Professor Montoya is not a bad professor, she shows she cares and accommodates with the student's needs. Her classes were very boring and the fact that it was an 8 a.m. did not help it. The workload of this class is crazy, for the amount of time you put for the material in this class, it would easily get you 7-8 hours to finish the homework with understanding the subject. The homework is not graded for correctness, but if you want to learn the material I recommend do the homework right to understand the material. Her grading scale is really good and it does the maximum to not hurt the student. The midterm was very hard and I failed it, but I ended up with a B in the class because of the quizzes, homework, attendance, and Final grades. But you have to study really hard and a lot for the final and the midterm in order to receive an A in the class.

Because I've never taken a stats course before (and reading past reviews), I was apprehensive about taking this class but I actually really enjoyed it. Professor Montoya is super organized and prepared when it comes to lectures. Her and the TAs are super intelligent and knowledgable about the material so help is always there for students when needed.

Here are a few important highlights:
- Attendance is tracked using iClicker; allowed to miss 3 classes without affecting grade

- Friday Zoom discussion: During Week 1, you'll be assigned a random group with 4-6 students. You'll work with that same group every week to complete your discussion activity in a breakout room.

- Midterm: 20 MCQs; allowed a 8.5x11in cheat sheet front+back; challenging but if you study hard, do the practice midterm, review past quizzes you can definitely get an A

- Final: (Optional) can opt out if you already have the grade you want

- Final Project: Due finals week; work with your discussion group outside of class time; as with any group work, there's always some people who don't carry their weight for the work; I didn't have to take the final so I didn't mind spending time to work on most of it

- Homework: one chapter on CourseKata due Sunday night; first couple weeks were incredibly dense and time-consuming but after that, it was manageable

- Quizzes: 12 Qs, 50 min to complete; weekly due Tues night; they're pretty easy and straight-forward

My advice: do all the hw + extra credit, pass all the quizzes, and lock in for the midterm so you can guarantee yourself an A and take it easy after week 6

Professor Montoya really loves what she teaches and it's obvious. However, she often speeds through lecture but always takes questions. Showing up to lectures is important (if you want the extra grade boost at the end of the quarter). The TA's always have office hours which help a lot. There are long notebook chapters due every week which took me a couple of hours just to complete. After, there are quizzes for each chapter (12 questions), they are open notes but it's still a little difficult to get 12/12. I got a 12/19 on the midterm but managed to pass the class with an A- without taking the OPTIONAL final exam. There is a group project for the final which honestly is a little tedious because you have to rely on others, but I would prefer that than a mandatory final. The worst part of the course is the discussion sections every Friday. Other than that, Professor Montoya is a good professor, I do not understand the negative reviews about her.

Used iclicker for attendance. Although the class was a bit tough for me because it was using r code for statistics, by being in a group, I feel like it definitely helped a lot. She gave a lot of opportunities to receive a higher grade on the weekly quizzes which was nice and you were able to collaborate on the retake quizzes which were online. I do think the first week or two were especially hard because she was having us cover like four chapters, but as time goes on it isn't too bad. She is also very open to feedback and took all of our opinions into consideration!

I was initially super scared to take this course because of the past bruinwalk reviews and since it was my first quarter as a transfer (and it was an 8am).
However, I am really glad I decided to take it with Dr. Montoya. I really think she has improved whatever was going on with the past reviews because I did not experience that at all and neither did anyone else I talked to in the class.
The class was made up of weekly homework on the free bruinlearn integrated course textbook. You would have to read and do R coding exercises directly onto the textbook and it was only graded on completion.
There were also weekly quizzes based on the homework chapters. The quizzes were based on correctness, but you could retake it one time and earn a max of 50% of the points you missed. You could also work with the TAs and classmates on the quiz redo. Lowest 2 quizzes are dropped. I really didn't like how you don't get to see what you got wrong ever even when the quiz is closed (maybe you could ask the TAs during office hours idk I didn't try that).
Every week during discussion, you worked with your group on a coding notebook project (not too hard and lowest is dropped). The only annoying thing about the groups is that it's inside a lecture hall with that kind of seating, so it's kind of hard to work together when you are so spread out.
Attendance is graded through Iclicker. It was an 8am so that was kinda hard, and I didn't really stay focused during lectures. Might be the timeslot or the lectures themselves, probably both. I was able to get an A+ pretty easily through the quiz/hw/projects but I felt like I didn't actually learn much about stats so I really recommended actually learning from the lectures and hw even if you can get points from them anyway.
The course is really R coding focused which I think is not the norm for 100A, but as someone who was really interested in learning about CS I actually really appreciated the slight intro to coding part of the class. There's no exams at all unlike other 100A classes so that's also something to think about.
Also there was extra credit through SONA and course evaluations. The course also used campuswire for questions which helps a ton since you can see your classmates questions so you usually can find your questions already answered through that instead of asking yourself and waiting. (No EC for campuswire participation).
Now onto the only confusing part of the class (not bad tho). Dr. Montoya has this really complicated grading scheme for HW and attendance. Basically, if your overall HW score is 85% it will be rounded up to 100% (if you get like 79% I'm pretty sure it still gets rounded up to like 99%). For attendance, its the same but the cutoff is only 80%.
This caused a TON of tension and issues between students and Prof/TAs because at the start of the course the HW wasn't syncing with the gradebook very well so people who did all the HW were getting like 90-99% instead. This made everyone freak out because they were afraid that they could do a bunch of work and it might not count (UCLA moment lol). The TAs and prof basically told everyone to chill out and if its above 80 itll get rounded up anyway so it didn't matter. Some students posted campuswire stuff literally longer than this review (believe it or not) arguing that they should have had a better response to the situation. It all worked out in the end.
Sorry for the giant review, this class's reviews made me dread my life for only being able to get into this 100A class so I wanted to reassure anyone else stuck with this class that its not a super bad thing.

