COVID.

Easiest class ever, and I've taken Scan 50W, Theater 10, Span 44, and more. He gives 4 tries per test and quiz and honestly you only ever need 1 to get 100%. Its that easy. Literally no tricks, nothing in depth. Can you plug numbers into an equation? You'll get an A. I fully believe (literally, no exaggeration it is that easy) my 6th grade cousin could've gotten an A in this class. He literally explained that X was a variable that represented any number. I am a dumb student and still thought this class was a joke. I honestly felt like this class insulted the intelligence of UCLA students. People did so well (like 95% of students got 100% on the midterm) he gave made us take an academic honesty quiz. Bro, people aren't cheating, it's really just that easy.

I was scared at first because he gave the whole "UCLA students are held to a high standard, you all are smart blah blah blah" at the beginning of class so I took it seriously at the beginning. Nope, this class was a joke. The quizzes scared me at first because of the really random numbers, but it ends up being a blessing in disguise. If you don't get the exact random number that he has, you did it wrong.

Most annoying thing is this class honestly has to be the freshman. I've never thrown shade on people in my class in a review before. But honestly, they needed to chill. They made a whole Zes fan club and just talked so much during the zoom lecture and in the chat that it was impossible to focus and honestly was just so cringe. That being said, lectures are useless, just google the formula for the quizzes during the quizzes once you see the question (again that easy). I don't know if I've said it yet, but this class is super easy. I'm not even a stem major, and truth be told, I'm a huge brick. Homework is graded on accuracy but the answers are in the back of the book and online. For R assignments, just go to discussion cause your TA does the whole thing and you just need to write it down and you'll get a 100% in that department too.

All in all: what a joke. Take this for literally the easiest class in your life including high school and middle school

Overall a fairly easy class, I would recommend it as a great GE (I took it for my life science req). There is homework every week and it can kind of be a pain but it only took me around an hour - 2 hours every week. His tests were very poorly written because he would ask strangely difficult questions about super easy topics. However, you get like 3 tries for each portion of each quiz so you can very easily ace each quiz.

Zes is pretty nice, but his lectures aren't very in depth; they basically just skim over the corresponding textbook chapters without explaining much (they're good as big picture overviews of the material, so I'd recommend reading the textbook chapters before coming to lecture).
He makes an effort to get to know his students (learning all of our names) and is quite helpful during office hours.
Homework is book problems, which generally aren't bad.
Midterm is open note and open book; as a reward for going to the lecture before the midterm, he actually showed us 2 of the questions on the exam (along with the answer). There is no final; there is a kaggle competition instead.

Class was a cakewalk, mostly because he followed our textbook (ISLR) pretty much exactly, and the textbook is very well written - it's mostly practical/conceptual, with not as much emphasis on mathematical rigour. He's a funny and approachable guy, but I didn't bother going to lectures. The few that I did go to focused on concepts, just like the book. If you put in the time to complete the homework assignments, then you should do well. Final project was a kaggle competition, and final exam was all multiple choice conceptual questions. The hardest part of the course was just putting in the time to do the homework and do the reading.

Note: the entire class was online due to the pandemic, and it is possible I may have had a different experience had the class been in-person.

Professor Zes, in my opinion, was not the best lecturer. While he explained most topics sufficiently well, I thought he had a tendency to jump from one topic to another. In my opinion, there were also a good number of occasions where he wasn't clear, and I had to rely on the textbook.

That being said, the class with Professor Zes is one of the easiest classes I have taken so far. The homework and lab assignments were pretty straightforward and are straight from the textbook. The quizzes, midterm, and final consisted only of multiple-choice questions with no time limit. Further, they all tell you your score immediately and you have multiple attempts to do the quizzes, midterm, and final. While a few questions were tricky, it was pretty easy to spot your mistake and get everything correct within the allotted number of attempts.

Professor Zes is genuinely a very caring individual who clearly put a lot of work into our lectures.

That being said, his teaching style did not work for me at all. He rambles a bit (understandably -- i'm going to give him some slack because this was one of his first quarters teaching I think and it just happened to be the worst quarter of all time). He goes into EXTREME depth: so much so that it's completely unnecessary. One class was 50 minutes of just explaining the difference between theoretical probability and empirical probability (btw the difference is that theoretical does not account for randomness and doesn't exist in real life, while empirical relies on simulations -- definitely not worth 50 minutes).

