General comments about the course:

I came into this course with an undergraduate mathematics minor and previous mathematical statistics experience. I was pleased to find that the course managed to prove interesting and both deepened my understanding of the material and helped me understand the applicability to psychological testing. The structure of the presentation was very useful for understanding the relationships pr various concepts.

The strongest feature of this course was:

Dr. Steiger's often colorful examples both helped concretize the information and make the class more interesting. I'm not sure that the class as a whole always tracked his somewhat eccentric sense of humor, but it kept me entertained.

The weakest feature of this course was:

Different notation was frequently used for the same quantities. When this was made explicit, this was not an issue, but there were times that missing an explanation that the notation was changing made it difficult to follow the explanation.

My suggestions for the improvement of this course are:

As a learner, I find the application of information useful both in comprehension and retention. It would have been productive for me to get a little more feedback in the form of another homework assignment. Leaving all the practice exams up through the semester allowed me to work through them as we covered the information in class. If, at the least, another homework assignment could have been left up in a similar way it would have been nice.


Professor Evaluation

General comments about the instructor:

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dr. Steiger lecture. I was reminded of the MIT courseware project and though it would be useful to the internet as a whole if the procedures he used for explaining certain core concepts were more widely available. This is my first semester here at Vanderbilt and of the three courses I took, this one in particular I felt imparted the information in a way I could not have gotten simply sitting down with a book or working on a project.

The extent to which he presented the science of statistics not simply as a set of facts to be learned through rote memorization, but as a evolving fiels subject to professional biases and errors, was a mature viewpoint that students are frequently not exposed to in dealing with mathematics.

My suggestions for the instructor to improve her/his teaching are:

My one negative critique of Dr. Steiger is based off an experience approaching him outside of class. I came during office hours, but at a time when he was scheduled to meet with someone else. He took the time to answer my question, but the explanation was cursory and his attitude was one of irritation. I would have preferred for him simply to have scheduled another time when he wasn't rushed. As I've mentioned, I have an interest in the field and wanted to take advantage of Dr. Steiger's obvious depth of knowledge to help complete my understanding. The reception I got had a chilling effect on my future decisions to attempt to involve Dr. Steiger outside of class which I thought was unfortunate.