To be honest, I enrolled in Stats 101A with Prof. Almohalwas just because I was not a stats major and this was my only choice. I was scared by those ratings and reviews on Bruinwalk. However, Prof. Almohalwas was super helpful and my experience was great. Maybe those reviews were written before COVID. He's unclear sometimes, just come to his OH if you have any questions. Midterm and Final were timed. They were really easy and our TA was generous about grading. There were 5 HW, 3 Quizzes and 1 EC HW. You'll get 100% on HWs as long as you did every problem(They were supposed to be graded based on correctness but our grader didn't do so). Quizzes were extremely easy and everyone should get 100%. The only thing that required you to work hard was the final Kaggle project. HARD but interesting. Overall, I would definitely take more courses with Prof. Almohalwas in the future if possible.

Professor AA is very nice and helpful. He indeed cares about students . However, his class is not clear at all, and the structure is really not organized. His Power Point are kinda messy as well. His homework is doable. The project is a good way to apply the skills we learned in the class. But we have to manually collect data which took a very very long time. Professor AA is indeed a good person and helpful outside class, but I don't recommend his class.

Never take his class.
Mark my words.
Simply never take his class.
Literally cannot learn anything.

Disorganized, unclear, insane, unreal. These are just a few words that come to mind when I think of STAT101A with Almohalwas. The level of disorganization in this class is actually impressive. His lectures are beyond confusing (I actually think he gets confused during them). They lack any sense of structure whatsoever or any objectives and it is simply impossible to know what ‘topic’ you are supposed to be learning during each class, even after the class has ended (I CAN NOT emphasize this point enough). There is no clear train of thought or structure to his classes. He posts an increadible amount on CCLE, most of which are unreadable R markdown documents which are impossible to learn from. The textbook is unclear and outdated as well as being broadly irrelevant to the course. Homeworks are very difficult and massively time consuming. Luckily, our TA literally gave us the solutions to them, otherwise I can garuntee 1/4 of the class would have failed every assignment. The group project was also a huge mess (like the rest of the course) with very little guidance. There was little to gain through it and it just added to a very high workload. Now, onto the midterm. Average grade for the midterm was 55%. This was because of a combination of very poor lecturing (as mentioned above), an unreasonably long test as well as the fact that the homeworks and textbook are all based on R, so before the midterm you are spending 99% of your time learning the material on R whereas th test is all by hand, which causes a lot of problems. Finally, the grading of the course. I believe the grades for this course were largely fabricated. I’m not sure how anyone got away with this but in one of the homeworks, I did not answer an entire section and got 100%, as did everyone else who handed it in (you can see this on the grade distribution on myUCLA). This was also the case with the extra credit assignmentand some of the quizzes and other homeworks. As well as this, we got our final grades BEFORE our final project was marked.

After reading the reviews here I was worried about taking this class, but it was much better than I expected. This professor was honestly one of the nicest and most approachable professors I’ve had. His lectures can be confusing due to the structure and length of his slides, but he always has review sessions before every exam where he pretty much goes over exactly what’s going to be on the exam, and he is great at answering questions. The textbook is also helpful at explaining concepts that the professor might not have explained well, so I recommend reading it. Exams are reasonable and much easier than I expected (the multiple choice section can be confusing, though, so be mindful of this). Also, the overall workload is light.

I had no prior knowledge of statistics whatsoever and I was able to do well in the class. Just put in some effort outside of class into making sure you understand the material well, and you should be fine.

Literally the most useless professor I've ever had. Never again. He didn't tell us what the final would be like until after the P/NP deadline. Told us the format of the final 2 days before the day of the final. On top of that, doesn't reply to emails even though we're doing the entire quarter ONLINE. Unacceptable. Don't take this class with him if you can help it.

Almohalwas is disorganized and does not explain concepts clearly at all. He clearly cares about his students A LOT but is an ineffective lecturer. Each slide show presentation he uses during class is at least 80 slides long and are a complete mess. Reviewing them is often of no use due to their sheer length and lack of information (it’s actually amazing that he is able to make a slideshow presentation this long that is void of any informative content). During class, he brushes over information, doesn’t explain concepts at all and most of the time, people are sitting there lost, wondering “WTF is this guy talking about?” I have never once left and if his lectures and been able to tell you what he was taking about, never mind actually understanding what he was talking about. He NEEDS to begin structuring his thoughts and learn to maintain a clear train of thought for the sake of his students.

Homework assignments all require the use of R and aren’t too bad, they can just be long. The only work that requires calculations to be carried out by hand are the midterm and final, which means you don’t get any formal practice carrying out equations by hand before the midterm and final, which is frustrating. The layout of the midterm and final is also messy with screenshots taken from R which can hinder your performance in the exam. The calculations required if you during the midterm are LONG and tedious. Completing an ANOVA table takes a lot of time and drawing factor diagrams for a repeated measures experiment is an art in itself. These tests are not easy to complete in the allotted time.
Note: I completed this course during the coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd riots so the final was able to be completed over 3 days so I’m not sure if it is representative of what his normal exams are like. The midterm was completed over an hour and 20 minutes as normal and it was hard to finish in time.

