MATH 170E
Introduction to Probability and Statistics 1: Probability
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 32B. Highly recommended: course 61 or 70. Not open to students with credit for course 170A, Electrical and Computer Engineering 131A, or Statistics 100A. Introduction to probability theory with emphasis on topics relevant to applications. Topics include discrete (binomial, Poisson, etc.) and continuous (exponential, gamma, chi-square, normal) distributions, bivariate distributions, distributions of functions of random variables (including moment generating functions and central limit theorem). P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - I loved 170E with Professor Tyler – he was a really good teacher, taught a lot, and was really helpful during office hours. There's a good amount of homework, but since we were virtual the midterms and final weren't bad. Class seems to be one of the easier math classes, but also one that's pretty interesting as well, and Tyler is a great teacher for this class.
Winter 2021 - I loved 170E with Professor Tyler – he was a really good teacher, taught a lot, and was really helpful during office hours. There's a good amount of homework, but since we were virtual the midterms and final weren't bad. Class seems to be one of the easier math classes, but also one that's pretty interesting as well, and Tyler is a great teacher for this class.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - This professor was the most unclear and unfair professor. I don't understand why he was even able to be teaching and don't believe he should continue. When I first started the class, I thought he was a really cool math professors with lots of icebreakers and fun games to help understand concepts. However, as the class went on it seemed to me that he really was playing mind games on the whole class. He would make typos on lectures and then frame it as if he did it on purpose, giving people bonus points left and right for what felt like complete favoritism. For our second midterm, he gave some of the class the ENTIRE midterm with word for word questions that COMPLETELY ruined the curve. The first midterm was fair and those who worked hard actually did better but since you were able to take the midterm with the higher score almost everyone got 100% on that midterm. Not to mention, he would tell us to ignore certain material that he said wouldn't be tested which then showed up on exams! For the final, there were many rumors that he gave people in office hours the questions that would be on the final. This class was extremely corrupt, as I had an A in the class up until the terrible and impossible final that was given. I am extremely upset with the way this class had ended and definitely wouldn't recommend taking his class. I have even reported this to the math department and I am very disappointed that no action was taken further.
Fall 2020 - This professor was the most unclear and unfair professor. I don't understand why he was even able to be teaching and don't believe he should continue. When I first started the class, I thought he was a really cool math professors with lots of icebreakers and fun games to help understand concepts. However, as the class went on it seemed to me that he really was playing mind games on the whole class. He would make typos on lectures and then frame it as if he did it on purpose, giving people bonus points left and right for what felt like complete favoritism. For our second midterm, he gave some of the class the ENTIRE midterm with word for word questions that COMPLETELY ruined the curve. The first midterm was fair and those who worked hard actually did better but since you were able to take the midterm with the higher score almost everyone got 100% on that midterm. Not to mention, he would tell us to ignore certain material that he said wouldn't be tested which then showed up on exams! For the final, there were many rumors that he gave people in office hours the questions that would be on the final. This class was extremely corrupt, as I had an A in the class up until the terrible and impossible final that was given. I am extremely upset with the way this class had ended and definitely wouldn't recommend taking his class. I have even reported this to the math department and I am very disappointed that no action was taken further.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - If you just want an easy A, Forlano is not your professor, as he generally tries to center his exams at an 80-85% median. If you really want to learn the concepts taught in class, Forlano is a great professor to take 170E with. He does a great job of breaking down the concepts in lecture for everyone, including non-math majors, went through all of the 170e curriculum (apparently one of the other 170e professors winter 2023 did not get anywhere close to finishing), and the homework generally does a good job of expanding on the concepts in class. Lectures may have been a bit dry, but he did record them via bruincast, so watching at 1.5x speed worked well, pausing when I needed to take notes. He also posted the annotated slides after the lecture which came in handy a couple of times. The homework tends