They combined the probability and statistics courses in my undergrad engineering program. When I went through the program, they were separate and I found the st

They combined the probability and statistics courses in my undergrad engineering program. When I went through the program, they were separate and I found the statistics course to be excellent. Unfortunately, they had already made it less valuable before they were combined because they had dropped other components of the course. They combined the courses so they could spend more time on the introductory math courses. Before, there was a grade 13 that provided a better math foundation for university, but since that was eliminated, they needed to spend more time on the math as students were doing consistently poor. Things have improved in the math courses since the change, though. The other reason why they combined the courses was that we were the only engineering department that had separate courses for them. But, we were also the only engineering department with machine learning and pattern recognition courses as well. Now, those courses need to spend more time at the beginning covering the material lost from combining the courses.