Akram M Almohalwas
Department of Statistics
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2.6
Overall Rating
Based on 13 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 1.9 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.0 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.0 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Often Funny
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
48.5%
40.4%
32.3%
24.2%
16.2%
8.1%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

23.7%
19.8%
15.8%
11.9%
7.9%
4.0%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

22.3%
18.6%
14.9%
11.2%
7.4%
3.7%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

16.9%
14.1%
11.3%
8.4%
5.6%
2.8%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

34.8%
29.0%
23.2%
17.4%
11.6%
5.8%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (10)

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Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: P
March 23, 2020

I've literally never written a Bruinwalk review until this quarter after I had Almo for 101A. I've had the whole spread of stats professors from Chen, Tsiang, Christou, Zhou, and Sanchez and Almo is for sure the worst experience so far.

To compare Almo and Sanchez, I felt that Sanchez was fairly organized. She had lecture notes, and a structured curriculum that go in a linear fashion. She may not be super nice but at least you know what you're learning about. Almo on the other hand is horrendously disorganized with regards to his notes, his lectures, his teaching, and his instructions. His lectures in particular feel that he is just YELLING words that are important but you have no idea what he's actually trying to teach.

Not to mention, literally a whole question out of four questions on the midterm was unsolvable which was not mentioned until after the exam was graded meaning that we wasted a ton of time trying to solve this problem during the exam and likely lost points on the other parts of the exam.

But overall, this class is not super hard. The homeworks aren't that hard and you can pretty much learn all the material in a day before the final by going through the textbook. But for sake of your sanity and feeling like you're getting your tuition's worth I would not recommend taking this class with Almo.

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Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: B
March 30, 2020

Disorganized, unclear, insane, unreal. These are just a few words that come to mind when I think of STAT101A with Almohalwas. The level of disorganization in this class is actually impressive. His lectures are beyond confusing (I actually think he gets confused during them). They lack any sense of structure whatsoever or any objectives and it is simply impossible to know what ‘topic’ you are supposed to be learning during each class, even after the class has ended (I CAN NOT emphasize this point enough). There is no clear train of thought or structure to his classes. He posts an increadible amount on CCLE, most of which are unreadable R markdown documents which are impossible to learn from. The textbook is unclear and outdated as well as being broadly irrelevant to the course. Homeworks are very difficult and massively time consuming. Luckily, our TA literally gave us the solutions to them, otherwise I can garuntee 1/4 of the class would have failed every assignment. The group project was also a huge mess (like the rest of the course) with very little guidance. There was little to gain through it and it just added to a very high workload. Now, onto the midterm. Average grade for the midterm was 55%. This was because of a combination of very poor lecturing (as mentioned above), an unreasonably long test as well as the fact that the homeworks and textbook are all based on R, so before the midterm you are spending 99% of your time learning the material on R whereas th test is all by hand, which causes a lot of problems. Finally, the grading of the course. I believe the grades for this course were largely fabricated. I’m not sure how anyone got away with this but in one of the homeworks, I did not answer an entire section and got 100%, as did everyone else who handed it in (you can see this on the grade distribution on myUCLA). This was also the case with the extra credit assignmentand some of the quizzes and other homeworks. As well as this, we got our final grades BEFORE our final project was marked.

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Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: NR
March 29, 2020

Absolutely disorganized. Not recommended at all.
The material is not hard itself, but Professor A.A makes it difficult for us. I feel like the grade distribution in the past years is also a lie. Because of the low average in the midterm, he personally gives partial credit to raise up the average. However, the result was that some students got ten more points, some students got no partial credit at all. Is it actually fair for everyone??? If the Prof wants to curve, he should curve the whole class instead of giving someone more points than others. He also gives a final project which requires a group to finish. If you meet up with someone lazy and contributes nothing, it will be several stressful weeks for you. The final project report was due on Friday of our Spring break, which is BS! I've never met a professor who made the deadline during the break. There is never so much hate and complaint for a class like this one.

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Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: N/A
March 21, 2020

It's very difficult to learn the material in Prof. Almohalwas' class because he doesn't give an outline of his lectures very well so they are hard to follow. He also expects you to know a lot of things about basic statistics "from Stats 10" which were not necessarily taught in that class. If you have a lot of time to invest in self-study, he does post all lecture notes on CCLE and assigns reading in the textbook, but it was very difficult to keep up with it all. The homework assignments were extremely difficult (especially at the beginning of the quarter) but the TA always helped with it in discussion. I think he could be a good professor if you already have a really strong background in statistics. Otherwise you will be lost and confused in his class.

Helpful?

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Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
April 4, 2021

To be honest, I enrolled in Stats 101A with Prof. Almohalwas just because I was not a stats major and this was my only choice. I was scared by those ratings and reviews on Bruinwalk. However, Prof. Almohalwas was super helpful and my experience was great. Maybe those reviews were written before COVID. He's unclear sometimes, just come to his OH if you have any questions. Midterm and Final were timed. They were really easy and our TA was generous about grading. There were 5 HW, 3 Quizzes and 1 EC HW. You'll get 100% on HWs as long as you did every problem(They were supposed to be graded based on correctness but our grader didn't do so). Quizzes were extremely easy and everyone should get 100%. The only thing that required you to work hard was the final Kaggle project. HARD but interesting. Overall, I would definitely take more courses with Prof. Almohalwas in the future if possible.

