I thought Stats 20 with Mike was great! Learning how to code in R is like learning a new language, but it is because of Mike and my awesome TA Bart that I feel like I have a solid comprehension of R for the upper division stats courses to come. The class breakdown was 7 homeworks (graded on completion), 2 midterms, and a final exam. The homework assignments were difficult, but always referenced material learned in the chapter notes that Mike lectured through. What I appreciated is as someone who is new to programming is that Mike standardized this class so that everyone must use the same base level functions and structure, making this class doable as an introduction. The graders for the homework always left helpful comments on how to improve your code. The midterm exams and final were all very difficult given the time frame, but as long as you understand the notes and the examples Mike emphasizes, you will perform fine. Plus the class is scaled generously. Overall - Mike is a great guy, and you should take him if you can, especially with Bart. They are both very accommodating and caring! My advice is that you should study his notes, work through the examples, and trust your gut instinct for coding on exams! :)

Yes, the class is tough. But, it is extremely valuable to take the course with Mike, if you plan to go on to major in Stats and take the 101 and 102 series. He is very welcoming, super nice, and willing to really help his students in order to make sure that they truly comprehend the material... if they put in the necessary work. Go to office hours, start the problem sets (they're long!) way ahead of time and you should be more than fine for the course.

(for stats 20)
HW is doable and not extremely time-consuming. If you try each problem honestly, you will receive more scores than you expect. Scoring 100% on HW is definitely possible.
Midterms are HARD, so the grades might be frustrating. The final is long and cumulative but not necessarily as hard since you have more time, so just make sure you have a solid foundation on the earlier chapters and study the later chapters well.
Don't give up learning the later chapters if you messed up the two midterms. I did horribly on the two midterms (below the class medians, close to the avgs), but then I got 90+ in the final by rewatching some of the lectures, taking notes on details taught in the lecture that was easily overlooked, playing with weird edge cases in R, and redoing some short HW problems. I ended up with an A.
The lectures are definitely helpful, but you still have to figure out lots of things in the HW by yourself (I mean searching on the internet is not helpful since you are not allowed to use outside sources). I never went to OHz, but I guess that may also help. On the Campuswire forum, some people asked questions that I never encountered in the HW or lectures, but thinking about some of those questions helped me understand the concepts.

This class is as horrible as everyone else mentioned here. However, this quarter I had a great grader, who points out my errors but gives full credit to my homework. Btw, I completed all parts of the homework and at least wrote complete code, and the graders just grade on completeness instead of correctness. BUT it is just so hard to write complete code. Thus, a nice grader seems great, but it also requires a large amount of time spent on homework.
Finally Mike seemed to give us grades generously, since I was between 25-50 percentile for most exams but still get an A.
If you got another professor for this class, just take it. If not, Mike is not so bad if you have a nice grader.

Before taking STATS 20 with Dr. Mike, a lot of students are discussing how heavy the workload is and how terrible it might be if the TA is Jake. To be honest I was a little bit intimidated by many comments about this class.

The class is more intense than I expected, one HW each week, and it is going to take about two days to finish (learning and doing problems). But I promise you as long as you do the problems, you will have a better sense of how to be a good coder! I have to say I became a better coder because of Mike and Ian.

Don't be worried if you have trouble with getting help. Mike's Campuswire is super helpful, you can get feedback from Mike or your fellow peers within 30mins. However, you won't expect to get the exact answer, but you will be getting a lot of useful hints.

Mike always emphasizes focusing on learning other than grades. Although he tries to push all the students as much as he can, he would be very thoughtful and nice.

There's one sentence from Mike that I would never forget as a student: "Your mental and physical&mental wellbeing and integrity is always more important than grades. " I forgot the exact words but he quoted a really good saying, "Friends&family, waffle, and work are the most important threes things, no matter what the order is, work is always going to be the third one.

If you are looking for an instructor who seems to be giving easy lectures, HW's, and A's, Mike is definitely your worst choice; If you are looking for an instructor who is pushing students hard but being helpful, and you care about learning more than grades, Mike would be your best choice.

Stats 20 with Mike is an wonderful and caring professor, and it is a great class which I highly recommend taking. Going into this class I had some concerns because of some of its low reviews that took place around 2019 and 2020, but the class has been revamped and is a lot better. The grading on homework assignments is based on completion so as long as you give it a good effort you will get credit. The TA Eduardo is also very knowledgeable and approachable in office hours and discussion. If you take this course wanting to learn R, you will get a lot out of it and finish with a good grade.

Very nice professor. Always answers students' questions on campuswire. Tests are ok. Very easy A+.

The grading is not strict and curves are often given. Mike is engaging and clear in his lectures and the posted notes are organized. The content is very interesting to learn and if you pay attention to class and review the notes, you'll be fine with this class! After taking Mike's stats20 gave me the incentive to take more stats classes and probably minor stats.

Professor Michael Tsiang was definitely hard and this was my most challenging quarter so far, but his notes and lecture videos were so well put together and clear that overall, my experience with this class was good, but it was just a LOT of work.
I believe this class has a bad rep because of a previous TA but the current TA is so patient and explained things clearly, especially with the homework problems. The beginning was definitely a struggle for me as I had virtually no experience with R and I was always confused on how to even begin the homework. The LAs were the ones that mostly pulled me through this course and once you practice a lot, the class becomes easier.
The homework is definitely a lot harder than his exams but they're done that way in order to encourage learning and they're graded on completion only, but they do hold key understanding for the tests themselves so even if you can't figure out the homework, make sure to understand why after.
The discussion also gave a lot of practice using R and even though they didn't contain many points, they are similar to what you will see on the exams and I believe it's created by the TA.
Overall, my advice going into this class is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRATICE. Play around with the code and see how it interacts with different commands as you will gain a deeper understanding of how it works. The LAs also host review sessions where they further go into R code.

Don't be scared about taking this class! I was nervous going in based on prior reviews, but this class has been restructured a bit from the ~dark days~ mentioned by some other reviews and is not anything to fear.

That being said, I would not say this is an easy class per se, but if you go to lecture and do the homework (even though they are for completion, if it definitely worth your while to dedicate a significant portion of time to really trying each problem), as well as go to office hours for things you are unsure about, you can succeed in this class.

Professor Mike is truly one of the kindest professors I have had, and cares a lot about your success both in the course (i.e. understanding R) and overall. He dedicates a lot of time via office hours and on campuswire helping out students, and emphasizes prioritizing your mental health over grades, which I appreciate. Also!! Exams are less difficult than homework, so don't freak out if the homework takes you hours upon hours; exam questions will test similar info but the solutions can often be done somewhat simply.