For someone who really wants to VERY thoroughly understand the material, he's not bad at all. For me,... I low-key stopped attending lecture. He's so nice and accommodating that it's hard to really criticize him. He seems like he would be a really good professor for a harder course or an upper div.

He gives tons of extra credit, is super lenient on grading (it seems bad when you see the quizzes at first, but I promise he's very very generous with it), and his testing is EXTREMELY fair. You will get multiple attempts for quizzes, the midterm, and the final. He was also kind enough to make the final no-harm (during COVID, mind you).

All in all: a great guy and a good professor, but lectures didn't work for most people in the class. Class is crazy easy, almost no work, but be prepared to maybe put in a little more individual studying if you are the type of person who really struggles with statistics and needs more assistance from lectures.

The entire class was online as a result of the pandemic, and my experience may be different from other people's.
Professor Zes, in my opinion, was not the best lecturer. While he explained most topics well, he tended to ramble. In my opinion, there were also a good number of occasions where he wasn't clear, and I had to rely on the textbook. I went to every lecture in the event that we would have a quiz, mainly because he briefly goes over methods to use. I found that basing my knowledge from the textbook was a lot better than going to lecture. However, the class with Professor Zes is one of the easiest classes I have taken so far. The homework and lab assignments were pretty straightforward and are straight from the textbook. The quizzes, midterm, and final consisted only of multiple-choice questions contain no time limit. Further, they all tell you your score immediately and you have 4 attempts (per part) to do the quizzes, midterm, and final.
Professor Zes was very kind, understanding and accommodating with what was happening with the pandemic and police brutality.

since this class was remote, i'm not sure how his teaching would translate in person. i love zes as a guy -- he's really dorky and a sweet guy, but i'm not sure how i feel as him as a professor. since i had taken stats before i'm not sure how his teaching style would work for someone who was brand new to stats.

his quizzes (almost every week) in the beginning of the quarter were soooo frustrating! but they definitely got easier as the quarter went on! he gave us four attempts, with the same ordeal for the midterm (four attempts for each part, which looked exactly like the previous quizzes). there's also the labs using R Studio, but my TA basically just gave us the code and went over it, so the only difficult part is getting it to convert to a PDF and get the software to cooperate. There's also weekly homework which the TA also go over that wasn't overwhelming. your lowest homework and lab grade is also dropped.

if you can use a TI-84 calculator or R Studio, then this class will be really easy to get through. if i were ever stuck on a topic or question on the homework, the textbook (which is required in order to do the homework) was actually really helpful. zes said in the very beginning that the textbook will be the greatest resource in the class, and the lecture is supplementary to it. his lectures were also recorded, so i ended up not attending lecture most of the time. i did try to drop lectures just because i like zes haha but he does ramble a lot (sometimes too much that there's only like 30 minutes of actual lecture content) and those 50 minutes can be a bit messy.

the class is definitely manageable though and can be an easy A. he has a lot of extra credit opportunities that are as simple as completing a questionnaire. i never attended office hours, but he was always trying to be flexible with his hours and does try to answer all his student's questions. he was always very accommodating throughout the quarter for his students, but especially towards the end with all the protests, making the final optional. overall, it was a great class to take while adjusting to learning remotely :)

Professor Zes was kind and caring of his students. His methods of teaching were slightly disorganized and hard to follow at times, but overall he was able to covey the course material. His quizzes at the beginning of the quarter were nothing like what he was teaching, and I relied on counting pixels of my computer screen for one quiz. However, he took feedback from students and from that point on, quizzes were generated from course material. The midterm was good, and the large amount of time given to take it was great. The homeworks were normal, some things were difficult, but the TAs did well in explaining.

Professor Zes is amazing! If you have to take stats, you should definitely take it with him! He He does expect you to have some level of understanding from the assigned chapters in the textbook to fully understand his slides, but honestly it is pretty easy to keep. He is super helpful and nice, and I would definitely take another class with him, even though I hate STEM classes. The midterm and final were really easy, the only annoying this is that he takes extra points off for getting a question wrong, similar to the old SAT grading style. Still would 100% recommend taking his class though!