I thought that Professor Garfinkel was very passionate about this subject, and that normally made the lectures very engaging and interesting. He explained concepts in a way that made sense and unlike the 30 series-the coding that we did outside of class was INCREDIBLY relevant to what we were learning in class and it actually really helped to solidify my understanding of different statistical methods. The coding was actually talked about in the lectures and didn't feel like two separate lectures, as 30 a and b did.
However, the workload for this class was very unreasonable. It seemed like the LS40 professors thought that this was students only class. The content was actually really interesting and I think it is very important to learn the problems with "traditional" statistical approaches.

I found myself consistently spending 10-15 hours on the weekly homework and lab. It was difficult to get help because when I went to office hours, the TA was so overwhelmed with questions. Sometimes, the TAs also weren't able to give concise answers-they often seemed just as confused on the material as the students.
There were two team data analysis assignments that were worth a total 20% of the grade. These assignments weren't unreasonably difficult but were a TON of work-especially considering that we also had weekly homework and a midterm on top of these assignments. I also found myself doing the majority of the work for my group, and it was frustrating because we all got the same grade and I received little help with the coding.

Alan Garfinkel is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He's an extremely caring and empathetic professor who is genuinely passionate about the material that he teaches. This is the second class I've taken with him and he's been consistently good across the board.

Don't get me wrong. LS 40 isn't exactly an "easy" class. The content is a lot more conceptual and you'll need to focus on really learning and understanding what's going on in order to do well. You'll also need good Python skills that you've hopefully developed in LS 30A/B.

The exams are pretty fair imo, I Garfinkel doesn't do "trick" questions or ask anything that's outside of what you learn. If you follow the lectures you'll be fine.

Summary: This is a great class with a great prof. The skills you learn are really useful for getting research positions too (ie. p-val NHST, Confidence interval testing, Bayesian stats). Come and be inspired.