The workload in this class is overwhelming and Mike and the TA Jake have the typical air of "this isn't difficult, why are you struggling to understand this?" when the majority of people taking the class have never used R before. I never felt like the lecture notes adequately prepared me for the weekly homework assignments, and definitely not for the exams. The final project was assigned in the middle of week 9 when it was supposed to be assigned week 7, and was originally due the day after our final. So naturally, I spent a lot of my time leading up to the final working on the project. Right before our final started, he said he would be fine with people submitting the project on Sunday. I would have rather had more time to study for the final and then work on the project during the weekend if he had mentioned this change earlier.

Professor Michael Tsiang's lectures and slides are very helpful because he breaks everything down in order for it to be easy to understand. His exams are not easy A's however as you will find trick questions or oddly-worded questions causing you to get a B or B+ on his exams instead. But don't worry!!! I was below the mean on the first mid-term, but quite above the mean on the next mid-term and final. As long as you guys make sure you are at the mean for every exam, YOU WILL GET AN A! In addition, he gives very generous extra credit opportunities, which I made sure to capitalize on, make sure you do too. Although this class might make you stress out a bit, as long as you put in your effort, it is an easy A. I wish all his future students the best of luck. YOU GOT THIS!!!

Mike is one of the best Prof in the Stats Department. Unfortunately, this class is ruined by the TA "Jake". If you ever have this person as a TA, just drop the class, he is terrible. I totally agree with the comments below.

As of Fall 2019 this class is no longer reasonable. The class is clearly meant to weed students out of the statistics department and honestly, its working. The workload is entirely unreasonable (10- 15 hours per homework assignment, at times multiple homework assignments per week, 70% average on homework grades), tests are impossible (45 minutes for multiple choice and multiple coding free responses, 58% average on the first midterm), and professor Mike and TA Jake are extremely rude and unhelpful (condescending and will not answer questions). Do yourself a favor and do not take this class.

The workload is insane. Everyone took this course previous quarters told me this was an easy course, but not anymore. It really just takes all your study time. The exam is really ridiculous. People seem they might have no enough time to finish all the questions in 45 minutes. There are 15 multiple questions and two free responding questions that are subdivided by two, which are expected to be done in 45 minutes. Weekly homework is intensive as well. I really do not know why they make the homework unnecessarily hard even though they know most of the students in this course are mainly STEM majors who need to do other assignments too. Re-writing built-in functions in your own code is just time wasting and really useless. There are always time consuming and crazy problems that are time-consuming and depressing. One of the TA's named Jake unnecessarily yells at students when testing time is up, and the professor emphasizes mental well-being. HA! It is really all oxymoron. This course gives you depression for real. I don't know how he was previous quarters, but this is the worst course by far.

This class is trash. I've taken the PIC classes, I have programming experience and this class is extremely difficult and you are docked points for the most random and dumbest things. When you ask questions, the TA or the professor will respond in an extremely condescending tone so as to ensure that you know you're an idiot. The midterms are hard as fuck, and the homework is tedious and extremely difficult. Don't take it, the grade distribution is misleading as it was before they seemingly changed the rigor of this class...

fuck the stats department

To anyone considering taking this class: understand that the course in its current state is flawed. Ideally, you shouldn't have to have prior programming experience to be able to succeed in this class, but as it stands, you should consider taking PIC 10A or CS 31 before attempting this class. Hopefully Stats 20 gets changed for the better in the future, but for now you'd be doing yourself a favor by getting some programming experience first.

Stats 20 has been redesigned to be much more rigorous. People struggled a lot this quarter.
The problem was with the way the class is designed. It tests you on your knowledge of R functions and nuances, when it should be testing your ABILITY to program in R. The exams were tricky and focused on details. They should've been testing statistical programming concepts, rather than testing if we memorized things that we could just Google in the real world. The Stats department needs to look to the CS department and follow their example in how to design an introductory programming course.

