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

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.

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.

Mike is amazing. Amazing professor and amazing person. When he tells you that whole grades aren't more important than your health you best believe he means that, it's not just something he says just to say it. During finals week when I got an untimely illness to say that he was accommodating and helpful would be an understatement. If you are going through something reach out to him he is a very caring and understanding professor which is somewhat of a rarity in South Campus. Also a great lecturer, I'm the type to stop going to lecture after Week 6ish but I kept going into Week 10. He really breaks down the material nicely but keeps it light like you leave the lecture not even realizing just how much you just learned. Also, laugh at his nerdy jokes, nobody in my hall did and it was super depressing because they were actually lowkey funny.

The class itself is hard but manageable. Don't go into it thinking it will be easy or even medium. If you go into it knowing that you will have to learn an entire coding language from scratch (which is hard) then you will be fine. How to do well in this class? HOMEWORK, HOMEWORK, HOMEWORK. Don't leave it to the last minute. Don't copy it. Really struggle through it trust me it is better to struggle on the homework than cram before the test. Do it by yourself, not with a partner. Also, do or at least try the advanced problems, they are not required but do it anyway.

The grading is beyond fair, the tests are strictly graded but the curve is generous to make up for it. It is after all, a class rank test which is annoying for other students to have to do poorly for you to look better in comparison but it's as close to fair as course like this can get.

I think somebody in here posted the grading distribution so find that.

DR. MIKE IS F--ING AWESOME! TAKE THIS CLASS, YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT! The old Bruinwalk reviews scared me, so I really hesitated to join this class. However, Dr. Mike is quite literally one of the sweetest, most empathetic, fun Profs I have ever met. He made a lot of adjustments to his curriculum in light of his student feedback.

He knows his lectures like the back of his hand and creates these organized pdfs of the material. His class was also really engaging and he managed to make me laugh in each lecture. He also teaches in a way where you can just focus on your learning without being concerned about your grade. I never found myself stressed or incentivized to cheat to do well.

The homework, while challenging, is graded on completion. The exams are quite difficult, but he curves generously so it doesn't really matter in the end. Just focus on trying to learn from mistakes you make on past exams. A study hack for this class is to also play around with R commands and see how outputs change depending on different types of inputs. He literally gives you all the resources you need for the class condensed on his pdfs, so Stack overflow is entirely useless and exams never have surprises on them. You will leave this class with a foundational knowledge of R that will help you loads in the future.

Dr. Mike also makes himself super available to his students. He has extensive office hours and is eager to answer all questions that come his way. He also places a strong emphasis on the importance of mental health and he cares about his students deeply.

Seriously, this class is fantastic. Ignore the other reviews, you'll be in great hands :)

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.

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.

Not much left to say that hasn't already been said. The reviews for this class are accurate unfortunately (mike is nice but the class sucks a$$). I had Bart as a TA and he was really chill and pretty funny. I would recommend him because he made this class a little better and honestly helped me get through it (not so much content wise but mental stability wise).

Now onto my advice: STUDY !! This may seem obvious to some of you, but it was completely foreign to me to study for a coding class. This class turns through a ton of material, so you need to review everything covered in the notes as well as the HW problems before the midterms and finals (this will help a TON).

I know if you are reading this you probably have to take this class and you probably have to take it with Mike. I'm really sorry and it might be scary reading all these reviews, but I promise you will get through it... just stay confident and good luck (you got this) !!

The professor is a friendly person.
Take this class online (COVID-19)a lot thing may be different from before.
40% for both exam(25%better one 15% lower one) 18% Homework 30% Final exam 12% Final project
Due to the epidemic, the project was cancelled. total grade is over 88.

The time for the exam is tight. I have never completed all the questions.
Exam grade is mostly based on percentiles, top50% A to A-, 50%-75%B+/B range. End 25%B/B-/below range.
Homework can be late for 24h, no points are deducted. Although the homework is difficult, it is scored according to the degree of completion. 75% complete, you can get 100% points . No one will tell you the correct way before due day. It is for "stimulate the learning process". If you don’t have time to think, or if you don’t have any clues. Just answer your plan and ideas will get full marks.

1st exam : min~1st Qu
2nd exam: med~3rd Qu
Final exam: med

Final Grade: A-

(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.