Alan Garfinkel is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He's an extremely caring and empathetic professor who is genuinely passionate about the material that he teaches. This is the second class I've taken with him and he's been consistently good across the board.

Don't get me wrong. LS 40 isn't exactly an "easy" class. The content is a lot more conceptual and you'll need to focus on really learning and understanding what's going on in order to do well. You'll also need good Python skills that you've hopefully developed in LS 30A/B.

The exams are pretty fair imo, I Garfinkel doesn't do "trick" questions or ask anything that's outside of what you learn. If you follow the lectures you'll be fine.

Summary: This is a great class with a great prof. The skills you learn are really useful for getting research positions too (ie. p-val NHST, Confidence interval testing, Bayesian stats). Come and be inspired.