LIFESCI 40
Statistics of Biological Systems
Grades
3.48
Average grade awarded in LIFESCI 40. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
68%
of the 1,474 letter grades
D, F or W
3.8%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
<1%
0 of 1 student passed
The registrar's own records: 1,474 grades over 9 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
1 of those terms is a summer session, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 9 terms ran 3.23 to 3.66.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 242 · 16.4%
- A 579 · 39.3%
- A- 187 · 12.7%
- B+ 109 · 7.4%
- B 123 · 8.3%
- B- 49 · 3.3%
- C+ 48 · 3.3%
- C 51 · 3.5%
- C- 31 · 2.1%
- D+ 12 · 0.8%
- D 14 · 0.9%
- D- 7 · 0.5%
- F 22 · 1.5%
- NP 1 of 1,489
- I 13 of 1,489
- DR 1 of 1,489
Percentages are of the 1,474 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: no-passes (NP), incompletes (I), and withdrawals (DR).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
Withdrawals are the exception to "excluded": DR is not scored, but it IS counted in the D, F or W figure above, which is reported over the letter grades plus the withdrawals. Pass/no pass and S/U outcomes are outside that figure on both sides.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Winter 2027 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GARFINKEL, ALAN reviews ↗ | 3.50 | 3.50 | 757 | 4 | 68% | - | not teaching it |
| TINGLEY, MORGAN WINN reviews ↗ | 3.55 | 3.55 | 314 | 2 | 76% | - | not teaching it |
| SHEVTSOV, JANE reviews ↗ | 3.47 | 3.46 | 202 | 1 | 66% | - | not teaching it |
| ASKARY, AMJAD reviews ↗ | 3.26 | 3.23 | 147 | 1 | 56% | - | not teaching it |
| MC CULLY, KRISTIN MARIE reviews ↗ | 3.62 | 3.66 | 54 | 1 | 72% | - | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
dibs has not read this course’s reviews, so it cannot say what kind of work it sets. That is dibs not having looked. It is not a course without papers or exams, and the reviews linked below are the answer until dibs catches up.
What comes first
dibs has not read a class page for LIFESCI 40 in any term it holds, so it cannot say what comes before it.
Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.
In Winters
Ran in 3 of the last 4 Winters.
From the terms dibs holds, which start in Fall 2021 and exclude summer. A department can run a course in a quarter it never has before.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture, three hours; laboratory, two hours. Requisite: course 30A. Designed for life sciences students. Introduction to statistics with emphasis on computer simulation of chance probabilities as replacement for traditional formula-based approach. Simulations allow for deeper understanding of statistical concepts, and are applicable to wider class of distributions and estimators. Students learn simple programming language to carry out statistical simulations, and apply them to classic problems of elementary statistics. Letter grading.
Sections in Winter 2027
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking LIFESCI 40 was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
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