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Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: B+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 28, 2021

Overall, the class has been quite a good experience for me. I find Dr. Almohalwas was organized enough in the lectures (attend lectures! they are very important). The problem is not about him but about the course itself: the materials are so scattered around between theories and R outputs. His tests require you to know your R results very well, so prepare towards them instead of just formulas. Lecture slides are often very long ( about 80 slides), but in lecture he will show you where to focus. Overall, Dr. Almohawas is very caring and understanding (2% extra credit, lenient finals grading, giving hints for modeling project,...). I strongly recommend him. You just have to make sure you understand what he teaches in R very well.

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Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: I
Feb. 22, 2020

This is the best professor I've ever taken. His lecture is very vivid, and he answers questions quite promptly! I would definitely take him again.

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2 4 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
March 29, 2022

Almo is quite funny and definitely cares about his students, but any structure in this class is nonexistent. As previous reviews have acknowledged, his "notes" are just random files on Bruinlearn that consist of R outputs with little context. Besides this, though, the class isn't actually too difficult since the class is essentially entirely computational. The homeworks are graded pretty leniently and the midterm and final were both calculating various values associated with regression outputs. Definitely make a formula sheet from his notes--it will be invaluable since you can use it on exams. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this class.

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Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 29, 2022

This professor very clearly cares about his students. He is super responsive if you email him and always seems willing to help out when you ask him questions inside and outside of the classroom. Homework assignments are pretty reasonable and graded very generously, and most questions on quizzes/assessments are also pretty straightforward; just be sure to keep track of all formulas discussed during class, and you should be fine. The biggest downside to taking this class with this professor is that he is SUPER disorganized. The Bruin Learn site is a jumble of random files, only about half of which are discussed/relevant to whatever is going on in class at any given time. The final project is also a total mess, as he typically assigns groups before people drop the class, so you might end up doing a group project alone (I asked to get reassigned multiple times, and he never got around to doing it). The final project is also due a few days after the final exam/end of the quarter, so you may find yourself working on it during your break.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 17, 2021

By far the worst professor I've had in my entire life. The biggest concern is that he is very disorganized, so he'll often give out 60-90 page PDFs and expect us to just know all the content there. Quizzes are given out at random times, exams are difficult, and there is a final project that was due a week AFTER finals week. By any means, try to take a different professor to save yourself time and health.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: P
March 23, 2020

I've literally never written a Bruinwalk review until this quarter after I had Almo for 101A. I've had the whole spread of stats professors from Chen, Tsiang, Christou, Zhou, and Sanchez and Almo is for sure the worst experience so far.

To compare Almo and Sanchez, I felt that Sanchez was fairly organized. She had lecture notes, and a structured curriculum that go in a linear fashion. She may not be super nice but at least you know what you're learning about. Almo on the other hand is horrendously disorganized with regards to his notes, his lectures, his teaching, and his instructions. His lectures in particular feel that he is just YELLING words that are important but you have no idea what he's actually trying to teach.

Not to mention, literally a whole question out of four questions on the midterm was unsolvable which was not mentioned until after the exam was graded meaning that we wasted a ton of time trying to solve this problem during the exam and likely lost points on the other parts of the exam.

But overall, this class is not super hard. The homeworks aren't that hard and you can pretty much learn all the material in a day before the final by going through the textbook. But for sake of your sanity and feeling like you're getting your tuition's worth I would not recommend taking this class with Almo.

Helpful?

4 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: B
March 30, 2020

Disorganized, unclear, insane, unreal. These are just a few words that come to mind when I think of STAT101A with Almohalwas. The level of disorganization in this class is actually impressive. His lectures are beyond confusing (I actually think he gets confused during them). They lack any sense of structure whatsoever or any objectives and it is simply impossible to know what ‘topic’ you are supposed to be learning during each class, even after the class has ended (I CAN NOT emphasize this point enough). There is no clear train of thought or structure to his classes. He posts an increadible amount on CCLE, most of which are unreadable R markdown documents which are impossible to learn from. The textbook is unclear and outdated as well as being broadly irrelevant to the course. Homeworks are very difficult and massively time consuming. Luckily, our TA literally gave us the solutions to them, otherwise I can garuntee 1/4 of the class would have failed every assignment. The group project was also a huge mess (like the rest of the course) with very little guidance. There was little to gain through it and it just added to a very high workload. Now, onto the midterm. Average grade for the midterm was 55%. This was because of a combination of very poor lecturing (as mentioned above), an unreasonably long test as well as the fact that the homeworks and textbook are all based on R, so before the midterm you are spending 99% of your time learning the material on R whereas th test is all by hand, which causes a lot of problems. Finally, the grading of the course. I believe the grades for this course were largely fabricated. I’m not sure how anyone got away with this but in one of the homeworks, I did not answer an entire section and got 100%, as did everyone else who handed it in (you can see this on the grade distribution on myUCLA). This was also the case with the extra credit assignmentand some of the quizzes and other homeworks. As well as this, we got our final grades BEFORE our final project was marked.

