COVID.

Easiest class ever, and I've taken Scan 50W, Theater 10, Span 44, and more. He gives 4 tries per test and quiz and honestly you only ever need 1 to get 100%. Its that easy. Literally no tricks, nothing in depth. Can you plug numbers into an equation? You'll get an A. I fully believe (literally, no exaggeration it is that easy) my 6th grade cousin could've gotten an A in this class. He literally explained that X was a variable that represented any number. I am a dumb student and still thought this class was a joke. I honestly felt like this class insulted the intelligence of UCLA students. People did so well (like 95% of students got 100% on the midterm) he gave made us take an academic honesty quiz. Bro, people aren't cheating, it's really just that easy.

I was scared at first because he gave the whole "UCLA students are held to a high standard, you all are smart blah blah blah" at the beginning of class so I took it seriously at the beginning. Nope, this class was a joke. The quizzes scared me at first because of the really random numbers, but it ends up being a blessing in disguise. If you don't get the exact random number that he has, you did it wrong.

Most annoying thing is this class honestly has to be the freshman. I've never thrown shade on people in my class in a review before. But honestly, they needed to chill. They made a whole Zes fan club and just talked so much during the zoom lecture and in the chat that it was impossible to focus and honestly was just so cringe. That being said, lectures are useless, just google the formula for the quizzes during the quizzes once you see the question (again that easy). I don't know if I've said it yet, but this class is super easy. I'm not even a stem major, and truth be told, I'm a huge brick. Homework is graded on accuracy but the answers are in the back of the book and online. For R assignments, just go to discussion cause your TA does the whole thing and you just need to write it down and you'll get a 100% in that department too.

All in all: what a joke. Take this for literally the easiest class in your life including high school and middle school

Overall a fairly easy class, I would recommend it as a great GE (I took it for my life science req). There is homework every week and it can kind of be a pain but it only took me around an hour - 2 hours every week. His tests were very poorly written because he would ask strangely difficult questions about super easy topics. However, you get like 3 tries for each portion of each quiz so you can very easily ace each quiz.

Zes is pretty nice, but his lectures aren't very in depth; they basically just skim over the corresponding textbook chapters without explaining much (they're good as big picture overviews of the material, so I'd recommend reading the textbook chapters before coming to lecture).
He makes an effort to get to know his students (learning all of our names) and is quite helpful during office hours.
Homework is book problems, which generally aren't bad.
Midterm is open note and open book; as a reward for going to the lecture before the midterm, he actually showed us 2 of the questions on the exam (along with the answer). There is no final; there is a kaggle competition instead.

Dave is an incredibly likable professor and very kind to his students. It is difficult to not get full credit for assignments, just put in a little bit of honest effort and you'll get full credit. You rotate around random groups throughout the quarter until the last few weeks where you work solely with your final group. We were supposed to have a midterm but he canceled it, we were also supposed to have a pop reading quiz but he canceled that too. The final project consists of choosing a dataset to analyze and present on. The presentation doesn't have to be perfect, just show up to class and don't go over your allotted time. My only criticism is that he could've given a little bit more guidance on what he wanted in the final report. That being said we still got 100% on our presentation and report despite some feedback from him on what we did wrong. Although you get an in progress grade for this class at the end because you don't get a grade until you finish 141XP, I got 100% on everything in this class. It seemed like he was giving extra credit to those who would speak up at the beginning of the quarter, and if that's true I'll end up with over 100%. WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PROFESOR.

I found the class pretty easy in terms of statistics content; I felt like a lot of it I had already learnt in high school which made the homeworks and exams easy. However, I did not learn anything about coding in R. The professor doesn't go over coding in R, this is more so covered by the TAs. However, in place of helping us understand the language, it was more so this is what you do and they would proceed to solve the lab for us. This definitely made it very simply but not the best for learning. But the professor is extremely approachable and helpful. He always holds office hours, will ensure he spends time with you to make you understand the concept and always remembers your name as well.

Professor Zes is honestly wonderful. Sometimes he spoke or used terms very statistics-y when explaining things or answering questions, and that was confusing because if I asked a question that's because I don't get the content so using that terminology doesn't help so that's really the only thing that sometimes came in the way.
Professor Zes always made me feel welcome in class, so it's not like he's a bad guy. In fact he's really nice and appreciates a good student, and he is also very approachable.

The HW was EASY and the quizzes, midterm and final had 3 attempts (even for the FINAL LOL).
The only hard part was the code and honestly some TA's are pretty bad at explaining it so that part sucked, but thankfully my batch of students was great and we collaborated on HW and code so we could all contribute the parts we knew-- so if you can do that I def suggest that, it made this class much easier.

If you've taken AP stats or another stats class in the past you'll be fine. If you've never taken a stats class in your life, take it with a friend who has then you'll do well (totally not giving myself away)

1 coding lab (R Studio) and 1 homework every week
4 quizzes (on problems WAY harder than what was covered in class)
1 midterm and 1 final

quizzes, midterm, and final all taken on some weird website with "jeopardy style grading" basically +1 if correct and -1 if wrong so if you get 4/6 for a section of the test that means you got only ONE wrong, NOT two. Or, 0/6 would mean 3 wrong. I spent way more time trying to figure out how many I actually got wrong than answering test questions. All tests/quizzes were online with two or three days to take.

Lectures were recorded and discussions are not mandatory but hw answers were given on the second discussion of each week <3 He also gives extra credit through "secret attendance", still not sure what he means by that but I think it just means if he sees your face more often than not during lecture or if you attend office hours often then you'll get extra credit.

Zes gets SO excited about stats that he tends to start talking about more advanced things and then says "but you won't need to know that for this class" and then you'll have to go back and erase your notes. TBH I stopped taking notes about three weeks into the course because I was so lost it felt pointless to write down equations I didn't understand to begin with. He's super nice and very interesting to listen to and he cares a lot about his students. If you need help, ask him for it!

I have friends who took stats with other professors and they said their class was way easier than Zes' however, other professors use lock down browsers during tests and quizzes while Zes does not.

Whatever you do PLEASE take this class. He is so approachable, understanding and overall the workload is easy. TA's give you homework answers as well as help with the lab, which is the main thing you need to pass this class. Exams are super easy as well, and you don't need to study because it is open note.

Just take this class. I swear it is the easiest class I have taken at UCLA.

Dave is really helpful and puts an effort into getting to know his students. However, if you come to this class with prior knowledge of data mining (e.g. STATS 102B, research or internship ML-experience), you will likely find this class not in-depth at all. My friends and I agreed that while the class was fun, we didn't end up learning a lot that we didn't know already.

Lectures are a waste of time. Zes digresses all the time so the frequency of useful information is very low. You don’t need to listen to lectures for assignments or tests. Honestly this class is a shallow overview of the methods that a lot of us already knew and to apply those methods, you use the R functions out there without thinking about the math behind those functions. This maybe a mean statement to say but I question the qualification of Zes as a lecturer and his ability to teach properly.