Notes:
Much less coding now than previous quarters.
Data analysis assignment is solo now.
Class uses iClicker for lectures (2? are dropped).

The Class:
WHO NEEDS STATS 13!
Genuinely my favorite class I've taken at UCLA. Thought the material and instructor were great. I did not know I liked statistics, but now I do! Felt like we learned truly cutting-edge methodology in comparison to traditional stats courses. Finishing the course has left me feeling very capable of being a strong asset in a research setting.

Professor Garfinkel:
Super great guy who's clearly very passionate about what he teaches. He mainly teaches at David Geffen School of Medicine, which I think is pretty cool (as I am one of the many UCLA premeds myself). Lectures were always engaging. He does not post slides beforehand because he wants you to pay attention to what he says during lecture, but he posts them right after class. Favorite STEM professor I've had; it was always very rewarding to talk with him and engage in class concepts, especially with "out-of-the-textbook" ideas.

Homework:
If you've taken LS30A/B, I would say this is a similar flavor of homework but to a significantly lesser extent. Roughly 50/50 split between conceptual and coding questions, the vast majority of which the labs/lectures prepare you well for. In my experience, LS 30A/B homework took me roughly 6-12 hours a week (I take a very long time and am not the norm). The homework in LS 40 took me roughly 4-8 hours a week.

Labs:
Graded based on completion. Usually a reasonable length to finish during our 2 hour lab (unlike LS 30A/B). I thought they did a pretty great job preparing you for the homework. Our labs had 1 TA and 2 LAs, which was a pretty healthy allocation of learning facilitators for our lab of ~32 students.

Understanding Checks:
Every week you get a quiz on Bruinlearn covering concepts from that week. You get two attempts with the highest score saved. Felt kind of similar to the prelabs from LS 30A. Doesn't take long, maybe 20-25 minutes if you're slow like me. Pretty reasonable content-wise.

Exams:
You're given a very healthy amount of prep resources with problem-solving worksheets, practice exams, and the core coursework. Both the midterm and final were very predictable, and I felt the homework/labs/understanding checks did a good job preparing. I did not read the textbook in this class except for assigned problems and certain conceptual holes I had (though the textbook is pretty good). The exams were based purely on material we learned in lecture and homework. Combination of very basic calculations, conceptual questions, and pseudocode. Felt very fair.

Data Analysis Assignment:
More so than anything else, this is the culmination of what the class teaches you. It's open book and you have many days to complete it over, but you're not allowed to collaborate. It's very similar to the homework data analysis questions that you get throughout the course, except you have the reins on the kinds of questions/analysis you address. As the name implies, it's basically a mock study where you do everything. I REALLY liked it.

Conclusions:
This is the class my bros, broettes, and non-bronaries. Highly recommend. GOATed. I don't want to leave.

I thought that Professor Garfinkel was very passionate about this subject, and that normally made the lectures very engaging and interesting. He explained concepts in a way that made sense and unlike the 30 series-the coding that we did outside of class was INCREDIBLY relevant to what we were learning in class and it actually really helped to solidify my understanding of different statistical methods. The coding was actually talked about in the lectures and didn't feel like two separate lectures, as 30 a and b did.
However, the workload for this class was very unreasonable. It seemed like the LS40 professors thought that this was students only class. The content was actually really interesting and I think it is very important to learn the problems with "traditional" statistical approaches.

I found myself consistently spending 10-15 hours on the weekly homework and lab. It was difficult to get help because when I went to office hours, the TA was so overwhelmed with questions. Sometimes, the TAs also weren't able to give concise answers-they often seemed just as confused on the material as the students.
There were two team data analysis assignments that were worth a total 20% of the grade. These assignments weren't unreasonably difficult but were a TON of work-especially considering that we also had weekly homework and a midterm on top of these assignments. I also found myself doing the majority of the work for my group, and it was frustrating because we all got the same grade and I received little help with the coding.

Garfinkel is the GOAT! I went into this course just trying to get my statistics lower div finished, but his lectures are some of the best I've ever had and he makes statistics incredibly interesting, engaging, and applicable to your own education. Highly highly recommend this class, but especially this professor. The workload could get heavy at points, but if you are coming directly from LS30A or 30B you will honestly be fine since the coding syntax will be fresh in your head.

I really liked him as a professor, he was funny and engaging and he has a really interesting perspective of statistics and STEM in general, the class was easy, homework was graded harshly and that is what tanks your grade, for tests your descriptions of things need to be written very detailed, but overall this class wasn't my biggest stressor, easy concepts and little need to memorize equations (only like 2)

If you are a pre-med student or student interested in research: I'd highly recommend this class.

Overall: I was initially dreading taking stats and only took this because the other stats was full, but this class far exceeded my expectations and was genuinely fascinating. Dr. Garfinkel essentially spent the entire quarter shitting on traditional statistics and teaching more cutting edge approaches through computer simulations. There are no complex formulas, it is largely conceptual, so if math isn't your strong suit you'll definitely prefer this.

For research/premeds: Unlike LS30 A/B, lab coding and class are directly applicable to one another, and to real life. Dr. Garfinkel literally gives you scripts in class on how to present the different things you learn in research papers or to a PI. You use real life disease examples and data which is really cool since you could essentially just replace the data with your own if you go on to work in a lab. This class is essentially an intro to the statistics they teach you in med school rather than useless formulas!!