Helpful?

3 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: NR
March 29, 2020

Absolutely disorganized. Not recommended at all.
The material is not hard itself, but Professor A.A makes it difficult for us. I feel like the grade distribution in the past years is also a lie. Because of the low average in the midterm, he personally gives partial credit to raise up the average. However, the result was that some students got ten more points, some students got no partial credit at all. Is it actually fair for everyone??? If the Prof wants to curve, he should curve the whole class instead of giving someone more points than others. He also gives a final project which requires a group to finish. If you meet up with someone lazy and contributes nothing, it will be several stressful weeks for you. The final project report was due on Friday of our Spring break, which is BS! I've never met a professor who made the deadline during the break. There is never so much hate and complaint for a class like this one.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: N/A
March 21, 2020

It's very difficult to learn the material in Prof. Almohalwas' class because he doesn't give an outline of his lectures very well so they are hard to follow. He also expects you to know a lot of things about basic statistics "from Stats 10" which were not necessarily taught in that class. If you have a lot of time to invest in self-study, he does post all lecture notes on CCLE and assigns reading in the textbook, but it was very difficult to keep up with it all. The homework assignments were extremely difficult (especially at the beginning of the quarter) but the TA always helped with it in discussion. I think he could be a good professor if you already have a really strong background in statistics. Otherwise you will be lost and confused in his class.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A+
April 4, 2021

To be honest, I enrolled in Stats 101A with Prof. Almohalwas just because I was not a stats major and this was my only choice. I was scared by those ratings and reviews on Bruinwalk. However, Prof. Almohalwas was super helpful and my experience was great. Maybe those reviews were written before COVID. He's unclear sometimes, just come to his OH if you have any questions. Midterm and Final were timed. They were really easy and our TA was generous about grading. There were 5 HW, 3 Quizzes and 1 EC HW. You'll get 100% on HWs as long as you did every problem(They were supposed to be graded based on correctness but our grader didn't do so). Quizzes were extremely easy and everyone should get 100%. The only thing that required you to work hard was the final Kaggle project. HARD but interesting. Overall, I would definitely take more courses with Prof. Almohalwas in the future if possible.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: B+
March 28, 2021

Overall, the class has been quite a good experience for me. I find Dr. Almohalwas was organized enough in the lectures (attend lectures! they are very important). The problem is not about him but about the course itself: the materials are so scattered around between theories and R outputs. His tests require you to know your R results very well, so prepare towards them instead of just formulas. Lecture slides are often very long ( about 80 slides), but in lecture he will show you where to focus. Overall, Dr. Almohawas is very caring and understanding (2% extra credit, lenient finals grading, giving hints for modeling project,...). I strongly recommend him. You just have to make sure you understand what he teaches in R very well.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: I
Feb. 22, 2020

This is the best professor I've ever taken. His lecture is very vivid, and he answers questions quite promptly! I would definitely take him again.

Helpful?

2 4 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A+
March 29, 2022

Almo is quite funny and definitely cares about his students, but any structure in this class is nonexistent. As previous reviews have acknowledged, his "notes" are just random files on Bruinlearn that consist of R outputs with little context. Besides this, though, the class isn't actually too difficult since the class is essentially entirely computational. The homeworks are graded pretty leniently and the midterm and final were both calculating various values associated with regression outputs. Definitely make a formula sheet from his notes--it will be invaluable since you can use it on exams. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this class.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: B
March 29, 2022

This professor very clearly cares about his students. He is super responsive if you email him and always seems willing to help out when you ask him questions inside and outside of the classroom. Homework assignments are pretty reasonable and graded very generously, and most questions on quizzes/assessments are also pretty straightforward; just be sure to keep track of all formulas discussed during class, and you should be fine. The biggest downside to taking this class with this professor is that he is SUPER disorganized. The Bruin Learn site is a jumble of random files, only about half of which are discussed/relevant to whatever is going on in class at any given time. The final project is also a total mess, as he typically assigns groups before people drop the class, so you might end up doing a group project alone (I asked to get reassigned multiple times, and he never got around to doing it). The final project is also due a few days after the final exam/end of the quarter, so you may find yourself working on it during your break.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A-
June 17, 2021

By far the worst professor I've had in my entire life. The biggest concern is that he is very disorganized, so he'll often give out 60-90 page PDFs and expect us to just know all the content there. Quizzes are given out at random times, exams are difficult, and there is a final project that was due a week AFTER finals week. By any means, try to take a different professor to save yourself time and health.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
1 of 1
2.6
Overall Rating
Based on 13 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 1.9 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.0 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.0 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Often Funny
    (4)
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