I couldn't agree more with the two previous reviews about Lamberson. Although he says he understands that some students may not feel too comfortable with statistics, he is condescending when students ask questions regarding the math portion. He does not provide you with enough practice problems and does not properly prepare you for the exam questions. When I visited him in office hours to discuss my group project, he was not helpful and simply told me "keep thinking", without offering any guidance. I would suggest to take this class with another professor.

I thought this class would be horrible, but I took it to fulfill an area requirement for my major. I can easily say this has been the best class I have taken at UCLA so far. Of course this is a subjective matter, but the material was so relevant and teaches you so many useful things in life especially towards the end of the quarter. I thought it was very related to marketing in a way as it teaches you how things spread within the population, how to identify relevant information through a network, and how to make use of the data you find. Professor Lamberson is amazing, his lecture was really fun and engaging, and he isn't afraid to repeat himself over and over again.
You should expect a quiz once a week, and the level of difficulty of the midterm + final are basically like the quizzes (which are not hard at all). There are 3 projects you do throughout the quarter that are relatively easy. Would recommend this class 100%

This class was incredibly interesting and actually applicable to real life I found myself applying the concepts even just for fun. Lamberson carefully and slowly goes through his lecture, ensuring every student understand what is going on. Some concepts are a bit tricky but nothing a quick trip to OH won't clear up.

Professor Lamberson is amazing. Absolutely brilliant to learn from, a great communicator, and super helpful. COMM 156 is such a fun class. Not too much work, and the "required" readings are not really required. Just come to class and you're pretty much guaranteeing yourself a good grade. 5 Quizzes per quarter, and the lowest grade is dropped -- he does have a tendency to make the wording intentionally tricky to make sure you actually understand the material. Exams are mostly multiple choice and super feasible. Also 2 really cool homework assignments are included in your grade. Would recommend him to anyone. Great upper division course, if you need to take one!

Interesting topic. Wording in quizzes and exams can be confusing.
Projects are fun, but difficult to create networks using the software.

Overall this class wasn't too bad in the end but ONLY take it if you're SURE the other computer system communications core classes are harder...

- This whole class covers unnecessary concepts that you natively know but don't think about, and it ALL revolves around the same point he makes clear in the FIRST class... It just gets boring and boring...
-His power points have VERY few words so it is very useful to take notes.
-He makes us do 6 easy in class quizzes but the lowest grade is cancelled. The quizzes are all like 5 questions consisting of true or false, multiple choice (of 2 options), and drawing ones.
-There's no textbook required
-His midterm is like the quizzes in question types but WAAAAY harder (multiple choices have up to 5 choices this time) and he basically said after everyone got a bad grade "the midterm was hard so I can separate who just knows the facts, and who knows how to apply these facts"
-He assigns some readings online but they are not necessary at ALL
-There's 2 homework assignments in the Gephi application he makes you download, and theres one class he devotes to teaching how to use Gephi (for these homework go to the professor or T.A. since this is the only thing the useless T.A. will know how to help its students so use him/her!!!)
-Office Hours are horrible cuz the professor is suuuuuper nice and helpful but he has too many students who want to ask him questions so there's even times when a student won't get time to speak with him (by the end of the quarter he used a system of signing up for 10-minute slots for office hours) which means only 6 students could sign up which is horrible.... make him invent a newer system for office hour that will benefit everyone...
-The final was SURPIRISINGLY more easy than the midterm (and sooooo short to be a final exam) and people did way better in the final. The final exam was actually more like the quizes than the midterm.

Professor Lamberson is a really funny guy but lacks clarity when it comes to teaching.
The first half of the class is manageable if you attend class and do the HW assignments. It’s key that you take notes in this class because his slides are useless.
The second half becomes a lot more stat based and a lot more confusing. Lamberson fails at explaining the concepts very well and made it more confusing than it had to be. I heavily relied on YouTube videos to understand the concepts and to do the HW assignments.
His class consists of a midterm, a final, 7-8 HW assignments and a group project. The one bad thing about the final is that we’re not allowed to have a calculator so a bunch of us were stuck trying to solve the math during the final.

Comm156 with Lamberson can be frustrating. He's a funny guy and that's nice, but it's also clear that a lot of the quizzes (six per quarter) and tests (midterm and final) are meant to be tricky. That's part of learning, obviously, but it doesn't necessarily feel like genuine learning vs. figuring out the ins-and-outs of his questions. The tests felt easier and were what boosted my grade. I attribute that in large part to figuring out how he words things.

Lamberson is arguably one of the most intelligent individuals on campus. He primarily taught PhD students at MIT and other top-tier universities. His studies on social networks are complex and very noteworthy. At first, I didn't care for him, mostly because his tests are pretty difficult and are meant to trick you. But this class seems too basic for him to teach, as you can tell when he tries to explain the basics of statistics. There is a group project that requires you to do your own "experiment," coming up with a hypothesis and elaborating on your fake results. There are a few homework assignments, as well as a midterm and final. If you have a good TA, then the grading is pretty fair. Lamberson cares about his students. He's willing to help people outside of his office hours, which I respect. It just requires more studying than other Comm classes to obtain a good grade.

Lamberson is a great guy, and the other class I took with him was awesome, he was clearly very passionate about it. The problem with this class is that he lacks passion, I really feel like he didn't care what he was teaching. The first half is fine, things you've definitely learned in other classes starting in about 6th grade. The second half is Stats based, and I've just been racking my brain to pull up information taught in Stats 10 because it is a lot more helpful than what he teaches. He's a nice guy and means well but lacks clarity and organization. Often times he would start teaching a concept and then in the middle say, "you guys don't need to know this though" which made it hard to know what we should and should not know. Tests are multiple choice and a bit tricky, group project isn't too bad if you have helpful group members.