This class is a must-take for anyone going into healthcare, scientific research, etc!! It's a relatively easy class if you pay attention and use your resources. The coding aspect is the most difficult part of the class (Python based simulations) but they help you build a really great foundation and they start from beginner level so anyone can succeed, even with very little coding experience. It is so worth it, because you can use the skill of Python to get into labs and actually be able to carry out useful simulations to perform data analysis for your future PI. The class is full of so many mind-blowing concepts that will really open your eyes to the world of data analysis in scientific research and the problems with traditional statistics, and it will totally change your perception of medical discoveries and research. Hands down would take this class again and would easily choose this over Stats 13 for premed or prehealth.

Prof. Garfinkel is amazing, has such fun energy in class and will not sugarcoat the concepts that he teaches. He is engaging, and if you have to miss a lecture they are always bruin-casted. The teaching staff is super committed to helping students succeed and they are very accommodating to extenuating circumstances. The grading scheme is pretty generous and most students seem to do well in the class.

I thought the content learned and Alan was a good professor who genuinely wanted to teach but I have several issues with this class. For people deciding whether to take this or Stats 13 I would have taken Stats 13, if given the option. My biggest issue overall with this class was the Data Analysis assignment. This is an assignment worth 20% of your grade, it is assigned Monday of finals week and is due Friday of finals week, on top of the final you have to take in this class. I thought it was quite unfair and stressful to assign such a project on the most stressful week of the quarter on top of their already difficult and content-heavy final, not to mention they graded the data analysis assignment so harshly it dropped my grade from an A to an A minus even though I scored well on the final and midterm. They sell you on the class that they made it easier, but it is still so content-dense, the homework takes so long, and they grade them so harshly. The average on most homework was almost always below 90%, and most other students in the class I talked to would agree that they spent over four hours each week on the homework to get docked points for the smallest errors that they could find.

I think the content we learned was applicable to the real world, and it was interesting to be able to code statistical tests. Alan overall was a good passionate professor, although there were other people on his team who took away from his valuable teachings.

this class was not that bad if you put in the work. it was interesting because it was super applicable to life sciences and healthcare research. i felt the homework was hard and went to office hours weekly to get help on it. it was graded harshly at first with the graders taking points off on every small error but the instructor adapted halfway through the quarter and they graded more nicely. midterm and final were not too bad and they were similar to the practice exams they provided.

I went into this class nervous since originally I was going to take Stats 13 but that filled up (a lot of people were in this situation). However, this class ended up being the best math course I've ever taken. Professor Garfinkel is an engaging lecturer and is incredibly passionate about this course. His love for the subject is infectious and I couldn't help but enjoy the class.
Pros:
The labs are easy and are a lot easier that LS30A/LS30B. I was able to finish each one within the 2 hour lab period.
The TAs are incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. I love them so much!
There are tons of accessible office hours and PSS for help on homework/class material.
I scored the best I've ever scored on a final exam in this class!
Cons:
The homework can be a bit confusing. I found myself often asking for help. (the graders were really tough in the beginning but got more relaxed later on)
The data analysis assignment worth a lot of your grade and is due right when everyone is panicked and moving out for the summer.

TLDR: Take LS40! You'll never forget to visualize the data :)

Dr. Garfinkel was a great professor with a lot of passion on his new method of teaching statistics. While Stats 10 or Stats 13 may have been easier classes to take, I think you can learn something more valuable with this class (problem with the generally accepted concepts of statistics).

Both the midterm and final were reasonable and fair exams. You are allowed a double-sided flashcard cheat sheet for the final. Our midterm was online and open note due to the protests so it may be different in the future.

The only con with this class is that you really need to be careful with the homeworks. They have graders that are quite strict and homework is graded on correctness. But as long as you put in the work everything should be okay :)

I'll be completely honest, I only took this class because there were a ton of seats available and Stats 13 completely filled up during my enrollment time. Although I wasn't great at coding in LS30A/B, which made me hesitant to take this course, they've completely reorganized the structure of this class from previous quarters which has made it a lot more manageable. The labs are graded on completion, homework is graded on accuracy but is fairly straightforward and consists of both coding and conceptual questions (they are a little stringent on points for homework so I would recommend attending office hours), and the midterm/final were just like the practice exams. In addition to a final exam, we have a data analysis assignment (which is basically a coding final) but we could use all of our notes and had around a 5-day window to complete the assignment, which made it fairly easy. Overall, I would recommend this class even if coding isn't your strong suit. Garfinkel is a super engaging professor and the class is fairly easy.

Garfinkel is a great, engaging professor and you can tell he is really passionate about the subject. His lectures were interesting and as long as you pay attention, you will be successful. The labs were coding on CoCalc and they were helpful for understanding the content of the class. There was one homework per week and they were somewhat long, but doable. I recommend this class with professor Garfinkel. The workload is not too bad, the content was interesting, and if you go to lecture you will do well. Also, I had never taken a stats class before this and did well, so prior knowledge is not necessary.

