I have never taken a stats class before this one. The class overall really wasn't too hard. Hard, but not too hard. The textbook was free and online with interactive homework embedded into the book. These readings were due every week and are an easy 20 percent for the class. The first week she has you read 4 chapters which is a lot, but it's definitely doable. I joined the class a couple days late and I managed to do it by the deadline (HWs are all due on Mondays). To be honest, the only reason I went to class was for the clicker points (it's called PollEverywhere and it's all done online, no clicker needed). The class was pretty much a repetition of everything that was in the book, not necessary in my opinion. Tip: do your homework during lecture. Nothing too important is said during class and all the lecture slides are online. AND the lectures are bruincasted. You need to learn some coding throughout the course, which I think is one of the tougher things to understand about the class.

I also never went to discussion sections (except for the first one) except for the quizzes that were every other week. I can't say whether or not the discussions are helpful because I never really went, but I'm coming out with a B, so not too bad. Discussions (once a week) are lectured by the TAs and it's all the students in one big classroom, just like lecture (no small, 20-30 student discussions). You are allowed a cheat sheet for quizzes, the one midterm, and the final exam, so that's helpful too. The final exam was a lot of copy and paste from past quizzes and the midterm. Numbers were changed around but all the processes and questions were pretty much the same. If you understand your mistakes from the quizzes and midterm, then the final should be really easy to do. I wish I had known this before taking the final. The final was also just an hour as opposed to 3 hours, so bonus (but you are allowed the full 3 hours if you needed it).

The professor didn't seem super confident in her lectures, or she least seemed a little awkward. I don't really know how to describe it, but kind of like another student giving a lecture. She was professional and everything, but I don't know... This was her first time teaching this class and a class so large so I think that has something to do with it. Also, she doesn't curve the class, so your grade is your grade.
r/ucla

To preface, I have never taken a statistics class in my life. The beginning of the class seemed fine, except the fact that the first assignment was to read and complete 4 chapters of an online textbook. Though she ended up assigning homework to just be 1 chapter due every week after this, Montoya still moved at an extremely fast pace. She assigned a chapter to be due on Mondays, introduce the chapter during the first lecture of the week, and then finish up the chapter on the second lecture of the week. I would recommend taking some sort of stats class before this if you haven't because I didn't and I struggled. The class itself is heavily based on coding with R language, and even though she often said to "not really pay attention to the R codes during lecture," her slides and homework were very reliant on coding. The syllabus was as follows: 20% homework, 15% in-class activities, 20% quizzes, 20% midterm, 25% final. There are 4 quizzes, done every other week in discussion. Her quizzes and exams are pretty tricky, and the wording ALWAYS throws people off. Those who do well have some sort of experience. And she doesn't curve grades. Overall, I would definitely recommend taking this class with literally any other professor, because Montoya is the reason I'm probably not gonna get into the Psych major.

Whatever you do, do NOT take this professor. I say this with as much objectivity as possible, she was disorganized, arrogant, and ignorant. When given suggestions by MULTIPLE students as to what she should do to help structure the class to better help comprehension, she replied with comments such as, "it was YOU who chose this class", as to say that it was our fault that we chose her class in the first place. FIRST of all there were only two sections, either she is so dumb that she cannot do simple math or she's arrogant.

There were ~420 students, you think the system is gonna let everyone take only one other professor, sure let one professor lecture almost a thousand students because we are privileged to choose which ever professor we want. It's not like there was only two sections and the other was completely filled!

Second She had no consistency, she was having us use an online textbook made by some professors from CAL STATE LA that provided hw questions and quizzes that were not only extremely LONG, but her lectures nor her test/ quiz questions did not match the textbook she gave us or her lecture slides, by the way which were majority of the time us solving one problem that we never used again.

She kept on claiming how we were doing well and the class average was a B, but that is only because if you do the HW you get 100% on HW credit so, factor that in , you can see why people were getting grades bumped. If you were to see the class average without homework grades to help out I'm sure it would have been at a C or D.

Her TA's were just as bad, when we had lab and review quiz and test questions, and they would understand how the questions were worded unclearly/confusingly, they would say, "just practice better test taking strategies". Obviously no one was on the side of the student. There was no integrity here only ego. Another example, I went to the TA review session and asked, "Could you explain this to me, or just review how to do this?" She said," I'm not good at regurgitating". It is clear that's not what I asked her to do, but yet she went ahead and repeated the same non sense that didn't make sense to begin with.

