MESA 8411
Programming for Data Science · 1 instructor on record · 1 section
That is the class itself, averaged across everyone who taught it. Who taught it, and how each of them scored, is the board below — that is what a student picking a section is actually choosing between.
Boston College's own “intellectually challenging” question for this class only — students answer it positively about courses that stretched them, so it measures intellectual challenge and NOT grading, workload or quality. Almost every BC class scores high on it, which is why it is shown as a rank rather than a score.
Boston College reports workload for this class only as one of five bands, not as a number of hours, and it does not publish what the bands mean — so this site will not translate it into hours. Higher means more work, which is not the same as worse.
This class will introduce essential programming concepts, data structures, and techniques focusing on data science applications. Students will learn what it means to write high-quality code. Additionally, topics such as testing, debugging, and exception handling will be taught. By the end of the course, students will have reviewed Python programming and be able to apply their knowledge to various data science problems. Topics include functions, recursion, loops, list comprehensions, elementary data structures, and reading and writing files. Completion of Python Programming Bootcamp strongly encouraged (contact gsehdonlineprograms@bc.edu to request access).
| Instructor | Overall | Workload | Challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Devan WaltonMeasurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment. Provisional | 951 record | 93rd | 33rd |
There is no ranking to read here: Devan Walton is the only instructor with evaluation records for MESA 8411, so the number is a record, not a position. It rests on 1 record, which is thin — read it as provisional.
Other MESA classes
All of them| Class | Instructors | Course score |
|---|---|---|
| MESA 6410Introductory Statistics | 210 records | 86 |
| MESA 6468Introductory Statistics | 310 records | 81 |
| MESA 6420Intermediate Statistics | 37 records | 83 |
| MESA 1060Classroom Assessment | 36 records | 87 |
| MESA 6460Interpretation and Evaluation of Research | 36 records | 80 |
| MESA 6830Interpretation and Evaluation of Research | 16 records | 75 |
The line
All 13 items · means across 1 recordBar length is the rank against every comparable record we hold, not the raw score: BC's questions all have a median around 4.5, so a raw-scale bar would be nearly full on every row and would tell you nothing. Every bar is one ink colour — nothing here is graded green or red. The hatched bars are not ratings at all: a higher number on either describes a different course, not a better one.
Game log
1 section · newest first| Instructor | Term | Sec | Instr | Course | Work |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devan Walton | Spring 2026 | 01 | 95 | 93 | 80 |
How to read this boardInstructors are ranked on their record in this class only, never on their average across everything they teach. Scores are out of 100 — Boston College's 1–5 agreement scale, ×20, the way these numbers were printed for years. Workload is BC's own five-band figure, not a number of hours, and is shown as a rank. A dash means the question was not reported, and is never a zero.