Back in early 2015, the SAS (Stats and Act Sci) department was having a discussion about CS students in the two required STAT courses (230: Probability and 231: Statistics). While CS students are as strong as other Math students in most courses, they were systematically underperforming in STATs.

The idea that got the most traction was to pilot a special section of STAT 230, which would focus on the CS applications of probability. The hope was that by including more relevant examples, and pointing out the many important tie-ins to later CS courses, the students would be more...