fuck you guang cheng

Guang Cheng is not a good professor. But, he is pretty clear when teaching straightforward and easy concepts in weeks 1-4, however, he fails to teach the second half (pdfs, cdfs) well because he explains none of the notation to students and expects them to follow along.

Outside of that, there are some serious problems with his course structuring. He teaches the first four weeks extremely slowly, and I would say that the content at this time is not difficult and should be taught in 3 weeks. The midterm is also torturously easy, with the mean and median both being above a 90. Then, he rushes through the significantly harder and more applicable content in the second half of the quarter. With my class, he rushed through variance, covariance, and MGFs in the last three lectures before the final. Additionally, he was out of school, leaving the quiet and unengaging TA to teach expectation within a week (two lectures). In the end, his final exam was so difficult that the average was like a 50 and he didn't curve it. I scored in the upper quartile and ended with a 65 or something like that. In the end, even though I was in the upper quartile for both the midterm and the final, I ended the class with a B, which felt really bad because I put in a lot of work and also did significantly better than my peers but got a grade that didn't reflect that.

This was by far the worst class I have taken at UCLA. What is supposed to be a foundational class for students majoring in statistics or data theory is completely changed into a poorly organized confusing mess of concepts.

The first portion of the class is manageable with content along the difficulty of what you would see in AP Statistics, with people averaging a mid to high B on the first midterm. After this, the course difficulty quickly picks up. He poorly explains concepts that are crucial like CDF and PDF and leaves everyone more confused leaving the lecture than they came in.

He has a thick accent and there is definetly a bit of a language barrier in the class. He also does not answer student questions properly and often responds with "i don't knows", non-answers, and wrong answers. He also makes mistakes during the lectures which the students have to call out, and fails to convey the information in an understandable way.

He has no sympathy for the students and can't answer even the simplest questions about how the class might be curved or grading. I genuinely don't think he is above failing everyone as last quarter the final average was an F. Heck, he didn't even show up to our final or midterm and sent the TA.

Please avoid this class at all costs. Do not take this unless you have no other option. If you do take it, make sure you have a study group of peers in this class and are good at teaching yourself concepts because you are definetly not learning anything from him.

For the first 4 weeks, he explains things pretty clearly. After that, you just no longer have any idea of what's going on.

Picture this: he walks in the lecture hall, starts the lecture with a recap of topics that he swore he went over last class but you have never seen these formulas in your life before. You refer to his 84-page lecture notes, which he sent to the class on the first week of the semester, assuring the class that he was going to use this as reference for his in-class lecture. You never find the page that he's on, you start panicking, he keeps talking and introducing more and more variables and formulas with symbols you swore never existed. Everyone is raising their hands, he doesn't acknowledge any of them. One student speaks up and tries to asks a question, he simply asks them to wait until he finishes writing on the board, and gives them a vague answer maybe only he and God can only understand. Suddenly, the class is over, you've learnt nothing and are now even more confused than when you started his class.

In his syllabus, he noted that his office hours are from 2-3pm on Wednesdays; he's never in his office during those times. He holds his finals in Week 10 (not finals week). We're currently on week 9 of class, and I can swear on Mother Nature's lovely earth that no one has understood anything past week 6. If they did, it's because they made the wise decision to skip this guy's lectures and just self-study the test topics.

Avoid if you can. If you have to take his class, don't bother coming to lecture after the first midterm. Do the HW, and read Chapters 3.1 to 3.9, and then 4.1 to 4.2 of the textbook. Watch youtube lectures, do practice problems, join study groups, save your time!

Professor Cheng does not care about his students. DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION. The professor hands out SELECTIVE grade bumps, does not respond to emails, and requires department intervention to be forced to communicate with his students.

His lectures are extremely theoretical, and don't help with understanding the homework. His final average was 54% with no curve, and no explanation. Seriously, do NOT take his class.

He claims to be a "busy" professor and that's why he can't communicate with his students. He refuses to set up an appointment unless it is weeks in advance. Very unprofessional.

Everything everyone is saying here is true… and it’s not like it’s only lazy students who expect grades to be handed to them writing these reviews, all of us are extremely disappointed with this class and the professor.

This quarter the final was SO botched. TA comes running in panicking and tells us there aren’t enough copies for all of us. Offers to let people with time to still take it there after he prints copies, and people who have somewhere to be to take a different version another time. Then partway through the final (for those who stayed) we were told to turn in what we had because another class was coming. We’re being given extra time to complete the rest another time, but wow… professor is nowhere to be seen this whole time by the way.

I regret having this professor SO much. Save yourself and avoid him at all costs.

TA: any cheng in the class?
me: Guang.

gene block if you can hear us please save us gene block🙏🏾. gene block if you can hear us please save us🙏🏾. please save us gene block🙏🏾.

What other reviews say are true. I feared for my final exam and my grade in this class. Our professor does not do a good job at teaching. He somehow manages to confuse students, including myself, on the easiest of statistics concepts that I've learnt before and know by making it hard for no reason. He twists your understanding of topics you know. He makes easy concepts hard, but that might be because he does not have an effective teaching style. He goes over the easy concepts in the first 5 weeks, but come post-midterm time, he RUSHES through all the hard concepts, especially the dreaded 3.9 chapter... Everyone hated that chapter. It was not fun to study on our own and the professor did a horrendous job explaining it.

The final exam was an absolute goddamn joke. The TA had 8 exam papers printed out and there’s 70+ students in the class. We started the exam 45 mins later at 11:45 so the TA could run out and print more. As we were taking the exam he ends it 25 mins into it bc there was another class taking place at 12:30 in the lecture hall. The TA handed the exams back in discussion and gave us the remaining time to finish. The utter lack of communication between the TA and professor was astounding; and the prof's lack of care about the midterm and final were evident by his absence. The whole examination was a complete debacle and shocking considering we were supposed to be taking a legitimate final.

I wish students in the future good luck.

Wow where do I even begin. This guy Guang is really the worst professor I ever had in my life. To keep it short, literally everything in the other reviews they say about this guy is true.

He was absent for the midterm and the final and on the day of the final this caused a huge disaster. I can't even make this up, his TA came 20 minutes late to the final and had only 8 exams for a room with nearly 70 people. The guy confessed this to the class looking like he would burst into tears any second and rushed to print 60 more copies of the test. We started the exam that was supposed to start at 11 at 11:45 and were given till 1:00pm to complete it. At 12:30, some other class came in and he had to collect the exams and gave people the choice of either coming to Friday discussion to finish or making an appointment with him.

The TA made a huge mistake, but this showed how little Guang cares about the class to not even attend his own final and prevent this situation. Maybe everyone says this about bad professors, but he is 100% only here to do research and he does not care about his students. He is always unavailable for office hours and is genuinely unhelpful when you ask questions. His final also contains content that was never gone over in lecture or in homework, and many people have attested to this.

If you end up having to take him for some reason and you feel absolutely lost in the class don't worry because 90% of the class had no idea what was going on either. Just stick to reading the textbook and pray before the exams.