The course difficulty has been toned down. HWs are difficult to complete and require you to think outside the box, but graded on completion so you will be fine if you put in a solid effort. Attendance at lectures is not mandatory (they are posted online), but discussion sections are. The tests are difficult, but partial credit is given and they are also curved. Mike is by far the most responsive and approachable professor I've taken a class with; he wants you to succeed.

Having taken AP Stats a couple years prior, I barely paid attention in this class and did all the (accuracy-graded) homework at 1:30 am with minimal repercussions aside from the usual self-inflicted carelessness. Seeing live the stats Ph.D.s' series of Canvas annotations notifications on my homework as they nitpicked my each and every mistake, misstep, and misoptimal calculation in the middle of the night gave me mild hypertension. I still don't get the policy of having graders separate from TAs for the homework and labs, since it's far more clumsy to learn from the mistakes from an upper div taker who isn't learning the same materials and methods in the class, but to be fair the only thing it really hurt was my pride. Lowest HW, Lab, and Quiz scores are dropped. The Campuswire condescension is kinda true, but not that terrible. The forum's used more like an all-around office hours. You don't need the textbook for this class since he just uses his slides as the content, and the slides are taken directly from the textbook anyway.
Tsiang gives lots of opportunities for people to get to know their classmates, which is more than I can say for almost any bio req lecture. Though few people came to lecture, the people that did saw each other a bit more, and we all kinda got to knew each other and interact with Tsiang if we needed clarification. I heard his 'Whine and Cheese Club' is also an option if you just want to talk more casually outside class, but I never really went so can't say much about it.
This professor notably exercises TA flexibility; anyone can decide to go to another TA or time slot instead if the one they're enrolled in doesn't work out. As someone in a 5-6pm discussion, having that option to go to the 4-5pm one instead freed a lot of time. Speaking of TAs, shoutout to Kaiwen for walking us through all the answers and apologizing when he interpreted the extra practice section wrong but extended the deadline for it, and was all around flexible during the flash floods. Also thanks to the teaching intern Josh for making practice tests for us, which I guess just aren't a thing Tsiang does normally. Other than that, this is a class you should put more effort than me into, but shouldn't be that stressful.

For background, I had absolutely zero experience with any coding language, besides the 3 days I spent on codeacademy to try and prepare for this class.

I must say that for one of my first in person class and intro to code, Prof Mike made it very enjoyable and not as intimidating as I thought it would be.

For one, he is a very understanding professor, dropping a hw grade (that was based on effort to begin with), changing the grade scheme to help with grade anxiety, etc. I was even able to change final dates as a result of a test conflict!

Prof Mike is also very approachable (despite me hardly approaching him but that's because I had to commute).

The hard part about this class is probably just the homework for me. I wanted to really try my best and sometimes that wasn't enough to get through the intermediate problems. The LAs are helpful, as I went once to an office hour and got through a problem. Eddie was my TA and he was also very helpful in discussions. The midterms, while heavily dependent on the free response, were difficult but not impossible for me, so long as you study code! It's important to know what you expect to come out of a command and that method of studying was very helpful once I finally figured out how to study for this kind of class (Midterm 2 made me feel bad but I didn't do horrifically).

Overall, I do suggest that you at least watch the lectures if he continues to BruinCast, as that is what I did after I was tired of driving to school everyday for 3 weeks. Being there actively really helped me succeed as I did WAY better than I thought in terms of my coding knowledge. Definitely would live to take Mike as a professor again in the future!

I decided for my reviews now I will now justify my scores for each of the components as well as a more extensive review:

Number Score Overview:
Easiness: 5 - Class content is not that difficult, exams are fair (NOTE: Took AP Stats in Highschool)

Clarity: 5 - He is very clear and great at explaining the statistical concepts

Workload: 5- The workload is not that bad, homework assignments can sometimes be long but not too bad, but it wasn't something completely unmanageable.

Helpfulness: 5- Mike was super helpful his office hour as well as the TAs. There was alot of support in that class to get the help you need.

Overall: 4- Overall this class was fine, I was a little bored but that's probably because I had learned the content before and it was very slow paced. I hated the labs, I did not learn anything and probably will forget the few things I remember about r. Content is interesting but go over less stuff compared to AP Stats.

Extensive Review:
Professor: Mike is a decent professor. He is really nice and really cares about your mental and emotional wellbeing. He is great at explaining things and he can be pretty funny if that's your sense of humor.

Class: The class is fine, a normal introductory statistics class. If you took AP Stats in highschool its pretty much the same thing except with less content. The main difference is that AP Stats covered more topics and focused more on theoretical stuff while this class focuses on what happens if theoretical conditions are not met and how to conduct these tests using simulation. The labs were pretty boring, did not learn much. I was just copying down whatever the TA. There will be coding on your exams so you should try harder on it than I did. The homework can be a bit long but for whatever reason, whoever is grading the homework is such a stickler for the smallest things. I would get the stupidest points marked off on my homework for the most random things. So just be aware of that.

Great class. It was his first time teaching 102B, but he was able to teach all of the topics and explain them really well. The material is almost identical to Math 156 and its a cool and relevant class for understanding machine learning. Lectures are recorded and aren't mandatory. HWs really help you understand the concepts and they're easy enough to do in one sitting. Exams are also not so bad, and he emphasizes the importance of mental health and not worrying too much about your grade with lots of motivational speeches. Michael and Miles are my top 2 for stats profs, so I was pleased to take his class.

This was a great class in basically every way. The lectures were engaging and informative, and all the work was directly relevant to the midterm and final. The midterm and final were fairly easy but did a good job preparing you for further statistics work. The only thing I didn't like about this class was the coding, but you're going to have to do that no matter what professor you take it with.

Professor Mike is a great instructor who explains the concepts in depth.

I felt like a fraudulent statistician before taking this class and now I feel slightly less fraudulent. Honestly I didn't understand anything in STATS 101A, but Mike clarified all the concepts in that course, plus so much more. Having taken MATH 115A, the application of linear algebra to modeling was pretty interesting to learn.

Mike's exams are my favorites of any professor's. They're open-note and you can have all the lecture slides during the exam. The tradeoff is that the questions are usually not straightforward, which I like, because it feels like solving a problem more than completing a memorization task, like most tests are.

Homework assignments are similar, with questions that are more puzzling and definitely tedious, but Mike has ample office hours and is always super helpful. Maybe a little intimidating at first, but once you get past the initial anxiety of approaching him, he's the most compassionate guy around. My TA, Yijia, was also super helpful and the fastest grader ever.

As long as you use the resources you're given, you'll learn a ton. And bag the A. Not that it matters...

TAKE THIS CLASS!!! I never took AP Stats and am not great with math, so I was worried about taking a stats class. But, the professor reassures you from day one that the target of his class is for beginners. He is very nice, accommodating, helpful, supportive, and flexible. All his lectures are recorded (lecture attendance is not mandatory) and he posts the lecture slides as well. He is very responsive and will answer most questions posted on Campuswire. Homework/quizzes are very doable and not that time-consuming. He drops the lowest quiz score and the midterm/final is multiple choice. The lab assignments (which use R) shouldn't be too hard as long as you follow along during discussion, but it is fast-paced. Overall, this is one of the best classes I've taken at UCLA and I feel like I have a good understanding of stats now since the professor explains things in a way that's very easy to understand.

just a goat of a teacher. he's not only funny, but teaches well and gives fair "assignments." The latter half of the course has a slight difficulty spike, but if anything that makes it actually interesting because it gives you the ability to say statistically concrete things that aren't inherently intuitive. Anyone would do just fine without AP Stats experience.