Alright so I have not finished his class yet, but I thought this would be helpful in case this man is still teaching next semester and students were registering for classes. I'm pretty sure Prof Lepage normally doesnt teach introductory stats but for some reason he was this semester. This man is completely and utterly senile. His lecture are completely disorganized and he goes of on random tangents about animals and randomness which have nothing to do with the class.



For all of you just starting Stats like myself, I would not recommend this class. So far I have taught everything to myself and I am barely getting by on his tests.



From the words of our TA this semester. " He generally has no idea what he is talking about and often teaches random theories to his classes which he has made up in his head. Good luck on your test because even I don't know what he's talking about"



Enough said. Seriously take this post and the others below it with the same recommendation, into serious consideration before taking this class.

Saying the man is in his own world is an understatement. His random tangents can vary from anything to eating tree bark all the way to how many locks on their door the Polish have. I took the class over the summer at 8am MWF. Literally one of the most painful experiences I have ever sat through in my life.

Grading scale is on a major curve, which I still don't fully understand. I failed both exams, forgot to do homework and got a 2.0 in the class.

Avoid him. If, at first his crazy little stories on his theory of calculators or ghosts of Wells hall seem entertaining just give it a week.

I still am not sure what statistics actually is.

He seems like a really knowledgable professor, but is reallllly bad at conveying the information to students. He doesn't make much sense and then gets distracted during lecture. I basically learned everything from my TA and on my own. He was terrible! However, we didn't have a final exam and instead just a 5th test, when other classes had an acumulative exam.

Not only does Raoul mutter about nothing all class, he starts talking about elevators and shit and eventually gets into his theories about how to better the population by "ending" some people. He is absolutely Senile and having a TA who doesn't speak english but calls herself "Vivian" just makes this class that much better. Absolutely worthless class...

Well...where do I begin....I thought I would get ahead and take this class, and well, that was the biggest mistake of my life. Raoul Lepage, or R, as he likes to go by, and adds to the end of every single e-mail he sends out (like 3 a day), is insane. I didn't think it could be possible to be as bad as everyone insisted he would be. My god, I wish I was right. Unfortunately, this man is senile, and is off his rocker. He's a very nice guy but has no business being a professor anymore. He basically comes to class and starts rambling on about absolutely nothing, while randomly writing an equation on the board that he never explains, and doesn't tell you how to apply it. However though, the class basically turns into a comedy club. Literally. His insanities and obscenities turn out to be a pretty good comic routine. As he talks about the most random things that make no sense, the rest of the class turns to each other and everybody just starts cracking up. All knowing we aren’t learning anything and that this man is completely out of his mind. One day, someone asked him what standard deviation was. He had mentioned it in passing in class, talking about sigma, and throwing out equations he never explained. His response however, was priceless: “Well…we really don’t know what it is. I guess I would best describe it as Tabasco sauce. We don’t really know what it’s made of, but we just throw some things together in there, mix it up, stir it around and in the end its pretty darn good.” That was it, his total explanation. Other samples include “It’s like fairies dancing on the head of a needle” “It’s not paint…but it’s paint” “I had prostate trouble and had to go down to Florida and even that has to do with statistics – and guys, you might think your safe, but the majority of you will suffer from prostate trouble when you get to be my age.” Oh and you know its trouble when before a test your prof says this “Well, this test isn’t meant for you to know how to do everything….so go to the ones you’ve seen before, work those for a bit…and then go to the ones you don’t know, try those, work those, see what you can do.” Is this a joke? No…I kid you not. Sitting down for a test day is like training for the navy seals. Come in the room- your in section 4? Sit in row D please. Now what is the last digit of your PID number? Is it odd or even? Sit accordingly – and the different colors come out, and he passes the tests out in a horizontal fashion. “Oh, Mr. Lepage, what form do we put down?” “Oh…theres only one form.” Although he means well, and is a nice guy, he can’t teach. Run for the hills people, R is on the prowl.

Overall I would say that Lepage is not only by far the worst professor I've had at MSU, but also the worst teacher I've had for anything in my entire life. Here are the highlights.