There is a group project which I actually enjoyed a lot. I had a great group which was very motivating and we really worked well together. I feel sorry for those who weren’t so lucky in this regard.

Quizzes contain content from lower division STAT courses so they’re OK if you still remember the content from those classes.

I found the way to succeed in this course is to expect that you’re not going to get much out of the actual lectures. For me, the best method was to read the relevant textbook chapters, take note of the equations (eg all the sum of squares formulae etc) and complete as many practice questions as you can possibly do.

Receiving a reply to an email you sent to Almohalwas is a game of luck. You might receive a reply almost immediately or you might not receive one at all! Im I’ve received a reply to 2 out of the approx. 10 emails I’ve sent him during the duration of his class. I think someone should start a betting ring about his emails.
He will release quizzes and homework's on CCLE without sending out emails so you best be on your toes!

All in all, taking a class with Almohalwas is an experience. He is a really nice guy but a really bad professor. He cares deeply about his students learning but doesn’t know how to teach. Structure snd organization are simply not words in his vocabulary

Almohalwas is disorganized and does not explain concepts clearly at all. He clearly cares about his students A LOT but is an ineffective lecturer. Each slide show presentation he uses during class is at least 80 slides long and are a complete mess. Reviewing them is often of no use due to their sheer length and lack of information (it’s actually amazing that he is able to make a slideshow presentation this long that is void of any informative content). During class, he brushes over information, doesn’t explain concepts at all and most of the time, people are sitting there lost, wondering “WTF is this guy talking about?” I have never once left and if his lectures and been able to tell you what he was taking about, never mind actually understanding what he was talking about. He NEEDS to begin structuring his thoughts and learn to maintain a clear train of thought for the sake of his students.
Homework assignments all require the use of R and aren’t too bad, they can just be long. The only work that requires calculations to be carried out by hand are the midterm and final, which means you don’t get any formal practice carrying out equations by hand before the midterm and final, which is frustrating. The layout of the midterm and final is also messy with screenshots taken from R which can hinder your performance in the exam. The calculations required if you during the midterm are LONG and tedious. Completing an ANOVA table takes a lot of time and drawing factor diagrams for a repeated measures experiment is an art in itself. These tests are not easy to complete in the allotted time.
Note: I completed this course during the coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd riots so the final was able to be completed over 3 days so I’m not sure if it is representative of what his normal exams are like. The midterm was completed over an hour and 20 minutes as normal and it was hard to finish in time.
There is a group project which I actually enjoyed a lot. I had a great group which was very motivating and we really worked well together. I feel sorry for those who weren’t so lucky in this regard.
Quizzes contain content from lower division STAT courses so they’re OK if you still remember the content from those classes.
I found the way to succeed in this course is to expect that you’re not going to get much out of the actual lectures. For me, the best method was to read the relevant textbook chapters, take note of the equations (eg all the sum of squares formulae etc) and complete as many practice questions as you can possibly do.
Receiving a reply to an email you sent to Almohalwas is a game of luck. You might receive a reply almost immediately or you might not receive one at all! Im I’ve received a reply to 2 out of the approx. 10 emails I’ve sent him during the duration of his class. I think someone should start a betting ring about his emails.
He will release quizzes and homework's on CCLE without sending out emails so you best be on your toes!
All in all, taking a class with Almohalwas is an experience. He is a really nice guy but a really bad professor. He cares deeply about his students learning but doesn’t know how to teach. Structure snd organization are simply not words in his vocabulary

worst class i've taken at ucla. hated stats. did NOT like the professor at all, everything about the class made me wanna rip my hair out. why are his powerpoints 100+ slides long? why does nothing he say make sense? why is so disorganized? genuinely upsetting, should be a relatively okay class content-wise but the prof made me wanna **** ** ****.

Not sure if the class is a lot easier than the actual school year, but for the summer it was VERY easy. I think it also has to do with the professor. Professor Almohalwas is exceptional and a great lecturer. He's very engaging and can get really up close (especially to students sitting in the front) because he wants students to learn and pay attention. His slides can get very long, but they're are helpful. He assigned six online quizzes that are fair, but drops the lowest score. There's also two extra credit opportunities: one lab and one quiz. The labs are long and you'll probably end up buying the software because there's not enough time in your section to finish it. If you have any questions on it, go to the professor because he'll pretty much spoon feed you the answers. His exams were beyond easy because he practically used the questions from his slides, previous quizzes, and old exams (very important that you attend his lectures and do well on the quizzes). At office hours, he's also helpful and it can get pretty crowded. However, he will do his best to answer your questions. I would definitely recommend this professor to a friend and would take him again for another class.