102C is one of my favorite classes here at UCLA. I feel like the Bruinwalk review does not do Guani justice. It is true that his lecture clarity are not as good as many of the lecture focused professors (shoutout to Mike, Miles and Linda! Loved those classes), but Guani is definitely way above a 1.9 rated professor in my opinion. His classes are curved with a fair scale (30%As, 30%Bs, if I remembered right) and it's a "if everyone did good, everyone get good grades" type of curve. He is helpful during office hours and gives homework extensions. He can be funny during lectures and tries to make them engaging for students.

I can tell that he definitely cares about his students and definitely wants everyone to do well, however I must also agree that he can be difficult to understand during lectures. (Man is just not that good at explaining theoretical concepts, but being the research professor as he is, all the lectures are theory heavy.)

Guani deserves a rating around 3.2~3.6 in my opinion. His homework is coding based, difficult but doable, exams are theory-focused like lectures. He usually gives a good amount of review and hints before the exams so that you can prepare well. If you attended all his lectures and go to office hours for anything you don't understand, you will get a good grade.

If grades is not all you care about, I also think that his lectures are worthy attending just for the theoretical concepts alone. 102C goes over some of the foundation of grad-level statistics, so I think its good for it to be theory heavy. You get to practice the theories with coding in homework, so don't worry about application either.

Anyways, don't be scared if you didn't get in Mile's 102C. I know Guani gets a lot of hate in the Stats department but I genuinely thinks that he is a good person and want you to do well. Best of luck and I hope you 102C end up being fun for you!

This can be considered as a general comment for the entire 102 series taught by Professor Wu. I had A-/A/A for 102A/B/C.

To start with, Professor Wu is a really nice person, he often jokes in class and answers whatever questions students have. Having taken three classes with him, I guarantee you that he really likes teaching, and he is in fact one of the few Professors in the Stats department who wants to teach you something...

As for the class, I have seen many negative comments on Bruinwalk, and I was also worried at first, but it turned out to me that it's an easy A as long as you pay attention in class, read through his notes, do the homework by yourself, and perhaps ask questions in OH. I got A- in 102A bc it was online and I didn't really attend the classes much...

He focuses a lot on mathematical (or theoretical part of) statistics, so you will see lots of derivations, proofs and the math heavy stuff in his class. If you don't like the theoretical part of statistics, then you probably will suffer in Wu's class, and I would highly recommend you to take Miles Chen or other professor's classes instead. However, if you plan to pursue a graduate degree in statistics or go for academia or really want to master statistics, then you have to learn these stuffs and taking Wu's class will be truly helpful. I personally likes the theoretical stuffs he taught, so I enjoyed...But if you aimed for practical application alone, then nope, it's gonna be a nightmare like the other comments have detailed.

In general, I feel like the stats department divides into two tracks (application and theoretical) based on professors. Christou, Wu, etc. are extremely theoretical based; whereas Miles Chen, Lew, Mike, etc. favor application of statistics. (just some personal opinions...)hope helps

I took this class as an easy GE, and yes the content was easy but professor Wu did not help and support his students after exams. The class average was a 75 and many people had questions regarding why answers were wrong, the professor and TA both said that they did not know and practice problems would not be provided. The content of the class wasn't difficult it was just more professor Wu's problems were oddly phrased and led to me doing bad in the midterm but made it up in my final significantly (once I realized that the Professor's creates his questions as a trick). I would recommend taking this class with a different professor as the content is easy yet it was just taught not in a good way.

Wu is a very nice man, but a terrible professor. He often begins class with a joke or story, or asks us how we are doing, and when he notices he is 致郁 he will say "I know from experience there is nothing I can say to make you guys feel better". He does not respond to emails at all. The TAs are often just as clueless as the students when it comes to homework expectations. My TA said they had to "push back" against the professor on some of the homework specs when they were too vague or too difficult.

Grading scheme: 5% quiz (based on completion), 35% homework (coding), 25% midterm, 35% final. Quizzes were easy enough, timed in lockdown browser. Homework was very confusing, because the hw specs were often not specific, so the TA would email us 3 days before it was due to clarify how the autograder and student graders will score us. Averages on the homeworks were all over the place, between 75% and 90%, but grading was usually pretty generous (or I got lucky). Due every 2 weeks, 5 overall, so each one was worth a substantial amount of our grade.

Tests: Midterm and final were the hardest tests I have ever taken. Averages for midterm was ~55% and average on the final was ~40%. No curve on individual assignments, but there was an end of class curve of about 25% (so D- became B-). No study guides, and lecture notes are pretty confusing, so pay attention in lecture (not recorded, slide notes posted, but for the latter half of the quarter he taught on the chalkboard, not using posted slides). Midterm was all MC, Final was half MC half free response.

I do not think Wu wanted to teach this class. He often expressed resentment on the topics he had to cover. The last chapter was barely covered in class, but still covered pretty extensively on the final. Some things on the final were not even part of the course curriculum and never covered in class.

Discussion sections were optional, essentially homework help and quiz review.

Miles is god, take Miles. That't it.

I took this class the summer of 2024 and it was a complete dumptster fire. Initially, about 40 people showed up to his lectures, but after quickly realizing that we were not learning anything, it dropped to about 6. Guani has a very dry, monotonous, and hard to follow along with teaching style. Additionally, his lectures focus heavily on theory which would not be an issue if that is what the homework and tests were about. HOWEVER, that is not the case as you will soon see.

The homeworks are very programming based, much of which you don't actually learn in class. There is much self learning to be done in this class as there hardly any resources provided to help you. Then we proceed to the worst part of the class. The tests. I believe the median of our midterm was a D, which means atleast half the people in our class failed it. Additionally, the highest score in our final was a 58 out of a 100, and the median was like a 35. So literally every single person in the class failed the final.

Both the midterm and final were on Lockdown browser and required an extremely strong knowledge of programming which was never taught in the course. You are only allowed one sheet of scratch paper front and back which can only contain formulas, not examples, so you can't just fill it up with code. Obviously with this much fuckery and poorly planned test taking where we did not have anywhere near enough time to take the tests, it ended with bad grades.

He is also going completely off the rails by not following the traditional grading distribution and just giving everyone shit grades, including my friends who scored in the top 20 - 25 % of the class.

Please avoid this sorry excuse of a professor at all costs. You won't learn anything and your GPA will get fucked.