Everyone I talked to in that class agreed with me, and I would hear so much shit talking when I got out of class. Which the lectures by a way were also a waste of time because like I mentioned all of her quiz and exam questions were not consistent to the type of questions the book asked or had us practice. So we were given three different styles of questions non of which helped you prepare for the other.

If you read others who got an A, I can guarantee you this is because these people were probably so self sufficient of students they didn't need an amazing lecture, or consistent material to do well on any exam or quiz. I'm a 4.0 student and this was my first B is any psychology course I've taken.

Another thing, she teaches R which is stupid because the psychology field uses SPSS, and in 100B we use SPSS too, so why wouldn't you want to teach students how to get better at using a program that they will most likely be using for years to come. R by the way is a system using CODE to get your data. Unless youre obsessed with that stuff, don't take this class. She would do the opposite of what she would say she's gonna put on the exams, and none resembled the previous. For example she said the final wouldn't have any R, but literally all of it was R. It was just a shit show.

You might be thinking a B is not that bad, but it's not that simple. I've taken a psych stats class before at my CC and I learned wayyyy more from that class then this one by 100%. There was nothing I hadn't learned about before, the only difference is the info given from this class was do it in R, but we didn't even get to chi squares, just anovas. Thats another sad thing about this institution, it makes transfer students retake classes they've already completed on the same subject, it's a waste of time and money. I learned way more at my CC than here.

For those students saying she was easy, you're on drugs. She didn't ask rocket science questions, but she was inconsistent with the type of questions asked, plus she gave a lot of tricky questions, even things we hadn't learned before. On the final she had a whole page filled with things she never taught. She deserved all of those reports, it wasn't without reason. I know a lot of students who put a shit load of time into their work, the homework, and studying for this class, but it didn't change the fact that nothing was consistent or working out. She said it would be redundant to go over key topics form the textbook. She literally didn't understand the problems people were communicating to her. And if you got an A that's because your learning style most likely is one involved with reading only. You could probably read everything and then you're good, no lecture needed. The cheat sheets didn't help because she always misguided you. And she was always writing snobby emails like, "this is not a binding contract that this will be on the exam, I am not required to tell you what will be on it, this is just stuff you should know". And then whatever she SAID was gonna be helpful info, NEVER was.

BEFORE , we even had first lecture, we were required to do 4 chapters on 0 week. And it was all on R. It took me 10 hours to finish 1 chapter.

She was Not responsive to feedback, and when she made MINOR tweeks to the quizzes it still didn't help the root of the problem, that people were trying to explain to her. And the basic response she and her ta's would give is , "be better test takers".

THERE'S A REASON WHY SHE ISN'T SHOWING ALL OF HER GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS.

Let me just start by saying I ended this class with an 89% and she said she would not round up....with that being said, her lectures are useless. I stopped showing up because she overcomplicated everything. I taught myself from the textbook and only studied from that. Her slides were confusing, she was confusing, and her TA's were pretty much useless. Overall the class wasn't too hard for being a major prep class, would recommend another professor for this class unless you are good at stats

The only stats class I have taken before this is AP stats (which didn’t really help a lot) and I had never coded with R before so that took some getting used to. This class had a lot of components (each week a quiz, homework, and lecture videos that you are required to watch, and a live discussion where you work on group projects) which was a lot at times, but since there was no midterm or final I thought this was a fair trade off. Instead of a midterm and final we had quizzes every week which ranged in difficulty but were not super difficult (and you could make up points afterward). This class took a fair bit of time but the professor was very reasonable with dropping the 2 lowest quiz scores, 4 lowest lectures (I.e. if you missed one or two) and other lowest scores in categories which really helped. The TAs and professor were both very helpful and I enjoyed this class overall (especially since I have heard it can be very difficult in person).