Dr. Garfinkel was a really great professor and I really enjoyed this class. It's not really a standard statistics class, but more of an overview of some problems modern science has with statistics + alternative statistical methods to help address said problems. Overall, a great class, and one of the handful of classes I've taken so far that really made me glad that I came to UCLA.

The grading scheme was as follows:
Participation through iClicker 3% (drop 2 lowest)
Homework 12% (drop lowest)
Quizzes 15% (drop lowest)
Midterm 20%
Final 30%
Team Data Analysis Assignments (x2) 20%

I wish that I could leave separate reviews for Professor Garfinkel's lectures and the rest of the course (the homework and labs), because they were like night and day.

Professor Garfinkel is extremely intelligent, funny, and personable. He explained how modern statistics was made to justify racist, eugenicist views and how the downfall of good statistics led to the downfall of good science (meaning that almost all research findings are irreproducible). He was very engaging in lecture and helpful in office hours, and if the entire class was just sitting in lecture and listening to him talk, I would have gladly had 4-hour lectures.

What made the class so unpleasant was the coding. Professor McCully is the new coordinator for the LS30/LS40 classes, and I think it is largely her influence that contributed to the excessively long homeworks, labs, and team data analysis assignments. I spent at least four hours on the homework by myself and two hours in office hours seeking help on the homework every week. As another review noted, sometimes even the TAs weren't sure what was expected for the code. This culminated in a 118-point homework assignment that was designed to be extra long because "we hadn't had homework in two weeks" - because we were taking THIS CLASS'S midterm and midterm data analysis assignment.

The midterm and final were extremely conceptual (almost no actual math). This could be a good thing, except the midterm was graded extremely harshly. If you didn't have exactly what they wanted (which often included answering unasked questions), they'd take off points, which really started adding up. In office hours after the midterm, there were so many red marks on everyone's Gradescopes that it looked like Christmas.

Near the end of the quarter, we started getting two labs per lab section - that's right, labs A and B. We couldn't finish them during our discussion section, which then made completing the homework (and then the data analysis assignments) very difficult. We get it - it's difficult to check code on Campuswire, but many of McCully's responses were downright rude.

I know I shouldn't be complaining too much since I got an A+, but they didn't input grades until Spring Quarter had already started (and, I believe, ran out of time to grade the final data analysis assignment as harshly as they'd graded the midterm data analysis assignment).

Professor Garfinkel is great, but he is very little of the time you actually spend on this class. The homeworks and team data analyses were designed like LS40 expected itself to be the only class you're taking this quarter - I genuinely don't know if they thought we could code faster or if they just didn't care how long it took us.

I'm actually embarrassed to write a review for this man because no length of words of praise and adoration is enough to express just how brilliant, and phenomenal this man is. He is incredibly enthusiastic about his work, prioritizes student learning and engagement, and is absolutely the greatest professor that I have ever had the honor of learning under. There is no question about why his reviews and ratings on BruinWalk are so high: All of the comments made thus far by his students are TRUE, and I will not even bother rephrasing what most people have already stated (but I probably will).

Yes, professor Garfinkel is unavailable most of the time, but NO worries. He has chosen excellent teaching assistants to help you ANYTIME that you need help! Seriously, up to this point, I had been thinking of transferring to a private college because most of the teaching assistants that I have had so far were HORRIBLE (chemistry 14A, LS2, physics 6A, DESMA10) and the class sizes were HUGE (like, I literally had to sit on the stairs for Lavelle and LS2). Something is different about this class though. I don't know if this class has amazing teaching assistants because the class is relatively new, or if the professor is so charismatic that the teaching assistants themselves find themselves in a position where they want to give it their 110% to impress him, but in either case, they were AWESOME. His lecture wasn't HUGE either. It was just the right size, to allow for small class time discussions when people asked questions.

Yes, his lectures are fantastic. I never got bored listening to his lectures, and to be quite honest, his late lectures were a huge concern for me in the beginning. His amazing lectures have made me disregard the bad timing of the lectures, and made me WANT to go to classes every day. There was once a poll going around in my freshman year, that stated that "if you were to have one last lecture, who would it be from?", and it's a shame that I didn't have professor Garfinkel sooner because I would have definitely chosen him.

As for grading, don't worry too much. He even told us the first day that he doesn't believe in the bell curve and a percentage scale, and that if you demonstrate understanding of the material, you will get the grade that you deserve. l was worried a LOT before taking this class, because l hadn't taken AP Calculus BC since my sophomore year, and I didn't do any math review since then. Oh man, professor Garfinkel goes through EVERYTHING, as if we're learning math from the ground-up. Now, this doesn't mean that he goes easy on us. It means that he brings up different facets of the same subject that reinforces your previous knowledge. I know of no math professors that do this (which is awesome). He also has fantastic REVIEW sessions for the midterm and final, where he covers EVERYTHING that you need to know. How awesome, right?

As for the charisma and brilliance of professor Garfinkel, I'll leave that up to you to witness.