Realistic Prerequisites
- Subject Matter
- Course Staff
- Lectures
- Problem Sets
- Exams
- Resources
- Grading
- Advice to Future Students
Course Info
Class Size | 49 |
Hours/Week | 8.3 (13 responses) |
Instructors | Peter J. Kempthorne (Lecturer) |
# of Responses to Course 18 Underground Questions | 8/49 |
Realistic Prerequisites
- 18.600 was necessary and sufficient.
Subject Matter
- Some students found the class very theoretical, while others found it very applied. The course appealed to both theoretical and applied math students.
- The material was theoretical, with examples drawn from applications.
- “The content was what you wanted it to be.”
Course Staff
- The professor was very friendly, approachable, and considerate. Students universally found that he cared a lot about them.
- “Accomodating with things like switching presentation times.”
- “I cannot think of a single time this entire semester when he denied me an extension.”
- “I also really enjoyed the guest speakers he brought in.”
Lectures
- Lectures received mostly negative reception. Students relied more on the course materials (textbook, notes) to learn the material.
- “I found the lectures to be mostly incomprehensible. I mostly relied on re-reading the lecture notes after class and sometimes reading the textbook.”
- “The lectures were very fast paced. The lecture slides were too dense for a lecture, but useful to refer back to during psets.”
Problem Sets
- There were 6 psets, the due dates for which were interspersed with due dates for projects (group project, final paper).
- The problem sets were taken directly from the textbook.
- Students’ opinions on difficulty ranged from straightforward to challenging. The split was roughly even.
- The lectures and textbook were adequate preparation for the problem sets.
Exams
- No exams.
Resources
- The official textbook was An Introduction to Stochastic Modeling by Pinsky and Karlin.
- Students found the textbook mediocre, often opting for the lecture notes.
Grading
- Students found the grading fair.
- “Seems to me that the expected grade distribution should be mostly A/B’s.”
Advice to Future Students
- “Basically a project test. You do 2 projects on cool things in stochastic processes that you’re interested in. Concrete material wise I did not learn a whole ton”