1. His lectures are beyond disorganized. They were littered with frequent nonsensical tangents and goofy stories. Even on the rare occasion that he managed to keep the lecture related to statistics, it was still impossible to follow. I'm not sure I ever understood what I was supposed to be learning.



2. The homework is usually doing some coding in the statistical program R. Funny story, Lepage doesn't really know how to use R. He told us this the first day of class. At first we thought he was just understating his abilities, but we quickly discovered that he actually had no idea how to use the program he was assigned to teach us. If you asked questions, we was completely useless. We were not only expected to do coding without any instruction, but the statistics knowledge required was not in any way related to the prerequisites for the course. Because the lectures were such a mess, completing the homework usually meant doing some Googling to find someone who had done something that sort of sounded vaguely like the assignment and then trying to apply it. More often than not, this meant running some bullshit code and making a pretty graph.



3. The in class handouts were a mess. About halfway through the course he started including coding demonstrations in Mathematica, but these were pretty much useless considering we were using R, not Mathematica. He was also extremely lazy with notation. X(t) often meant X subscript t, not a function X of t. He never really explained this when he did it so you were always wondering. His reasoning for doing this was because doing subscripts was very tedious, so he preferred not to use them. He instead gave us handouts that made absolutely no sense.



4. Exams, like homework, were confusing. It was often difficult to figure out what he was asking. The exams usually had very little to do with the lecture, mostly because the lectures were mostly nonsense stories.



I feel that the university has done me an extreme disservice by letting this man teach. Despite getting a 4.0 in this class, I learned absolutely nothing. Considering that I am a statistics major and this was on of my 400 level statistics electives, I am beyond disappointed.

LePage is easily one of the worst professors I've ever had. He's a clear example of the type of tenured ancient dinosaur prof that shouldn't be allowed to teach anymore. You will learn nothing from this class and will only go because you get attendance points and his random bizarre comments are entertaining, but not because he's funny, but because he's a complete nut case. "Statistics is like giving a kid 14 bicycles! You can't ride 14 bicycles!!" Huh? Exactly. "I find the brain fascinating, how they can do those things to make you think those things" If only LePage had a brain left. At the end of each lecture, you'll still wonder what you're supposed to be learning about. I'm disappointed at the university for charging us so much money to sit in front of a lunatic rambling on about his prostate problems and completely random often shocking comments about nothing. He started the semester saying that statistics is the new world revolution and that all our other professors are so terrified of this "world explosion" that they build shields around themselves to protect themselves from this tidal wave. He said he was going to train us to handle and conquer this explosion. Well he didn't and in the end you'll walk away with little knowledge of statistics besides what you have to teach yourself from the really terrible book, but you'll still have a 4.0 because of the ridiculous curve. I ended with an 85% which when curved was 108% with a 4.32 grade.

I've never rated a teacher on allmsu, but I felt very compelled to warn everyone about Lepage. He is honestly the WORST professor I have ever had. Everyone talks about how bad some professors are (and they really aren't that bad), but you should seriously believe every horror story you hear about this guy. I had over a 100% going into the final, so I'm not being bitter...I'm being honest.



If you want an easy 4.0, but absolutely hate the class while doing it and learn absolutely nothing, take Lepage. He has an extremely boring, monotone voice and wastes easily 35-40 minutes of lecture time talking about complete, uninteresting nonsense. At least when some teachers waste time, they are half-way interesting or funny...Lepage is neither (look at some of his quotes scattered around allmsu).



I just took the final today, and it had some things on it that we have never done or even talked about during the semester (Lepage is the kind of guy to throw something completely new on the final exam and screw everyone up). I honestly suggest avoiding lectures and just getting help from your TA or help-room (doing those were the only ways I've learned anything).

His class pretty much consists of a bunch of tangents & anecdotes.



He's a pretty smart guy but he has an annoying habit of making a totally random statement out of the blue, then "going backwards" to explain what it meant. Sure, that type of thing can be good in storytelling but it doesn't help understand statistics.



So far the class is fairly difficult (really given the material, it shouldn't be) and very boring. The only thing that gives him a little credit is that he gives the class a big curve so it still isn't hard to do well in the class.



