Math 171:
For my Quantitative Reasoning pillar, I took Statistical Decision Making (Math 171), instructed by Dr. Steven Hoehner. This course concentrated on teaching students the tools and skills necessary to interpret and apply practical statistics to real life problem-solving. The content of the class was purely taught through lectures and note-taking, which makes for a very uninteresting class.
The first half of the semester, I was able to grasp the content of the class fairly easy. As long as I attended the lecture, I had no problem completing the assigned homework through Webassign and I received a high grade on the first test. I was originally expecting myself to be able to fly through the class without any issues. Until COVID-19 pushed the course into an online format.
This portion of the semester was an uphill battle, that got steeper every week. Dr. Hoehner insisted that lectures be given through Discord, an app aimed to communicate, but struggled to due so. Many students experienced issues connecting to the lecture or receiving either audio or video. The lectures were choppy and difficult to understand, so much so that I stopped attending lecture for the majority of the semester. Many students requested the move to Zoom, which was more widely used throughout the university and students overall had a better experience with. Dr. Hoehner refused to accommodate to students and all lectures and office hours were through Discord. Several students, including myself asked if we could set up a zoom meeting conference for office hours instead, that didn’t happen. I resorted to YouTube to educate me on the tools and skills, I would need to complete the homework’s.
The project at the end of the semester caused me a lot of unnecessary stress. The instructions were unclear, and the expectations were hard to understand. Although, I finally was able to grasp and understand the point of the class. I was able to use the skills and tools; I had cultivated over the 15-week class and apply them to a real-world problem. While I struggled through this class, I am extremely happy with the effort I put in and the final grade I received.
Math 171 Statistical analysis project – Montana B. Shanks