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Arash Amini
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Based on 18 Users
Tests were hard, approaching Christou level. Amini was a decent lecturer and a funny guy, and helpful in office hours. I'd definitely take another class with him.
I really think Arashi is an amazing professor. His lecture notes are crystal clear and organized, and he would upload all of the lectures to youtube so participation is optional. He would always pause a little bit for our questions, so you could easily tell he cares a lot about the students. The homework takes some time to finish, but the exams are definitely doable if you understand most of the topics covered in this class. If you want to master the skill of linear regression and are willing to take some challenge, Arashi would be the perfect choice for you.
The coursework is based on 7 homework assignments (20% of overall grade), a midterm (30%), and a final (50%). The homework assignments were sometimes challenging but not too bad, and the TA went over a lot of the questions during section. The exams were 48-hour exams, and they were pretty tricky (some of the questions genuinely felt like trick questions), but in retrospect, they were doable, and Professor Amini has an exam-writing "style" that you get used to after the midterm.
It seems that the negative reviews have been downvoted, and even though overall I had an alright time in this course, I do see where they're coming from. To me, it definitely came across as though teaching this course was not a priority for Professor Amini; he was several minutes late to every lecture except the very last one, did not plan out and announce exam dates and times until the week of/the week before, needed to be reminded by students to post class materials (such as lecture slides and exam grade distributions) in a timely manner, and encouraged students to use Campuswire rather than emailing him but then proceeded to be pretty inactive on Campuswire. I totally understand how difficult it can be to balance professorship and other life responsibilities during the pandemic; the above is just my own observations from this past quarter.
Overall though, I did get the impression that Professor Amini cares about students' learning, and he always made time for questions during lecture. And since the course material/assignments were relatively doable, in the end I would recommend 100C with Prof Amini. Just be prepared to not have the same engaging experience that you may have just had in 100B with Prof Christou.
This review is written during remote learning. He gives extra credits for frequently attending live lectures. Homework is challenging, but still doable, so don't procrastinate until the last minute. Exams are very tough, approaching Christou level. He gave us 24-hrs to finish exams during remote learning. Partial credit is a beautiful thing, so just write down everything you know. Study his lecture slides well for exams.
Professor Amini sincerely cares about student learning. He often stops during lecture to ensure we can understand, and will answer questions patiently. I think he struggles a little with the online format, but he cares about our grades and our learning. He also makes an effort to know the name of every student who attends live lectures, which I really appreciate. Professor Amini is a kind, generous, and decent instructor.
This class was HARD. Like, it's definitely true when people say it's the hardest stats class at UCLA. But, I really liked Amini as a professor. His slides were super clear and concise, and they were soo helpful when doing the homework. But, be warned, the workload is HEAVY. The homework took me days to complete, and they were graded on correction through Gradescope. But I think the graders got really lazy by the end of the quarter, so they were pretty lenient about grading, which is nice. Amini had a midterm and a final, and they were both ridiculously and insanely hard. The averages on both tests were Ds, I'm pretty sure, but the curve was really good. He made the final open notes, book, and even laptop, but tbh it didn't even help because it was that hard. Still, I think his curve saved me. Overall, I really enjoyed this class because you get to learn about linear algebra as applied to stats, and Amini made it really clear to follow! But his tests and homework were really hard :(
The professor has no responsibilities at ALL. Due to coronavirus, the final was arranged as an online take-home exam. He claimed that the final will be updated at a specific time but after all, he delayed for 3 hours with no reason. Besides, he even set the wrong due date of the final after it has been posted.
Most of the students in the class expressed their concern about the final that will cause stress to the fellows, but the professor insisted to arrange it and said he will TRY to explain the reason of it. However, he did not leave a word after all.
Besides, the slides and materials are unorganized and definitely not helping you to understand the subject. Boring and useless class. Be prepared to study by yourself :) Avoid if you can.
This is a fairly mathematically intensive class that covers a lot of the theoretical background to decision theory and statistics. I would go into more detail here, but actually Prof. Amini makes all materials (including lecture videos) available on his own page here: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~arashamini/teaching/200b-w23
Being an ECE major with an ML background, I found the class quite challenging, but also enjoyable as I felt it provided a deeper understanding of the relationship between data and the estimators (models). That said, the class is fairly abstract so it is more useful to someone who is interested in ML theory papers than implementation-focused ones. Regarding the lectures, I sometimes found Prof. Amini a bit difficult to understand as he soft-spoken, but as he records his lectures I could re-watch those moments again later.
The materials of Stats 100C are very hard and abstract in general. Fortunately, Dr. Amini is understanding and allows us to take tests online. The homework gets harder as we approach the end, and it is a bit difficult to complete them without committing a lot of time rereading the slides. Some of the slides are too long and make it very hard to review, but Dr. Amini's lecture is engaging and he explains everything he writes carefully. I hope the slides will be more organized (especially MLR) but other than that Dr. Amini is kind and helpful!
I thought that Christou was hard... until I took Amini. At least Christou was a good teacher.
Stats 100C with Amini is one of my favorite stats classes I've ever taken at UCLA. It's definitely not as easy as other coding based classes like 101A/102A but you will learn a lot. For example in 101A they tell you to use plot() to check if your lm model violates any of the assumptions (normality, constant variance etc.) but it's in 100c I finally understood how the math behind it really works. I also really like the geographic interpretation of ANOVA, and his slides are super clear and organized.