I appreciate the generous curve that Mike gave out in the end, and how gracefully he handled all the criticism he received over the course of the quarter. Mike really is a good professor and very supportive of his students. It's not his fault that this class was doomed. I only hope that he is just as vocal as we are to the Stats department about finding a solution for the issues in Stats 20.

Do you want to spend hours looking over your homework because even though you know it’s right, they will take points off for the most random stuff (like SPACING)?
Do you want to spend hours and hours on end studying, just for the midterm to be an assemble of questions that are so specific, you’ll have no idea how to answer unless you had the sheer luck of randomly encountering the same problem at some point in your life?
Do you like when your TA (Jake Kramer in particular) treats you like you are the worst idiot they have ever encountered in their life? Do you enjoy going to OH just so the TAs and the Professor can give you nothing but cryptic and confusing answers?
Do you love when it’s almost impossible (if you work at night and you can’t go to the Professor’s OH) for you to see your midterms, and to understand what you got wrong (which also makes your chances of getting a regrade, or checking if anything has been graded incorrectly absolutely impossible)?
If you are into all of these things, then you will LOVE this class.
Otherwise, if you have to take this class, mentally prepare to take one of the worst classes in your UCLA career.
I have an A in the class (at least so far), and I’ve never hated a class as much as I hate this one.
The professor tries to be nice, but most of the time he is unhelpful.
Jake Kramer is BY FAR the WORST TA I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.
Anyway, GOOD LUCK! I hope you have a much better experience with the class than I personally did

Probably the worst class I've ever taken at UCLA. This is not an introductory level class workload. You cannot give your students a final project during week 10, and a final, and hw. Like ???? this is not the only class we're taking you need to CHILL OUT. Professor tries to tell us to be calm and no grade is worth you mental health blah blah oKAY THEN DON'T ASSIGN US WORK THAT'S GOING TO TAKE 45 HOURS TO COMPLETE. The material we learn in class is so far off from what we're assessed on in hw and on tests. I just have no words for this class but don't take it if you don't have to cause it straight up made me want to die.

I can definitely say that Stats 20 is currently in a transition period as Mike is looking to intensify the rigor of the class to best prepare Stats majors for the 102 series. What this means is that you can expect to spend a good amount of time doing homework and an end-of-the-quarter project. You can also expect to see written response questions in the midterms that can usually get brutal in difficulty as well as multiple choice questions that requires extensive playing around on R to learn specific outputs.

Personally, I recommend that you take a programming class such as Python beforehand. I took C beforehand, and still managed to struggle. Then again, knowledge of C does not translate well into R (Python is somewhat more similar to R). There were also some students with no programming experience that were in better shape than I was, but they probably have better study habits than me (I don’t recommend taking multiple shots of vodka while studying). But yeah, anyways, Mike is a real kind dude and he would try his best to help out his students on Campuswire and in office hours with hints. He won’t outright tell you the answers to homework problems, as he expects you to learn by struggling, but it does give you a better sense of accomplishment when you get a difficult function to successfully run.

I’m going to be frank, I did get quite stressed with the class and I usually manage to get my stress under control during the most trying times. I’m sure a lot of other people got heavily stressed too. The other reviews weren’t joking that there were multiple homework assignments around the time of the second midterm and the final project did get delayed until a week and a half before finals week, so that is something you will have to get prepared for. Combined that with the fact that I had a difficult Linear Algebra class to deal with and let’s just say I got pretty awful scores for my midterms and final. However, you can ask Mike if you can take your midterm at another time (I forgot to do this, oops) as he knows the period during the midterms is just downright tough.

In the end, I got a B+, and I don’t even think I deserved that grade at all. Mike was once a student like us, and graded very leniently since he knows how being a college student is a real ordeal. At the same time, he put us through quite a wild ride in this class in the hopes that we become ready for the upper division Stats classes. Because of that, I now feel ready to take on anything upper division Stats classes toss at me, and I’m optimistic that my newfound skills in R will take me far. So don’t be afraid to take this class, just don’t expect an easy ride.