to be on the theoretical side, with lots of "demonstrate X given Y" questions; some are fairly trivial, a few required a lot of calculation that I felt was unnecessarily long (extensive double sum problems anyone?) and/or required some insight, so I would definitely recommend blocking off your schedule to attend, in addition to discussions, office hours with a TA or the professor for the occasional question you get stuck on. I also heard before taking his class that homeworks are very long, but I personally didn't experience that, probably because I took heavy advantage of office hours (the TAs for my class were awesome but are graduating soon - thanks Ben Jarman for all of your support!). While the homework was not super close to the actual exams (the exams were almost all computational), I felt that it did a good job of forcing understanding of the topics needed for them if you first put in decent effort on the homework yourself before getting help. At the beginning, homeworks due friday only used concepts taught the week before it was due, but towards the end it started catching up with concepts touched on wednesday being used in the homeworks due that friday. Exams were in my opinion fair: they were very similar to the practice exams Forlano gave out (but not like copy-pasted wording) and weren't super difficult but they weren't easy either. Forlano also clearly made an effort to minimize multi-part question penalties, so almost always part B was solvable even without knowing how to do part A, and grading was also generous and fast (<7 day turnaround for all exams even with 160 students). Definitely make sure you work on a cheat sheet for the exams as you go along, as you'll need to know the different types of random variables and how to use them by the second midterm. Not specific to Forlano but just 170e in general, but definitely get used to doing basic double integrals before taking this class. It appears at the very end, and unfortunately 32a isn't a prereq/coreq but 95%+ will have taken it, so you'll be at a massive disadvantage if you don't. All in all, I would definitely take another math class with Forlano, You do not need the textbook.
Winter 2023 - If you just want an easy A, Forlano is not your professor, as he generally tries to center his exams at an 80-85% median. If you really want to learn the concepts taught in class, Forlano is a great professor to take 170E with. He does a great job of breaking down the concepts in lecture for everyone, including non-math majors, went through all of the 170e curriculum (apparently one of the other 170e professors winter 2023 did not get anywhere close to finishing), and the homework generally does a good job of expanding on the concepts in class. Lectures may have been a bit dry, but he did record them via bruincast, so watching at 1.5x speed worked well, pausing when I needed to take notes. He also posted the annotated slides after the lecture which came in handy a couple of times. The homework tends to be on the theoretical side, with lots of "demonstrate X given Y" questions; some are fairly trivial, a few required a lot of calculation that I felt was unnecessarily long (extensive double sum problems anyone?) and/or required some insight, so I would definitely recommend blocking off your schedule to attend, in addition to discussions, office hours with a TA or the professor for the occasional question you get stuck on. I also heard before taking his class that homeworks are very long, but I personally didn't experience that, probably because I took heavy advantage of office hours (the TAs for my class were awesome but are graduating soon - thanks Ben Jarman for all of your support!). While the homework was not super close to the actual exams (the exams were almost all computational), I felt that it did a good job of forcing understanding of the topics needed for them if you first put in decent effort on the homework yourself before getting help. At the beginning, homeworks due friday only used concepts taught the week before it was due, but towards the end it started catching up with concepts touched on wednesday being used in the homeworks due that friday. Exams were in my opinion fair: they were very similar to the practice exams Forlano gave out (but not like copy-pasted wording) and weren't super difficult but they weren't easy either. Forlano also clearly made an effort to minimize multi-part question penalties, so almost always part B was solvable even without knowing how to do part A, and grading was also generous and fast (<7 day turnaround for all exams even with 160 students). Definitely make sure you work on a cheat sheet for the exams as you go along, as you'll need to know the different types of random variables and how to use them by the second midterm. Not specific to Forlano but just 170e in general, but definitely get used to doing basic double integrals before taking this class. It appears at the very end, and unfortunately 32a isn't a prereq/coreq but 95%+ will have taken it, so you'll be at a massive disadvantage if you don't. All in all, I would definitely take another math class with Forlano, You do not need the textbook.
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