I can see why this class is considered a weeder for the stats dept, but if you just stick it through, you shouldn't receive a grade lower than a B. Each homework took me 12+ hours and basically sucked the soul out of me. The cherry to top it off is receiving a grade between 50-60 for something I worked so hard on. Turns out the TA Jake or whoever grades this sh*t takes points off for the tiniest things that can cause your code to not work. IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!! So you're saying that if my code works for 90% of possible cases, I should only receive 40% of the possible points? And even if you think you know your stuff, the exams do an amazing job at changing your mind. They test on the dumbest, most random cases that I would be surprised if anyone has ever stumbled upon. Both Mike and his pet dog Jake aren't that great at helping either, they never give straightforward answers to your questions and leave you with cryptic questions that leave you more confused than before. HOWEVER, half the class gets A's, so as long as you score at or above the average on both homework and exams the lowest grade you'll get is probably an A-.

TL;DR: this class is HARD AS F*CK but not a GPA killer. Still don't know if that A was worth my loss of mental sanity.

Mike was the best professor I have had at UCLA. His lectures are extremely clear and organized. I came into this class with no programming experience and left with a great understanding of R. It is evident that he cares a lot about each of his students and focuses more on your learning than your overall grade. I wouldn't say this is an easy class but you will definitely learn a lot. Edouardo the TA is also super cool and very different from the old TA who a lot of the old bad reviews are about. He always upvotes my replies on Campuswire (even when no one else does). Overall a great experience.

I think students have talked a lot about the hardness of this course. The experience I want to share is about Michael's referring students to the Dean's office. During that quarter, about 50 people are referred to the Dean's office, which is unreasonable for a class. Did every referred student commit serious issues? Not really; after my case was closed, my problem was reading the syllabus carelessly instead of copying code. In a coding course, it's typical for students to Google the challenging assignment problem as far as students understand them and write the answers in their own words. Such a learning method is different from copying code.
Furthermore, one of my friends was accused of an offense he had never done. In Michael's email, he said his action is the best for students' long run; the truth is we don't appreciate such rude movements. Let me tell you the consequence of such unreasonable referring. Once Michael refers the student to the Dean's office, removing the 'DR' notation on the student's transcript will take another quarter, no matter whether the student commits something or not. The 'DR' notation can be a disaster for the students who want to apply to graduate school during this period. Even if you receive an A after your case is closed, it won't help anymore. Your dream school can reject you, or you must wait until next year to apply because there is a 'DR' on your transcript.
I suggest avoiding this course during the fall since the unreasonable 'DR' can kill your future path.

ALRIGHT FOLKS there's a bunch of TEA in these bruinwalk reviews about Stats 20 with Tsiang so I've gathered what a bunch of people have said and I'm giving my take on it.

Is the workload of the class too much?
Sorta. Stats 20 was definitely the class that I had the largest workload for for this quarter, but I'm not sure if I'd say the workload was too much. There's about a homework assignment every week, and each homework assignment took be a total of about 6ish hours each. That said, I do have some coding experience, so idk if I'm the best judge of this.

Did the stats department turn this class into a weeder course?
No. The grading for this class in terms of percentages is very low and the grading is very harsh. They'll take off points on homework for not taking into account situations they never tell you to take account for, and the midterms will cover things that there is no way you would have learned except maybe by pure coincidence while "playing around in R". All of that is pretty dumb, in my opinion. However, your final letter grades for the class will all be based on how well you do relative to everyone else in the class. So even though I'd say I did very bad in terms of how many points I got on each homework and midterm, I still got an A for my final grade. It's not really right to call this class a weeder because based on what Mike said about the grading, still about 75% of the people will get B's or better. So, while I'd say they hand grading pretty poorly for this class, your actual final grade probably won't be that bad as long as you are keeping up with/doing slightly better than everyone else.

Are the instructors super unhelpful on campuswire?
Yup. Mike uses campuswire to communicate with students, but for pretty much every question, they'll give you some super vague answer that isn't helpful. And, if you try to ask the question again, they'll just link you back to their original, vague answer instead of trying to clarify.

Is Mike a horrible teacher and person?
No! I can see how people can find his constant positivity annoying with how much work the class is, but I'd say Mike is a good teacher and person! His lectures and presentations are pretty good, he's pretty friendly, and despite everything, you'll probably be pretty good at R coding by the end of the course. He gives off dad humor vibes, and even though no one ever laughs at his jokes in class, I actually found them quite funny!

Does the TA Jake Kramer always talk super condescendingly, delight in making problems too hard for students to do and taking off points from them, basically use discussion sections to show off stuff that he knows how to do but you can't, is literally trying 24/7 trying to catch people for cheating, and probably steals lunch money from students?
x <- TRUE

(honestly, if there's multiple lectures offered for your quarter for Stats 20, try to find which one has Jake as TA, and then take the other one)

This is going to be a long review so I'll put my TLDR first: Decent class, but very hard.

First off, I've read through the reviews from Fall 2019, and this is a COMPLETELY different class. It's also not the end of the world if you have Jake as your TA.

