Stats 100A is not supposed to be that hard a class. Content-wise it's not the worst, but Professor sanchez makes it way harder than it needs to be. She grades on an absolute scale where an A is 95+ and the range for B+ is 88-89 but B is 80-87. She overloads us with work, there is always lengthy homework, participation quizzes or random participation assignments due. She basically had 3 midterms, although she calls 2 of them "formal quizzes" and even though they're easy on content, it's IMPOSSIBLE to finish them comfortably in time. Lengthy computations make it impossible to score well in these exams, and a couple points here and there can get you down by 3 grades. She's also extremely intimidating, and unnecessarily condescending. I respect that she wanted us to be thorough with the material, but she treats us as if Stats 100A is our only, and hardest class, and gives too much work. I took this class thinking how hard can she make 100A, but trust me, avoid it if you can.

Professor Sanchez is infamous among the stats professor and I took her class knowing it was going to be a very rough experience. My expectation for her was low as yours will probably be, so surprisingly she did exceed my expectations. She is not as bad as other reviews describe as long as you follow her "rules".

Some things to note:
1) She takes attendance every single class. Sometimes twice every class! Sometimes it's on a sign in sheet, sometimes she roll calls, sometimes she tells you to turn in a in class exercise, sometimes she calls on random student's name to answer a question, sometimes it's all of the above.
2) There are a lot of in class participation points throughout the quarter based on the correctness of your answer and you will most likely not be given much time for those. However she is nice enough to let you drop the lowest two.
3) She assigns official homework once every two weeks. BUT, there is often smaller, shorter take home exercises that she will assign in class(and she may or may not post on CCLE about it). So pay attention in class!!
4) There are two quizzes in addition to one midterm and one final. She takes these assessments very seriously and will write you many many many bullet points on rules to follow. FOLLOW THEM! DO NOT OPEN YOUR BACKPACK WHEN YOU ARRIVE IN THE EXAMINATION ROOM. One time she was very annoyed at a particular student who looked through his backpack inside the classroom before she handed out the assessment. She yelled at him in front of the whole class and order him to sit at the very front.
5) Homework needs to be turned in within 10 minutes of starting class or else she will begin to deduct points. Try to turn it in BEFORE CLASS BEGINS, or else your P(getting yelled at ^ humiliated) = 1.

Despite my comments above, as long as you follow her rules and pay attention in class, have a decent TA, attend office hours, you will do just fine get at least a B+. She gets through a lot of material and you will feel like you've mastered a lot of material after her class. You learn a lot, more than other more "easy" stats 100a professors. And a bonus, she is quite entertaining, the way she talks, her sarcasm, and her occasional analogy of probability and life/death is quite accurate. She is very intimidating, but deep down, I believe Juana truly cares for her students.

Shout out to Lenny for being an amazing TA!

> Overall, Professor Sanchez has some strict rules but they were easy to get the hang of and the class structure made it really easy to learn the material without outside study. The class would be best for people who learn well during lectures and are detail-oriented.

> I understand why students would be frustrated with Professor Sanchez, she has a lot of very strict rules and is a bit rude to students who break them. But I found that if you just follow what she says as best as possible (it is hard sometimes) she's a fine professor. The class was easy and I feel like I retained a lot of the information. When she was rude in class it was often the student who started it by complaining about one of her rules, so just do your best to follow them without complaining and you'll be fine.

> She takes attendance randomly in lecture but discussion section attendance counts for extra credit so it's still easy to get 100% attendance missing a few lectures.

> In terms of the lectures, she gets turned around sometimes but overall the slides themselves are very clear and follow the book exactly. She does multiple-choice questions in class with color cards which some students found stressful but it doesn't count for anything so it's really fine. I actually found those questions super helpful because between those and the homework assignments I found I didn't have to study much to do well on the tests.

> For the tests she lets you have a full front and back cheat sheet with all the formulas so as long as you understood the homework (which is exactly like the book example problems) you'll do well on them. The hardest part is remembering formatting and details like writing down labels for the sets and events.

Take Sanchez If:
-You learn better with structure and someone constantly keeping you in check
-Dont mind going to class
-Learn by practicing
-Want to learn the basics of probability really well

Don't Take Sanchez If:
-You prefer to cram the night before tests
-Care more about getting a slightly better grade than learning Stats

Her class isn't hard, you are just going to have to do a lot of problems. The upside is the night before each test you will barely have to study because Sanchez already made you sure you've done each problem literally 10 times.

She's not as bad as people say! If you follow instructions and don't mess around, you'll be fine in this class.

I think a lot of the bad reviews just come from miscommunication/misunderstandings. There's definitely somewhat of a language/cultural gap between Prof Sanchez and her students, but if you treat her with respect, she will do the same. She is honestly very nice towards her students and cares about our success.

I emailed her multiple times and she was always willing to help and added words of encouragement and niceties in each of them that a lot of the reviewers below won't tell you about.

She is somewhat disorganized and goes extremely fast in lecture! Pay attention or get left behind (I often found myself in this situation multiple times). The homework is easy and can be finished in a couple hours at most, but her quizzes and tests often are too long to finish (in my opinion) without rushing super fast. Practice proofs! That's what separated me from getting a way better grade in this class.