Learning team: The learning team was extremely responsive and listened to student feedback. They gave the majority of the code to us after previous quarters complained about too much coding (it was all pretty easy after the 30 series), and when our quarter felt there was too harsh of grading on homework, they reduced the amount of points taken off. They were also extremely accommodating for me as a non-UCLA athlete with conflicts and making assignments up. Grading on the final was very forgiving and Garfinkel is also just generally hilarious and a great lecturer.

Tests/assignments:
- Exams were extremely predictable and similar to practice tests (although the answer keys could be conflicting on wording sometimes), and I didn't feel the need to go to any PSS.
- Biggest tips to succeed would be to do practice tests, memorize the specific wording of responses in class, and learn distinctions between different resampling methods well. We also got a notecard for the final exam which made all the tiny difficult differences between the resampling methods easy to just write down beforehand.
- (For once) campuswire was also a great resource that TA's and classmates were all super active
- homeworks could be difficult (similar to 30 series length), but 95% of my questions could be answered on campuswire or with the textbook
- Overall courseload was similar to LS30A, and is very doable with any class combination

Not the easiest class in UCLA but definitely one that I would recommend EVERY pre-med student to take. Honestly if you can't get an A in this class, you probably won't get into med school anyways. You learn the cutting edge techniques of modern-day statistics but tailored towards pre-med students. I've never took a single statistics before in my life but still managed to get a 98% on this class. The final exam allowing a double sided cheat card also helped.

overall, if you want a free A, take stats 13. If you plan on doing any sort of research in the medical field in the future, this class is almost a must-take.

Professor Garfinkel was one of the best professors I've had at UCLA! His lectures were very engaging and he was extremely helpful during office hours. He definitely is a professor that wants his students to succeed and understand the material. The workload can sometimes feel like a lot but the material you learn in lab is super helpful for all the homework assignments and makes it very manageable. The textbook is also super helpful to learn the material and there were no curveballs on any of the exams. If you try and put in the work with this class you can do very well. The course content is also extremely important and you learn useful coding. Highly recommend this class and Professor Garfinkel!

I decided to take this class after watching Professor Garfinkel’s videos in LS30A and took it simultaneously with LS30B. The work was manageable and I was able to end with A’s in both. The TA’s and LA’s are very helpful with the coding and explaining topics that were confusing during lecture. The lectures aren’t recorded but the slides are posted after and the textbook is very helpful for understanding the concepts. The professor is very engaging and I didn’t mind having it as a 9am. The midterm and final felt very fair and similar to the practice exams, and I recommend using the CLC worksheets as practice before the exams because they use past exam problems. The only thing is that homework was pretty harshly graded even after getting help from TA’s, but this was balanced out by the exams, quizzes, data analysis assignment (which only took a short time to complete), and participation. If you put in the work in this class you will do well, and it was much more interesting to me than a traditional statistics class.

TAKE THIS CLASS.
I'm not going to lie. The only reason I decided to take LS40 was because Dr. Garfinkel taught it. After taking LS30A/B and surviving off of his YouTube videos, I considered him somewhat of a math god. For starters, the content that your learn in LS40 is extremely valuable, and made me question why stats 13 even exists. It is highly applicable to research and builds a foundation of statistics that every person should have. Most of the people taking it are pre-med, and I would highly encourage everyone to take it. Next, Dr. Garfinkel is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He is an amazing lecturer, and you can tell that he is extremely passionate about what he teaches. He wrote the textbook so he obviously knows exactly what's he's teaching, and anticipates the questions about more difficult concepts and answers them flawlessly. spring 24 is the first quarter where the workload was cut down, and it is very very manageable. It was less work that 30A or 30B. We just had a lab graded on completion, a homework assignment, and a short canvas quiz that you get 2 attempts on every week. The code is given to you so it's really easy to navigate even if you aren't that good at cocalc. The only issue I had with this class was the grading. We had 8 homework assignment in total - they returned the first 4 right around the middle of the quarter. These homeworks were graded pretty harshly, as they were very nit-picky about the details. I would say it's pretty much impossible to get a full score. Our homeworks 5-8 however, were not returned until grades were due after the final. This was a little frustrating because we couldn't use them as a resource to study, and I had no clue what my grade in the class was. I will say that they did get a lot more lenient with the grading after receiving a lot of complaints. The midterm itself also took 2 weeks to get graded, which I think is a bit long. The instructional team was very accommodating. In addition to the final, there is a data analysis assignment that is pretty easy - it's just like a shortened version of a homework assignment. I was able to get a full score on it, but they don't give you a rubric at all so you really just have to try your hardest and pray you checked their boxes. The midterms and finals were very fair, the questions were pretty much the same format as all the practice materials they give you. All in all, I have absolutely zero regrets taking this class, and if you actually care about your education and the quality of learning/content that you get out of UCLA, I am willing to bet that you won't regret it either. This class is one of the few that I can say is making my out of state tuition worth it.
TLDR: Take this class, they cut down the workload, exams are fair, homework and labs are extremely relevant to content

Prof. Garfinkel is the goat honestly !! He's very engaging and passionate about the material, and is very willing to help students. Our final review session was extended over an hour because he wanted to answer everyone's questions. Class is easy enough as long as you show up to lecture (+ you need to show up for iClicker participation points anyway). Lectures weren't recorded but the slides would be posted on Canvas.

I didn't go to PSS or Garfinkel's office hours but attended my TA's office hours every week for homework help. Unfortunately homework is graded on correctness but they kind of tell you the answers at office hours + you can also see if other people have the same question on Campuswire. For the midterms and final, you get a 3x5 index card. They provide practice midterms and finals that are generally very similar to the actual content.

They haven't published the textbook yet so they provided it to us for free, I'm not sure if it will change.

Overall highly recommend this class!!