Workload: Very heavy. I cannot stress this enough. We had 7 homeworks in the quarter, and each one of them takes 4-8 hours if they're done well. The last problem is always a very difficult "challenge problem" and usually they are nearly impossible to answer unless you stumble on the solution through sheer luck or have a stroke of coding brilliance. Luckily, they're weighted a little less heavily than the rest of the homework, so you can do average (or above average) and still miss the challenge questions.

Lectures/Professor: Mike's lectures are VERY similar to his notes, and he only expands on things a little bit verbally, so you can really substitute one for the other, depending on your learning style. Outside of lecture, Mike is very nice and approachable, but he does tend to be vague in his answers. Mike is VERY accommodating to situations if you're struggling. I feel like he gets a bad rap, but he wants you to do well, and if you take an interest in the class and go to his OH/ask questions he'll remember your name and try help if you're struggling.

Pace/Structure: Overall the class is decently well-structured in the first half (apparently this is a change from fall 2019) but the one thing that frustrates me is that loops are covered so early and then we're penalized for using them. Mike/Jake frequently say that you should use loops as little as possible, but I found myself frequently struggling to avoid them because they're the easiest way to solve a lot of the problems. Around week 6/7 and the second midterm, the pace of the class goes crazy. While the quantity of material (1 chapter/week) doesn't change, the difficulty of the material skyrockets. The chapters and lectures get much, much denser and the homework problems get a lot more complex. I also wish the last few chapters had been covered more in depth because they felt very rushed.

Grading: There is a massive curve in this class. If you're about average on the homeworks and midterms, you're almost guaranteed a B+ or better. The way you receive grades is super wack, because you'll never get an answer key for the homework, just feedback on what you did wrong or right. You can take that to office hours and ask questions, but it's a pain in the ass to try and ask about all the missed points, especially when you sometimes can't even tell what you did wrong. The midterms are even more wack because you get nothing but a score and the class distribution. The other big problem, which I'm hoping doesn't happen again, is that grades were delayed by about a month or so. We got scores for the 5th week homework during finals week, and were missing three homework grades when we took the final, which definitely impaired people's ability to choose whether to take the class P/NP.

[I'm going to add to this review after the quarter is actually over, but I wanted to get it up to start off with]

The best thing about this class is that you come out of it with a very well-developed knowledge of R. If you have the time to devote to this class you'll learn so much, but it'll be a pain in the ass while you're doing it.

This class is hard. Manageable, but very hard. The lectures are clear, you can understand what the professor is saying, but when it comes to the homework, it's a completely different story. The workload is extremely heavy each week, about 300+ lines of code. Also, the homework is very hard. The lectures only introduce the basic functions you need, but the homework test you on the complicated logic behind these functions, so it is depressing spending 10+ hrs on the homework every week. However, this year they changed the hw grading to completion grade. If you can stick through, the grades are not bad. However, it's just this process of sticking through that's very depressing.

When my friend told me about the difficulty of the class I thought it would be comparable to CS31/CS32 (In which I did well in those classes) but I was wrong. I think this class is more difficult in terms of grading and workload. I'm not sure why they claim you need no previous programming experience to succeed in the course because even with taking cs courses in the past I spent a lot of time on the weekly homework assignments. Then your points get zapped with a secret rubric. My favorite is course's hatred of for loops, I can't tell you how many points for loops cost me even though no where in the homework say that for loops will cost me points. Another weird thing is that they disallow you to use any function that was not explicitly mentioned in the course. Exams are closed note, I think that's quite weird because there are so much syntactic sugar in R you need to memorize. It feels as if the exams are testing you on how well you memorized the intricacies of R, not your programming ability WITH R. The exams averages will be like in the 60s with homework averages also being around 60s. Despite this Mike gives a really generous curve at the very end. All in all, this class will beat you down with R until the gods grace you with the curve. NOT WORTH.

About 40+ people were sent to the Dean's office for suspected academic dishonesty.

If your code looks even slightly similar to something that is found online, you will be instantly sent to the dean's office. You'll have to wait for over 3 months to get your appointment. And finally, when you do have your meeting with the dean, you will have no choice but to plead guilty (even if you did not plagiarize) because if you don't, you will have to wait for another 3 months to remove the DR from your transcript

I was here for the COVID online session. Take his class if you really want to learn stuff!

Before I took this class, I got scared by this class's rating. However, when I took this class, I was honestly surprised by how well he teaches. Though hw is hard, I could tell you that he's probably one of the best professors teaching stats 20. If not best, he is experienced. He has a bunch of lecture notes that you should refer to everytime you do homework. Then there is campuswire on which you can ask questions, either in public or through dm. If you really work through all the hw sets by yourself, you coding skills will improve tremendously.

Also, my TA was Edoardo. He's super passionate in teaching and super helpful on campuswire. If he's a choice, choose this guy!

Best luck to those who are taking stats 20 afterwards!

I do not know how his lectures were like in the past, but according to my experience, professor Tsiang is definitely a professor who is underrated. His lectures are extremely structured and clear, with notes that remind you of the content of the lectures even after the quarter ends. It is true that some of the questions in the homework are tests are tricky, but they really really give you a deep understanding of R. He has made my 102 series a lot easier. Also, he curves really generously and provides different grading schemes. Do not be frightened by the absolute scores in the tests, focus on what you have learnt, and enjoy your stats 20 with professor Tsiang. Highly recommend!