Historical instructor

Derek Bean

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 3.57/5 from 14 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

STAT 301
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
I did not take stats with him but he subbed for my professor once and I learned more than I had all semester
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STAT 421
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Derek is a good professor and 421 has useful content. There is a lot of homework, so the experience may be unpleasant if you have a heavy schedule. There were two take home exams without time limits, which I thought was an stress-free way to assess your learning. The readings aren't necessary to succeed as long as your keep up with lectures.
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STAT 421
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
I have so much homework! I've never seen an assignment question that actually contains two entire large questions from the textbook.
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STAT 421
Quality 1/5Difficulty 3/5
LOTS OF HOMEWORK. We received five large assignments weekly, with each assignment containing five or more sub-questions. My review is factual and free of any profanity or derogatory terms, but it appears someone reported it despite my effort to share an honest experience.
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STAT 311
Quality 4/5Difficulty 4/5
Derek is passionate about stats and is great at breaking down concepts in lecture. He doesn't post any notes or recordings online though, so it's important to go. He's helpful and patient during office hours and replies quickly on piazza & email. His exams are difficult (which is reflected in the low means), but he curved the class quite a bit.
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STAT 421
Quality 5/5Difficulty 3/5
His lectures were really good (besides the coding demos). Attendance doesn't matter and all lecture notes/code on Canvas for you to use. The class was 66% homework (13 assigns total/4-6+ hr/week) and 2 take-home exams that aren't too bad. The HW is relentless, but it taught me R better than all my other stats classes and was my second to last one.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Derek Bean

STAT 301

Introduction to Statistical Methods

3 credits

An introductory course covering distributions, measures of central tendency, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, regression, correlation, and experimental design.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026 · Sources

John GillettDerek Bean+4 more

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2022–Spring 2026
STAT 421

Applied Categorical Data Analysis

Credits unavailable

Applied Categorical Data Analysis covers contingency tables, association measures, and logistic/Poisson regression using R to analyze categorical response data.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026 · Sources

Derek BeanJialuo Li

historical GPA · grades

Fall 2022–Fall 2025

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026STAT 301Introduction to Statistical Methods
Fall 2026STAT 421Applied Categorical Data Analysis

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

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