The book isn't really necessary. You need it a few times in the class when her homework questions (maybe one or two per fifteen question assignment) ask you to go to the book for reference, but it's not worth 60-70 bucks, just go look at it rq in the Science and Engineering Library.

If anything, don't procrastinate taking your Stats 100a class because Sanchez is the only professor taking it (i almost did because of her reviews), just push through and you'll be fine.

My grade isn't reflective of how heavy the workload for this class is. I am an individual who is super passionate about statistics so keep that in mind as you read this review.

- Her lectures were very intense because she had this whole ritual of pre-lecture readings with post-lecture slides to review for HWs, Quizzes, Exams.
- We had about 15 HWs through the quarter (so more than 1 per week) and they would take a while, especially if you were not engaged during lectures (which is entirely possible).
- Participation quizzes accounted for 25% of your grade...not bad right? They were a pain to answer because every lecture had a quiz you had to finish, a few had like 20 Qs (idk why she didn't just call those HWs).
- Midterm and Final were timed, which isn't a problem because frankly I prefer that, and her questions were fair and not impossible. Our distributions were how you'd expect them to be for a stats class with this large of a syllabus for 10 weeks.
- She did offer EC opportunities but those were in the form of more quizzes, which I was done with and did not attempt (to be exact I attempted 20% of ONE quiz out of 10).
- Her grading scale was that you needed a 95% for an A, so if you were not on top of your game from Day 1, you're likely going to heavily depend on a thick curve for one of the tests.

Finally,
Take this class if you have to, its not unbearable if you are passionate about stats and need it as a prereq for more computational upper-divs. But if this class is one of four, maybe five classes in the quarter and you just want to explore the field...hold it off for the next quarter.

Professor Sanchez was...a lot. She was not too bad she was manageable but I am not sure if that was because this class was online or just her regularly. You are forced to buy her textbook and a cognella quiz thing to take some chapter quizzes but this thing looks EXACTLY like ccle!! AND its mostly extra credit other than like 3 or so that are graded! Which I thought was a waste of money honestly but no matter. Her teaching was not too bad, she had slides and sort of went through it, you really have to read the book to get a good understanding though, a lot of these questions on homeworks and exams require some sort of practice. Her exams were not too bad either, except that for the first midterm she tested on material that we had literally learned the lecture prior. She is a very kind lady but she is also not the best so just keep that in mind

Professor Sanchez was a real pain in my ass this quarter and I honestly regret taking this class with her even though I did alright. Her lectures almost always went overtime and would be full of participation quizzes that you would have to do on your own time before next class if she didn't get to them and her homework assignments were full of dumb technicalities that weren't even relevant to the course content that you had to make sure to follow if you didn't want to get a 0. The class itself wasn't that difficult (especially if you had taken a statistics class in high school or community college) but some of the assignments could be pretty long (in particular the ones that she assigned over Thanksgiving break and the week of the final). My advice would be to take this class with a competent professor that is reasonable about the workload and the grading and if you absolutely have to take this class then be prepared to do a lot of extra work. Oh, and don't waste $95 on the textbook--you can find it online for free.

I will keep this review simple. Took this class while working a day job during the Covid pandemic. So I might have a different perspective than others.

1. She gives daily homeworks with tight deadlines. That might sound easy to follow, but it isn't. I missed almost half of her homeworks. Of those I missed, half were because she posts them both at Gradescope and CCLE. What clarity. Also those freaking participation quizes... While my other classes have once a week homeworks with scheduled deadlines, her class was a mess.

2. She has annoying rules and mark schemes. She will take points off your work for the most annoying reasons. If you're someone who takes classes extremely seriously, fine, you'll succeed in her class. If you might have other things going on in your life, and just want to learn statistics, don't take this class.

3. She makes the textbook she wrote to be the class textbook, so she'll make money off of it. The worst thing is, she cannot express herself clearly. With statistics, most questions are long convoluted. Her questions are often ambiguous and she insist on making her own questions. If you didn't understand it, too bad, you'll get no points because of her mark scheme is strict down to the last symbol.

I am taking STATS 100A with Prof Jauna Sanchez over Summer 2020. She made it compulsory for us to dump $95 to buy the book 'Probability for Data Scientists' written by guess who? Herself, Juana Sanchez. The book has online content just to make sure that you absolutely have to buy a new one. And then she also gave us the spiel on the importance of copyrights and that the university takes copyright infringement seriously.
I respect authors and their rights to their intellectual property. However, making it compulsory for your students to buy an expensive book that you yourself wrote, at a time when the university administration has been pushing for professors to offer classes that either do not require a compulsory textbook or have a lower-cost alternative. And then being self-righteous is just ridiculous.
I would have dropped the class if I had the slightest option to delay taking STATS 100A any longer.
I'm sure the other reviews are already convincing enough on why you shouldn't take this class. But if you need another reason, here it is. So unless you absolutely have to take this class, I'd suggest finding an alternative.