I really think Arashi is an amazing professor. His lecture notes are crystal clear and organized, and he would upload all of the lectures to youtube so participation is optional. He would always pause a little bit for our questions, so you could easily tell he cares a lot about the students. The homework takes some time to finish, but the exams are definitely doable if you understand most of the topics covered in this class. If you want to master the skill of linear regression and are willing to take some challenge, Arashi would be the perfect choice for you.
The coursework is based on 7 homework assignments (20% of overall grade), a midterm (30%), and a final (50%). The homework assignments were sometimes challenging but not too bad, and the TA went over a lot of the questions during section. The exams were 48-hour exams, and they were pretty tricky (some of the questions genuinely felt like trick questions), but in retrospect, they were doable, and Professor Amini has an exam-writing "style" that you get used to after the midterm.
It seems that the negative reviews have been downvoted, and even though overall I had an alright time in this course, I do see where they're coming from. To me, it definitely came across as though teaching this course was not a priority for Professor Amini; he was several minutes late to every lecture except the very last one, did not plan out and announce exam dates and times until the week of/the week before, needed to be reminded by students to post class materials (such as lecture slides and exam grade distributions) in a timely manner, and encouraged students to use Campuswire rather than emailing him but then proceeded to be pretty inactive on Campuswire. I totally understand how difficult it can be to balance professorship and other life responsibilities during the pandemic; the above is just my own observations from this past quarter.
Overall though, I did get the impression that Professor Amini cares about students' learning, and he always made time for questions during lecture. And since the course material/assignments were relatively doable, in the end I would recommend 100C with Prof Amini. Just be prepared to not have the same engaging experience that you may have just had in 100B with Prof Christou.
This review is written during remote learning. He gives extra credits for frequently attending live lectures. Homework is challenging, but still doable, so don't procrastinate until the last minute. Exams are very tough, approaching Christou level. He gave us 24-hrs to finish exams during remote learning. Partial credit is a beautiful thing, so just write down everything you know. Study his lecture slides well for exams.
Professor Amini sincerely cares about student learning. He often stops during lecture to ensure we can understand, and will answer questions patiently. I think he struggles a little with the online format, but he cares about our grades and our learning. He also makes an effort to know the name of every student who attends live lectures, which I really appreciate. Professor Amini is a kind, generous, and decent instructor.
This class was HARD. Like, it's definitely true when people say it's the hardest stats class at UCLA. But, I really liked Amini as a professor. His slides were super clear and concise, and they were soo helpful when doing the homework. But, be warned, the workload is HEAVY. The homework took me days to complete, and they were graded on correction through Gradescope. But I think the graders got really lazy by the end of the quarter, so they were pretty lenient about grading, which is nice. Amini had a midterm and a final, and they were both ridiculously and insanely hard. The averages on both tests were Ds, I'm pretty sure, but the curve was really good. He made the final open notes, book, and even laptop, but tbh it didn't even help because it was that hard. Still, I think his curve saved me. Overall, I really enjoyed this class because you get to learn about linear algebra as applied to stats, and Amini made it really clear to follow! But his tests and homework were really hard :(
The professor has no responsibilities at ALL. Due to coronavirus, the final was arranged as an online take-home exam. He claimed that the final will be updated at a specific time but after all, he delayed for 3 hours with no reason. Besides, he even set the wrong due date of the final after it has been posted.
Most of the students in the class expressed their concern about the final that will cause stress to the fellows, but the professor insisted to arrange it and said he will TRY to explain the reason of it. However, he did not leave a word after all.
Besides, the slides and materials are unorganized and definitely not helping you to understand the subject. Boring and useless class. Be prepared to study by yourself :) Avoid if you can.
This is a fairly mathematically intensive class that covers a lot of the theoretical background to decision theory and statistics. I would go into more detail here, but actually Prof. Amini makes all materials (including lecture videos) available on his own page here: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~arashamini/teaching/200b-w23
Being an ECE major with an ML background, I found the class quite challenging, but also enjoyable as I felt it provided a deeper understanding of the relationship between data and the estimators (models). That said, the class is fairly abstract so it is more useful to someone who is interested in ML theory papers than implementation-focused ones. Regarding the lectures, I sometimes found Prof. Amini a bit difficult to understand as he soft-spoken, but as he records his lectures I could re-watch those moments again later.
The materials of Stats 100C are very hard and abstract in general. Fortunately, Dr. Amini is understanding and allows us to take tests online. The homework gets harder as we approach the end, and it is a bit difficult to complete them without committing a lot of time rereading the slides. Some of the slides are too long and make it very hard to review, but Dr. Amini's lecture is engaging and he explains everything he writes carefully. I hope the slides will be more organized (especially MLR) but other than that Dr. Amini is kind and helpful!
Stats 100C with Amini is one of my favorite stats classes I've ever taken at UCLA. It's definitely not as easy as other coding based classes like 101A/102A but you will learn a lot. For example in 101A they tell you to use plot() to check if your lm model violates any of the assumptions (normality, constant variance etc.) but it's in 100c I finally understood how the math behind it really works. I also really like the geographic interpretation of ANOVA, and his slides are super clear and organized.