[kaitotst]

Lecturer: Dr. Shui Feng

A very intensive course in probability. This either clicks with your or it doesn't. Very computation heavy. The professor teaches from a very traditional standpoint, ie. he will teach you the theorems and show your proofs (that you won't be tested on) as well as do a few examples, BUT you are expected to do a lot of practice/examples on your own time to succeed in the course. The topics covered in class were,

1. Basic Counting Rules (Permutations, Combinatorics)
2. Probability, Independence, Conditional Probability
3. Random Variables (discrete & continuous & their distribution functions)
4. Expectation, Transformations
5. Marginal & Conditional Distributions
6. Covered to a lesser extent (and not tested): Covariance, Moment Generating Functions

No proofs in this course. You basically learn concepts from lecture notes and find success by doing a lot of problems in the textbook. Although he doesn't assign any homework, doing as many textbook questions as you can and being able to do assignment questions will allow you to do well in the course. The tests were fairly easy, but since they were computation heavy, it's difficult to do them comfortably within the allotted time. Very similar to the assignments. Assignments were taken right out of the textbook (of which solutions are posted online lol). The exam was very challenging. In our year, it was worth 70%, so this freaked a lot of people out and a lot people probably didn't enjoy his class for that reason. The exam was tricky in the sense that you're applying the concepts you've learned to situations that you haven't seen before. You're still using the same methodology, but it feels weird. The purpose of this was to test how well you can apply concepts/use your head, according to the professor. We were allowed a one-page 2 sided cheat sheet on the exam.

Dr. Feng is a nice guy, you'll know him for his quote, "That's all for today" at the end of every lecture. He's a good teacher, full of smiles and will answer every question you ask him and try his best to make you understand what's taught in class. He does have a chinese accent, which could be an issue to some people, but he does his job very well.

Mark Distribution:

10% for 5 Assignments (2% each)
20% for 2 Midterms (10% each)
70% Exam

Hi has anyone taken this course with Dr. Lozinski? I really want a good mark, but that 70% exam is scaring me so not sure if I should take this course. Any tips?

Sometimes getting people to respond will be a little hard since it's mostly first-years asking questions in this forum. Most upper years are active on this Facebook group for Math and Stats and there will be people who will be happy to answer questions: https://www.facebook.com/groups/282262961785426/

You'll need to verify your FB account with your McMaster email.

I had it with Lozinski but I think it was a 60% exam. There had been lots of rumors floating around that they usually make the exam very hard and just end up adjusting everyone's marks. But it turned out very very fair, like textbook level/tutorial type problem level of difficulty so that definitely didn't get adjusted. Exam was pretty heavily focused on the material not covered on test 1 or test 2 though.

Thank you so much for the info! I know that to get a good mark in maths courses you have to do lots of practice, as long as the stuff we learnt and practice in our lectures and homework problems are what we get tested on, then I'm satisfied.

How is Dr. Lozinski as a prof? There is also a Dr. Shui Feng who teaches it. I am curious as to how you found them in terms of approachability and how well they teach.

Thanks once again!

I thought Lozinski was a pretty good prof. He knows his stuff, he explains things very clearly. He also has many applications of the topics to the financial world since that is his specialty so you may be more interested in his class if you're interested in financial math. He doesn't dwell on these topics, but he does bring them up and you can research on your own if you're interested. I don't know too much about Dr. Feng, but I think he moves a bit faster than Lozinski did. Lozinski is willing to answer questions during lecture too if you have any. He will usually ask if anyone has any questions whenever you finish an example together. I think the one thing I liked most about Lozinski is that he writes really big on the boards so that people in the back can see. A lot of math profs have trouble writing in a size where everyone can see.

In terms of studying, I think it's best to go over the class examples, homework assignments, and tutorial questions. The textbook homework sometimes helped for the assignments but didn't really help for midterms. Also you really need to know your integration from first year calculus. You'll be integrating a lot in this course, especially using integration by parts.