To preface, I had very low expectations going into this class. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Mike, the TA, and the LAs were all very helpful throughout the quarter and really placed an emphasis on thinking critically to solve difficult problems. The homework assignments and exams were all challenging, but not unnecessarily so; I felt that they tested the material in a fair way even though I didn't do as well as I wanted on them. Mike's lectures and notes are all very well-organized, so make sure you read through them thoroughly and reference as needed.

This is a hard class, and there's naturally a lot of anxiety about grades (I know I stressed A LOT). Listen to Mike when he says that he will assign a grade that reflects your learning. If you put your best foot forward and make an honest effort, you will get a good grade. I performed at or slightly below the median on both midterms and the final and ended up with an A, so the curve is very generous.

Lastly, do not hesitate to go to office hours or ask for help on Campuswire. I wasn't able to attend office hours too much due to my schedule, but there are 6-7 different timeslots a week that should hopefully work.

Well, I feel mixed about this class. Tsiang is really a nice person. Besides what I experiencing in the class, I do really like him. He always care about the students and let us know that wellbeing is the most important thing in our life. But I don't think this class is meaningful.

First, the class is just like from CS department. As a CS major students, R is not a good language to write functions. But we have to spend more than 5-10 hours if you decided to finish all the homework(based on completion, you can show you hard working to get a full credit.). It's not difficult for me but very boring.

If you have coding experience and not a stats major, buy a book for R and don't take it. Else if you(haha) are a beginner, maybe this is a gate for coding. Don't take it as a stats class, it's a CS class. Trust me.

Second, the exams are very difficult. I have no idea how my classmates can get a perfect score on it. But this class is not a GPA killer, prof will curve your score. Even you mess up all the exam, you can get a B or even a A-.

STATS 20 will let you feel depressed. But you will learn a lot. Make the decision by your own.

This is the best professor I've ever had at UCLA. He really cared about the students and never took points off for minor mistakes. The TA Jake is the best TA in the world: he never yelled at us. I don't understand why here are so many negative comments about these two wonderful and lovely people. I would definitely take Michael again!

I absolutely loathe every second that I spent on this class. All Professor Tsiang does is reading the pdf handout. He does not explain things most of the time ( maybe he assumes that we just know it all? ). This class is hard for people with no previous coding experience. Professor Tsiang will give you the most basic knowledge of R and then give you questions that require a lot of R coding experience. There's a lot of homework, and all the questions are difficult and tricky. Maybe I'm too dumb for this class. I found it quite discouraging talking to professor Tsiang. I don't want to say this, but this is the worst experience that I ever have ever since I attended UCLA.

Tsiang is an excellent lecturer and his emphasis on learning makes the class worthwhile. If you are a stats major, this class is IMPORTANT. The amount of material that is covered to prepare you for the 101 and 102 series is insane. I wish I tried a bit harder to understand the concepts because honestly I got my ass kicked in 102A. So put in the time now! I went from scoring 30s and 70s on the homework (graded on completion) and then I got my shit together and started getting 100s. PUT IN THE TIME! Tsiang pays attention to your progress, so don't focus too much on your midterm/final/homework scores. As long as he sees you are trying to understand the concepts, you will be alright!

This was the worst class I took at UCLA. I changed it to P/NP because I literally thought I was gonna fail. The highest grade I got on an exam was 35%. Yes, in the end it was curved. But the stress/depression that this class caused me was not worth anything. The TA (I had Jake) was intimidating, not helpful whatsoever, and smug! The lectures were actually super clear and the notes were helpful so you'd think it would be straightforward! But it wasn't at all...it was like learning the ABCs in class then having to write your own code for ranked choice voting for homework. For an introduction to programming class, it was absurd. They said you didn't need any prior experience coding to excel in the class but this was not the case at all. Not to be dramatic but I wouldn't recommend this class to my worst enemy

If you're here to find an easy class, go find another class lol, this will definitely take some chunk of your week to do the hw. I'll be honest, I like Michael and wow surprisingly unlike the reviewers here, Jake too. I took this when crap hit the fan with COVID. Class wasn't too hard, unfortunately I wasn't as focused as I'd like to be because you really do learn a lot in this class. If you engage with Jake or Michael during office hours or through questions on discussion boards, they will remember you! Michael's notes are very good and R has swirl which is an interactive command line platform that you go through each assigned chapter that Michael has designed. Our final project was made optional because of how hectic everything is and I am very grateful. I will say the best way to study for this class is to just plug in random crap into R and predict what the outcome is. You don't get to have R by your side during an exam and Jake expects you nail the basics. Having some computer programming experience is definitely preferred because how everything in R is stored is probably harder unless you understand that(although you'd just have to put in the effort to read more if you dont have experience). Miles sometimes likes to be cryptic with his answers because he wants you to learn(that definitely frustrated me a lot), but as long as you show that you're trying, he'll "tell" you the answer if he sees you struggling a lot.

Michael Tsiang provides notes that are very clear regarding R syntax and gives a good overview of R in general, and you should be able to do some simple data projects on your own after this class. His lectures are essentially going through the notes and code on RStudio and explaining slightly more in depth, but not by much. The homework was manageable (medium to hard difficulty), but they are graded based on optimization as well--you will get docked points if your code doesn't solve the problem in the quickest way, which is not something considered in CS 31 or 32. Tsiang was more helpful when I asked him questions in person.

On the negative side, he was slightly passive aggressive in class. He threatened to tank everyone's grades when someone took a photo of his slides during lecture against his wishes. The exams are difficult in that you have to be extremely familiar with the output formats of different inputs, which I don't think is very relevant to real-day usage where you can tinker around with code and see the output, but might be relevant to coding interviews. Most people found the exams hard, and I scored a B to B+ on both midterms and the final and got an A in the class, so it was definitely curved.

Overall, it's a good overview of R, but the exams and instructor are slightly off-putting. It'll be helpful to work through the problems and study with peers.

Don't take Stats 20 with Professor Tsiang who always has Jake Cramer as TA!!! I dropped this course on Week 2. The workload was unreasonablly large, and all homeworks and exams were very difficult. Strategies for problems on weekly homework were not taught in class, and they needed great amounts of time.

This class was such a nightmare! So much heavy, unnecessarily difficult workload that takes up what should be used as study time! The exams test on minute details that you can't really study for. The last two weeks were a complete disaster! A self study chapter, a homework assignment, and a final project all assigned in Week 9 with barely enough time to study for the final. And the worst part about the class is the professor saying crap like "Your mental health is more important than your grades" which baffles me because this class is the source of mental health problems. The only good thing about this class is the curve, but everything else was just bad.