I thought this class was great. I was really scared going in because of some of these reviews, but I ended up finishing the class strong. I took this class online and he held it as an asynchronous course (posted lectures) with weekly "coffee talks" that would serve as office hours. There is just one weekly assignment that is pulled from the textbook that sometimes didn't line up with his lectures, but he would answer any questions about them (and they weren't very hard or long at all). There are two tests: the midterm was very lengthy and difficult because it was so open ended, but being able to review this test before the final helped a ton. The final incorporated similar questions from the midterm and some VERY BASIC stats that we learned in the 2nd half of the class. We could use Excel on our final for the stats portion. We also had ample time to complete the group project, and he only required that we present a PowerPoint, no paper needed. Easiest group project ever. Overall I think everything was pretty clear and very doable as long as you ask questions. Don't be afraid to take this class!

The first half of the class was great and taught practical material on social science research, then the second half was predominantly statistics based. It was difficult but definitely doable thanks to Professor Lamberson. His recorded lectures were useful for studying and he was always available for help during office hours. Most of the statistics he taught how to do from Excel, which also helped. Overall I think Professor Lamberson did his best to help us understand material he knows many of us find to be challenging.

The final exam was pretty difficult but he curved it and also our final overall grade. The group project was my favorite part of the quarter and helped boost my grade lol. Would definitely recommend taking Professor Lamberson for this required class if you find stats difficult like I do!

I took this course fully online, so it may be different than in-person. Professor Lamberson seems like a really nice guy and he is pretty good at teaching. He made the material pretty easy to understand and kept his lectures short and to the point. There is one textbook that is assigned and it is pretty helpful for tests, especially when you want to understand concepts in more detail; however, you can definitely be fine in the class without even touching the textbook. There is a three-question quiz after each lecture, and these points add up! I did not take the quizzes as seriously as I should have, which is the cause of my B+. There were also about five homework assignments, a midterm, a final, and a group project. The homework is really simple and straightforward, the tests were pretty tricky and made you really think, and the group project was quite easy to do. I would recommend taking this course with Lamberson.

I personally had a breeze in this class and really enjoyed it. I thought Prof. Lamberson was very reasonable, clear, and trying to help us out. I also really appreciated Andrew's efforts as TA to help us out as well. Even though I didn't really have a hard time with this class, I made the effort to go to all the discussions and the coffee talks on Wednesday, and it was nice to just chat with the instructors.

I didn't open the textbook ever, all you need to do is take really good notes on the lectures and you'll be set. For the online recorded lectures, he had mini quizzes just to prove you watched them (super duper easy) and one mini problemset each week for homework. One midterm, one final exam, and one mini group project which wasn't too bad (shoutout to my amazing group).

I think overall Professor Lamberson was pretty understanding and reasonable, which was nice. However, he also made our weekly homework unnecessarily hard and half the time covered concepts he never talked about in his lecture. I also felt that a lot of his quiz questions were designed to trick you rather than actually testing your understanding. As well, the class was listed as synchronous but he actually gives asynchronous recorded lectures and then holds office hours once a week in the scheduled class time. This class is meant to be around 2 hours, but he intentionally kept his lectures short so they were generally 20-30 minutes. I didn’t mind this and I appreciated that he realized it’s hard to sit through long recorded lectures, but at the same time he barely covered the topics which made doing the homework difficult. His tests were fine, we were allowed to use calculators unlike some of the previous times he taught this class. The one issue was since the test was on CCLE, he made it so that you could not move throughout the test and as soon as you submitted an answer it was locked in and you couldn’t go back which was stressful. There was also a group project which he gave very little guidance on and basically completely relied on his TA to work with us on it. The TA Andrea was AMAZING - so helpful and kind and she made section pretty fun. Without her help and her review sessions I think the whole class would’ve been a lot more confused as she was way more hands on than the professor. Overall the class was ok, I think it’s dumb that it’s one of the mandatory classes for the Comm major but since we all have to take it I think Lamberson is fine for getting this requirement out of the way as it wasn’t too hard to get an A.

I really wish that I never took this class with Lamberson and took it with Peterson instead. The second half of the class was strictly math without a proper incorporation of relevant class concepts from the first half so it felt completely pointless. OH AND WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE CALCULATORS ON THE FINAL so that was such an enjoyable experience! He also just expected us to know the area of a triangle without even mentioning that a homework problem would require such prior knowledge. The lectures and homework did not overlap as much as they should have. The homework was completely different from the exams, which was quite frankly a waste of time and annoying since they were due every single Sunday so my weekends were always stressful. He also should have had powerpoint slides for the formulas instead of writing on an old school chalk board that was hard to read at times. I basically had to teach myself the entire second half of the class via YouTube videos or videos on Khan Academy, so I was basically paying over $1,000 to teach myself for a mandatory class, let that sink in.

As for the GROUP PROJECT: Since the T.A. assigns the groups based on discussion, I was stuck with lazy fellow classmates who lacked a strong work ethic and creativity for the research proposal group project so I basically did the whole project with one other member while a third group member (a smart ass, sexist guy in my group) tried to take credit for everything during the presentation and would barely let me get a word in. Although, my group did well on the project, I did not have enough time to prepare for the final so I ended up getting screwed in the end and my grade dropped from an A.

Overall, Lamberson seems like a nice man. However, unfortunately as a professor, he was disengaged this whole quarter, he lacked passion for teaching this class. However, in fairness, he might have been going through some difficult personal issues so hopefully the next time, he teaches this course, things will change.

*If you hate math skip this professor at all costs.* I would have rather taken this class with Peterson or Kernell. Lamberson is super unorganized and unclear. And for the love of god, please do not save 150 for your last quarter at UCLA. Not a fun note to leave off on...

Heavy on stats

Lamberson is a great guy, and the other class I took with him was awesome, he was clearly very passionate about it. The problem with this class is that he lacks passion, I really feel like he didn't care what he was teaching. The first half is fine, things you've definitely learned in other classes starting in about 6th grade. The second half is Stats based, and I've just been racking my brain to pull up information taught in Stats 10 because it is a lot more helpful than what he teaches. He's a nice guy and means well but lacks clarity and organization. Often times he would start teaching a concept and then in the middle say, "you guys don't need to know this though" which made it hard to know what we should and should not know. Tests are multiple choice and a bit tricky, group project isn't too bad if you have helpful group members.

Professor Lamberson is a really funny guy but lacks clarity when it comes to teaching.
The first half of the class is manageable if you attend class and do the HW assignments. It’s key that you take notes in this class because his slides are useless.
The second half becomes a lot more stat based and a lot more confusing. Lamberson fails at explaining the concepts very well and made it more confusing than it had to be. I heavily relied on YouTube videos to understand the concepts and to do the HW assignments.
His class consists of a midterm, a final, 7-8 HW assignments and a group project. The one bad thing about the final is that we’re not allowed to have a calculator so a bunch of us were stuck trying to solve the math during the final.