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 AMAZING!! i took this class spring q and he was super helpful and a great teacher! workload was super manageable and midterm/final was online. try to get a good ta for help regarding r studio coding, but my ta was super awesome and helped us with the lab each week!

Professor Zes is really approachable and responsive on Campuswire, and he's got a good sense of humor so lectures aren't as boring as initially expected. He's able to explain many of the Stats concepts in a manner that is easy for us to understand through a combination of examples and analogies. If you have programming background, the coding portion for labs should be manageable. Highly recommended!

I rarely write reviews but I really loved this class. It's structured in a way that you can succeed in the class as long as you read the textbook and understand the discussion lessons in R. I didnt go to the professor OH but I would go to TA OH once a week and would read the book in advance but it was overall never too stressful. Plus quizzes and really fair and the professor is really responsive on Campuswire. Loved this class overall and would take it again :) + the professor is really nice!

This class was beyond confusing. I took stats in high school and the way this class was set up was very complicated and made very little sense. The lecture was not mandatory so many people simply did not show up. However, on his exams, he rewards the people who do show up by including some questions about stories he told in class. The class itself was fine, kind of confusing, but overall fine.

What was not good was the discussion section or "lab". You have to use R studio. I have little to no experience in coding so this was really difficult. My TA was very unhelpful in actually teaching us how to do it. My friend was having trouble even getting the system to run on her computer and the TA didn't provide any assistance to her in troubleshooting the problem. Just simply said, "Oh that's weird". I disliked how the coding was not covered at all in the lecture and was only done in lab. Kind of felt like I was taking two separate classes; a coding class and a stats class.

That all being said, the grading was overly kind. I don't feel that I really learned anything but still was able to secure a solid A in the class. Professor Zes has his exams set up "jeopardy style" which essentially means that you get one point for every correct answer and minus a point for every incorrect one. This is daunting when on your first attempt you get a -10, however, you have three attempts to take the exam. It is broken up into like 5 or 6 sections and you get separate scores for each of them. I am not sure if I am recalling this correctly, but I am pretty sure he records your best attempt for each section. I believe I scored almost a 100% on the exams, despite not really knowing what I was doing.

I know this is a class that a lot of people have to take as a pre-rec. If you have to take it, take it with Zes since the grading is so kind. However, if you don't like your TA try and switch so you don't have to go through the pain and suffering I did.

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.