After the midterm, I was feeling like I more so agree with the review two below mine. After the final however, I more so agree with the review one below mine. For the first half of the class, the material went very fast, leading to a steep learning curve for me. As programming isn’t quite my cup of tea, I feel behind a lot of the smart people on the lab midterm, which was very punishing to those who knew the solution yet messed up the answer due to mistyping, small logic errors, etc. I managed to crush the lecture midterm though, since Professor Lew threw out questions that were on the unfair side and I had a good grasp of how the code should be structured.

Things took a turn for the better during the later half of the course. Stuff made more sense, and the labs weren’t that bad (though the ggplot2 lab was quite a beast). And for the lab final, Lew changed the format to free response so that more partial credit could be gained, and it wasn’t as punishing to mess up an answer. Lecture final was more fair, though a bit challenging.

Looking back, I really am thankful that Professor Lew is so helpful, caring, and flexible (she even would extend deadlines for holidays). Really, if you follow along for your labs, you’ll get full credit. And for the exams, study your lessons and practice tests deeply. Finally, Professor Lew REALLY emphasizes the outside world and prepping you for technical interviews. Try not to ask her really small questions that you can find the answer to yourself, as she’s super busy. She may sometimes talk firmly, but this is for the best, as she wants you to be able to think for yourself. Work hard, and know how the code works and how to come up with it FAST. If you do this, you WILL get a good grade; it’s definitely possible to succeed in this class.

This was a very valuable class. I know that the distributions here seem pretty good, but also pretty hit and miss. I think that overall it depends on how Lew feels about your class, and I think that she liked our class and said that she was going to give 40 or so percent A’s which is pretty good. Overall, the class is pretty valuable! There’s a lot of material covered for the first midterm, like 4 packets of 40 something pages of notes. But after that when it gets to the apply family, distributions, etc. things get a lot easier. Overall, I think the first midterm was definitely harder than the final, especially since everything is open book open note. The material for the class isn’t that hard, there’s just a lot of material and kind of a steep learning curve at the beginning. But once you kind of get into it, it’s not that hard.

Overall, the hardest part about the class is the time constraints. We have 50 minute lab midterms, which can be very stressful, but if you come prepared, then they’re not that hard. “Luck favors the prepared” as Lew puts it. If you do the practice midterms, just have them open during the exams, and a lot of the techniques are the same. There’s a lot of lab and lessons each week, and you have to post to weekly forums. They’re not that hard or time consuming, and if you get stuck, most people post online to the forums.

Overall, can’t complain! It was a great class. You learn a lot from it, and it’s a very fun and useful language. This is not an extremely easy class as it kind of has a reputation for. The lab exams are very stressful, and the multiple choice questions are pretty specific and detailed, so it would definitely help to have a textbook or really intimate knowledge of the notes. Overall, stressful exams, but she is pretty nice about grading. Definitely a worthwhile class to learn. I think Lew is very good at preparing you for future data analysis classes. It’s a strong foundation, and would definitely take again!

This class is way more stressful, and I consider it to be harder, than my CS31 class. During the quarter, I already had a feeling that she is not as nice as people think. She has some sort of attitudes toward international students (or whoever she thinks is). On the final day, she picked on some students she thinks will cheat (and obviously, they all look Asian) and told them to switch their seats. Its okay to do this, but it has to be applied to the whole class, not just the ones based on her judgement, otherwise, she is discriminating against them. I also have friends who went to her office hour and got bad experiences talking to her, and coincidently, they are international students. In general, I do believe she is very knowledgeable about the subject, but I dont think that she is nice and fair.

I disagree with the review below mine. The fundamental problem with this class (the 2019, spring updated version) in my eyes is not Jake Kramer the TA. The problem is the lectures and the fact that there were almost no assignments given throughout the entire quarter. For about 1-2 weeks, we had an application called Swirl where we could interactively learn about R, and this was great. I really learned something during these 1-2 weeks. Yes, some of the Swirl assignments were worded poorly but you could skip most of questions anyway. And the whole point of having small assignments that are worth <1% of your grade is to learn and not to be stressed about your grade. So even if there was one assignment you couldn't finish, it really didn't matter. Now, back to the point. Professor Lew's lectures consist of her talking about random topics that you will inevitably forget the next week. Yes, you might remember her talking about the "apply" family or something but will you be able to successfully use it in R? Absolutely not. If i were teaching this class I would give packets to my students every week to teach them concepts. I wouldn't just mention topics and hope they stick with the students.
If you have a choice, take it with Tsiang, please.

After hearing so many bad things about STATS 20, I was pretty scared to take the course. But I had the best experience imaginable. Professor Lew is so helpful and you can tell she really cares about her students. She explains R concepts in a way that is easily comprehendible and the workload is very manageable. Take this class with her if you can!

Prior to this course, I was very inexperienced in the field of programming since I struggled in AP Computer Science during high school. However, Professor Lew has made me a passionate learner in R over the summer by her distinctive yet beneficial teaching style. The 15 lessons as well as the discussion sections held by TA Eric Fischer were essential to understanding the concepts required for the midterm and final exam. I would certainly recommend Professor Lew for future students, especially the ones who are pursuing Statistics as a major.

This was my first class in the Stats Department, and let me tell you: Professor Lew is a legend.

All of the other Bruinwalk reviews are right: she's a friendly, skilled, knowledgeable, helpful, and experienced professor who will get you through this course. Though the class wasn't difficult (no more TA Jake?), Prof. Lew was lenient due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the grading was incredibly fair. If you have to take STATS 20, take it with her if you can; it'll be worth your while.

COVID meant that a lot of the course was asynchronous; however, there was a new mandatory group project this year. The group project was a lot of fun (and easy!), though it was tough to schedule with group members, and also somewhat unstructured and vague (given, it is the first year). Other than that, smooth sailing!

Professor Lew is a very wonderful human being. She is super supportive and caring towards her students. However, as someone who is not well-versed in coding and has a hard time with it for the most part, it was somewhat difficult to understand her during lectures because the way she explains the concepts are a bit more geared towards people who already have some kind of coding knowledge. However, I know the subject is hard to teach sometimes and she does try to be mindful of students who are struggling. Overall, the homework and labs are doable (though take some time) and Lew and our TA are always available for questions, which I definitely appreciated.

I really enjoyed taking this course with Professor Lew. Her teaching philosophy is that everything we learn in class should translate into a skill that we can leverage in finding a job. As such, there were no actual exams. Our grade was comprised of lessons, labs, and a final. The final was a technical interview, which I really liked. Her lectures sometimes left me a bit confused, and since I took this class during the summer, they were a bit rushed. However, most of that confusion is usually dispelled by doing the lessons. The trial and error of the lessons was what really helped me learn R, so I would recommend spending time on them rather than rushing. Professor Lew was also lenient with deadlines, which was helpful. Overall, I feel like I learned a lot from this course and in contrast to other "intro" programming classes, I never felt intimated asking for help. I'm incredibly grateful that Professor Lew created such a collaborative class environment. I would really recommend taking this class with her.

Dr. Lew is absolutely fantastic and is very very kind! I never thought I would actually enjoy coding before despite I had many lenient programming professors. Her office hours, assignments, labs,... are all doable, not tricky, and enjoyable. She has a very loose deadline to help us cope with this pandemic. My TA, Kexin Li, is also fantastic and helps us a lot too. Overall, this is arguably the most enjoyable STEM class I ever have and makes me feel I can apply what I study to the real world (mainly thanks to Dr. Lew's emphasis that her course should prepare you for interviews, not to mention the numerous times she advised me about internships, research, future job prospects,...). I cannot recommend her enough to others!