I can tell he is a really smart guy, plus he seems pretty nice and has a decent sense of humor. It's just that his notes (he writes on a tablet PC) are really poorly organized and basically useless, and he doesn't really do a great job of explaining things.



Every time homework rolls around, I end up spending all my time teaching myself from the book.



I really wouldn't recommend him if you really care about stats. However, he's not so terrible (because of the curve) if you just want to fill your course requirement with a good grade and forget it about it afterwards.

Professor Lepage.... What can I say? He is as horrible as every previous post says. His lectures are so pointless, i've begun playing hangman with a friend. I am getting over 115% in the class and I have absolutely no idea what the practical applications are. I don't know what any of what I'm doing means. I can take the formulas given and plug the relevant information in. That's all that is necessary for this class.



I don't understand how the TAs will put up with this man. I'm sure he's intelligent somewhere deep deep deep down, but he doesn't show it. You can't get to the position that he is in and not know what you're talking about, I suppose.



If you are considering taking this class because you want to learn, don't. If you are taking this class because you have to, ask your TA with questions and spend lecture time napping or writing down some of the hilarious quotes that Lepage pulls from, well you know where.



I'm happy to have taken this class only as a way to keep my gpa at the height that it is at. I would be miserable absent that reason.

Ok so usually I try to give my professors a chance, but this man is a HORRIBLE professor. He doesn't explain ANYTHING to you, he just starts doing examples, if you can even call them that, at expects you to know what he's doing. It takes him 10 minutes to look up and realized that people are raising their hands, he goes off on super random tangents about horses and how he decided to change the pronunciation of his last name. I already pay enough money to come here and on top of it, I had to get a tutor because I had no idea what was going on. My tutor even told me that one of the concepts he was teaching us doesn't even exist. If it wasn't for the half-decent TA this class would have been hell. Luckily, LePage grades using a curve. That's the only good thing about this class. If you want to learn something and don't want to stress about this class, DROP IT! I definitely do not recommend this class with this professor and I am usually a person who doesn't listen to all these comments.

This professor is bad in more ways than good. The first exam was not too bad, he let us know what formulas to memorize and gave us a sample exam to study from, but from there it went downhill. Exam 2, he had no sample exams, there was no curve, and he practically gave us nothing to study from. Exam 3, i had to work a little harder and ended up with about a 17/25. Exam 4 was dropped because the class average in my section was 8/25. The final exam was a little simpler because all of the previous exams with the answers were online so if you studied off of those, you would do pretty good. As far as learning the material from recitation and lecture... it won't happen. The recitations are TAs that barely know english and go through problems very fast since Chinese people are good at Math. And the professor went off-topic so much. Best thing to do is get a tutor or find someone that has old exams to study from. I hope I never have to have this teacher for a class again.

Ok....so I 4.0ed the class without having to take the final. The ONLY reason i did well in this class was because of my Stats tutor. I found him on this site. We met before every homework was due and he worked through all of it with me before I turned it into my recitation. Also he worked with me twice on the week of an exam to to study for the exam. Seriously, I think i went to class maybe twice. The times I did, I was only confused more. I strongly suggest getting a tutor for this class if you want to do well. And, act fast. The tutors go VERY quickly. A friend of mine couldn't get a tutor because they were all booked with students. So my 0.0 goes to Lepage...he's a horrible professor. However, he is no longer teaching at MSU after the spring semester. (my TA told me this on the day of our final) She also told me that the new prof is a very intelligent one! So, if possible, avoid taking this class until next fall. If you have to take it spring semester, get a tutor!

Lets stop the Lepage bashing. This man is the best. He wears the same thing EVERY day, he says the most random things, and because he is so weird it makes the class fun. Bring a friend to this class, so you can laugh at the stupid remarks he makes. Heres a little sample of some random sh*t he says. If you understand what they mean please tell me "It's just like halloween, sometimes you just gotta lay it down." Or "Sometimes I think we are all just hot house carrots." As far as his teaching goes, hes not very good at it, but he makes the class so easy, he pretty much does the homework for you, and loads on extra credit. I havent taken the exam yet, but i only need a 54% on it to 4.0 the class, and im guessing there will be about a 20% curve, so i need about a 34%. Lepage= Entertainment, and an easy 4.0. All stats is is plugging in numbers to formulas, i dont know what it means, but i get the answers,and get good grades so thats all i care about.