Disclaimer: I took this during COVID, so your experience might be different depending on when you take this course. In this class, you will be mainly learning from the textbook, so take good and thorough notes!! Dr. Montoya's lecture videos are all recorded and pretty short; it summarizes the key points in the chapter that you read each week. It's pretty helpful for recapping what you've learned and preparing for the weekly quizzes. The quizzes are ~12 questions and you are given 50 minutes to do it and it is only based on the chapter that was due that week. The quizzes varied in difficulty, but the best part was that Dr. Montoya allowed students to make up to 50% of the points that they missed by redoing the quiz. During the requiz window, you are allowed to collaborate with your peers. This was super helpful for boosting my grade. I highly recommend finding a friend or two to compare answers each week. She also holds office hours during the lecture time, so it can be worthwhile to go if you have any questions. In discussion, you complete a Jupyter Notebook each week with the same groupmates (you will also be working with them for the final project too). Discussion sections were okay in my opinion and the final project was really doable. The project allows you to apply everything that you've learned in the last ten weeks. If you split the project equally amongst your groupmates, the workload will be really light. The project is released in week 6 and my group started in week 9 and we still completed it on time. You can also go to office hours and ask for help too, if you need it. Dr. Montoya also built in a lot of flexibility into this course:
Homework: 20% (graded on completion and if you only complete 85% by the deadline you still get full points)
Lecture participation: 10% (aka watching recorded lecture videos, but also graded on completion, can get full credit even though you only completed 80%, and offers 1% of extra credit if you watch all videos before finals week)
Discussion Group projects: 20% (two lowest grades dropped)
Quizzes: 30% (two out of eight quizzes are dropped)
Final Project: 20%

Overall, I really enjoyed this class, even though it was a little work intensive in the beginning (start chapters 1-4 early!!).

I freaked out when I got a B on the midterm and quizzes, but worked hard and ended up getting an A on the final. This class requires commitment. You have to spend time not just reading the textbook, but trying to understand the materials. Montoya will go over big statistical concepts in class and have questions for you to engage in class, so it helps a lot. The other part is R coding, which I never had any experience in. For this, you really have to just practice on your own and ask TAs for clarifying questions. Everything for the tests and quizzes are literally from the textbook and lecture. If you need materials/notes contact me *************!

Montoya is the nicest and easiest going professor I have ever had. She accommodated for those who complained not being able to get the grades they wanted by offering to give them some credit even if they didn't do their homework on time if they completed it. People may say she is unnecessary making this class "hard," but it really just depends on how much work you are willing to put it. If you try and get help, she provides the resources for you to get an A.

Montoya was very clear and gave a lot of resources for students who needed more than just the lectures. I had no problems with her class. You just need to take very detailed notes on the homework/textbook AND THEN show up to class to reinforce what you already learned. She gives points for completing the homework which is embedded in the textbook (which forces you to actually read the book). You get an R cheat sheet (which they provide that gives you all the codes you need to know) and your own cheat sheet that you make for every quiz and test. She also gives participation points in class through her website where you respond to questions in lectures. In my opinion, this class was extremely doable if you just put the work in and you get the easy points this stuff will actually be important for 100B so it's worth it anyway. Unfortunately, I think that the class will be even easier in the next quarter. A lot of the students in my class basically bullied the teacher into changing things to be easier. She was really flexible with helping the students towards the end (too flexible in my opinion). Some students said that they actually filed formal complaints about her, so I think that pressured her to make things easier at the end. Overall, I thought the class was good, well structured, and not that time consuming, and I would take another class with Montoya.

This class was pretty tough. The first week was very stressful because she assigned 4 chapters from the textbook due in 3 days. Each chapter took me 3-4 hours because it was difficult to understand especially if you're not familiar with coding. Her quizzes are pretty tough but doable. PARTICIPATION MATTERS. Homework and participation counts more so do it. By participation I mean showing up to class and doing the poll everywhere, you don't need to raise your hand or anything. I dedicated a lot of time to this class so do that and you will be fine. Montoya is a really nice, helpful professor she did more for us than any other professor I had. She gives extra credit for doing SONA and for doing evals. Her midterm was okay, but her final was pretty much her previous exams. Obviously not all but most of them were, so that is an important tool to use for the final. Just do the homework, study it, go to her office hours, stay on top of it and you'll be fine. Everyone made this class seem worse than it is, but again it's all about doing the work. Also her exams are more conceptual based, so r coding is not used as often, but it's important to understand what each function does and why it's important as opposed to knowing how to do it (unless she changes it). I say take it with Montoya she's a really good professor! Good Luck.

Honestly just take anyone else. She dipped out on the final and won’t respond to emails probably because she knew everyone was going to be mad at how it was not at all how she claimed it would be like. I still some how came out with an A or A- depending on how I did on the Final but her class overall was very poorly structured and taught. She does not prepare you at all for her tests and quizzes everything is self taught practically. TAs were really nice though.