I'm a bit torn on my grade for LePage. On one hand, the guy's tests are easy, and the recitation will give you all the time you need to complete whatever homework you don't finish working along with Raoul in lecture, and he gives a few opportunities for extra credit. But on the other hand, this man is batshit insane. He'll go off on nonsensical tangents during lecture (which wouldn't be a problem if more than a handfull of them were actually interesting), take half an hour to pass out exams completely, and make a mistake while teaching the class every 4.3 seconds. I skipped lecture here and there, and still 4 pointed the class. If you have this class, go at least once a week to get at least some of the problems taken care of before thursday recitation. LePage isn't the worst teacher at MSU, but he's definitely not the best either. Anyway, if you're stuck with him, don't sweat it.

Let me just start by saying this: I dropped the class, so my opinion may be worth less than others.



I went to class every day and every day was painful. He TRIED to teach us about stats, but failed. It was about as educational as taking a stats class taught by my dog.



If someone were to look up "lecture tangents," you'd probably see his picture. One day he managed to go from talking about some problem to talking about how some guy at Sears wouldn't let him buy a vacuum because it was a "professional" model. Keep in mind he's still scribbling "important" shit on his stupid tablet that we're supposed to be understanding.



Oh, and lastly, if I remember correctly, the man wrote SLOWER THAN SHIT! That was probably the most annoying.



If you don't HAVE to take STT 315 then don't. Sure the curve is nice, but it's sooo painful.

I read all of these before taking the class. He was the only professor available and I figured it couldn't be as bad as everyone was saying. Wrong, wrong, WRONG. Lepage is a nice guy and he makes some pretty strange and downright odd comments in class that will get a laugh out of you. His mummbling can keep the lectures interesting, but don't plan on learning anything.



There is absolutely no structure to his lectures. He randomly writes down examples and formulas, never telling you what they're for. So you've got all this information and no way to apply it.



Looking back, I learned 90% of the material in recitation, unfortunately that still doesn't translate correctly to the test as his questions are sometimes random and off the wall.



Avoid this professor at ALL COSTS!

PROS-

1.Generous Curve.

2.Bonus questions. Nice Guy.

3.Bonus Points for filling out the right info on the cover page so you better remember your section no. if you plan to take him).

4.10 pts for regular attendance<<< not extra credit.



CONS-

1.Lecture is extremely boring and almost impossible to understand.

2.Useless asking him for explanation when you don't understand a question, he's speaking in a way noone will understand.

3.Regular Attendance Required.

4.Exams are awfully difficult (curved 3 out of the four exams excluding final)



Class average- 6/25 (4th exam), 12/21(3rd), 14.5/20(2nd), forgot the 1st but i remeber the average is a failing grade or else he wouldn't curved the 1st.)

To the guy/girl who made the comment below, I just have to say that you're obviously NOT a good student if you never bothered to come to class. Being a good student requires that you not only come to class on a regular basis, but that you also make the most of office hours, help rooms, and other things of that nature. With that said, I think Lepage is a fair prof. who has been teaching for so long that he gets bored by his own lectures and HAS TO tell those corny jokes of his just to keep himself awake. though a large part of it is the class itself, not Lepage. Statistics period, or at least the way it is formatted is a bunch of redundancy about ANY and EVERY random thing under the sun.

He is by far the worst teacher I have ever had in my life!!! He expects you to already know everything about statistics and jumps into lectures not explaining or clairifying a thing. He will ramble on about life trying to connect statistics to it, but only confuses everyone more...Last exam everybody (huge lecture N100 BCC) looked through the papers and then looked blankly around the room to see if anyone else knew what to do. The exam was completely different from the practice exams. He had not prepared us for anything on it!!! There were lines of about 10 students behind the 5 ta's in the class asking what to do. RIDICULOUS that is the best word to describe Lepage.