This class was entirely in-person and required attendance through iClicker. The first week was a slog to get through since we had to do four chapters of homework in a week (one chapter can take hours). There's no midterm or final. but weekly quizzes and a group final project. All in all, I didn't pay much attention and was able to get an A. There's a lot of leeway here since assignments get dropped/homeworked curved/extra credit.

I didn't have any experience with coding before coming into this class, but it was manageable. The class was asynchronous, and we had an "online" textbook linked through MyUCLA and module videos that would give us participation points. Instead of midterms and finals, we had weekly coding quizzes and a group final project. I believe she dropped the 2 lowest quizzes.

Overall, the quizzes were at first quite difficult, but as long as you understand the code from the textbook (I HIGHLY recommend taking notes on THE CODE and its output), you will do well on the quizzes. The quizzes often were just carbon-copies of codes, and you just had to know which was the correct code and output. The final project was alright; it really just depended on how collaborative your group was.

Overall, the class went fine, and it wasn't too difficult!

Your perspective on this class will probably be influence by your major

Psychobiology - this wlll probably be one of your easier pre req classes. The coding in LS30A is harder than what you do with R in Psych. 100A.

Cog Sci - probably going to be one of your easier pre req classes. The difficulty of PIC or CS classes does not compare to what you do with R in this class, not even close.

Psych - probably going to be one of your tougher pre req classes if you are not specializing in computing.

I am only the third person reviewing Montoya and I am surprised to see the low reviews for her. I’m not sure my grade yet, but I do think that Amanda was a really great professor. I am by no means the smartest student or amazing at stats. On bruinwalk, I usually look for the reviews from the B and C students because Ive been really struggling in my classes at UCLA.
However, I was really happy with this professor.
These are the reasons I liked her:
-She was extremely knowledgeable about the material
-She was very welcoming to students in office hours
-She is really helpful one on one and in small group settings.
-She encouraged us to ask questions,
-She never came off impatient or annoyed. It’s evident she cares about her students
-She was energetic
-She uses slides which she would post online before.(She does take attendance in lecture thru poll everywhere, but the slides are still very helpful)
-She is very open to feedback,.
-She uses a thing called ask for me where you can submit questions anonymously totheTAs and they will ask them during lecture to the professor. I absolutely loved this.
-You get a CHEAT SHEET for EVERY SINGLE QUIZ, MDTERM, and FINAL. It is written on a regular piece of paper one sided. You will also get an additional cheat sheet of R codes given by the professor, so you don’t need to memorize codes.

Anyways, you do have weekly homework which is reading in an interactive textbook. I did like this though because it will force you to stay caught up in the class and it’s based on completion so it definitely helps your grade. You get a week to do it, you just cannot hold it off until the hours before it’s due because you will not finish and that would not help your understanding anyways. I usually would break it up by sections over a couple days, it’s reallynot daunting at all.

There were quizzes in discussion every other two weeks. I never did that great on these, but I changed how I studied for the final and I did the best I had on a test in the class. So I do think my poor quiz scores lied in my inefficient studying. I should’ve used notes from the professors slides on my cheat sheet more than my own notes.

BE GRATEUL FOR HW and POLL EVERYWERE questions.. they are both based on completion and easy points that will help your grade.

DONT BE SCARED OF R, it’s not that bad at all and I suck at programming

Go to her office hours. Hardly anyone is there and she is really helpful. It helps to explain he concepts you learn in this class out loud and discuss them.

This class will also definitely enhance your LinkedIn and resume. R is one of the most desired skills in employees for jobs right now and after taking this class you will get to put several skills on your resume relating to R which will give you an edge in internships and jobs.

The class covered a lot of concepts in stats 10 except instead of doing the math by hand you are using R. You are learning a lot more about the meaning behind your calculations s opposed to learning to find the calculations themselves.

Yes, concepts can be difficult but you are not being set up to fail. This class if fair. I do recommend this professor

This was Prof. Montoya's first time teaching so I understood that there would be a learning curve. Even though there were mistakes on the slides and on the quizzes/midterms, she was still a very sweet professor. Someone else mentioned that it was like a student teaching other students and I definitely feel that that was true, she could be a bit awkward at times. I still think she was a pleasant lecturer who clearly knows a lot about stats, just didn't always teach it perfectly. I did progressively worse and worse on the quizzes, my lowest being a 75% and an 80% on the midterm (lowest quiz is dropped thankfully), but the final absolutely saved me. The questions were basically copied and pasted from the past quizzes/midterm and I studied those so much that I ended up acing it, plus she offered one EC point for completing the course evals. So, I would say don't be discouraged, do all of the online homework (which is only graded on completion), take good notes on the online textbook, do all of the in-class participation points with Poll Everywhere (you don't even have to be in the physical class room to get the credit), and the super simple EC assignment and you'll be fine. I think she'll only get better as she teaches more.

For Professor Montoya's first time teaching this course and also my first time taking statistics, it was a great class. We used Canvas and learned how to code using R. You can tell that Professor Montoya cared about our learning as her lectures went deeper into the readings we did from Canvas. The quizzes were kind of tricky because they included some coding in it and was also a little nit picky with questions that came from our readings in Canvas but it was overall fair since the lowest quiz is dropped. The midterm was the same as our quizzes but just accumulated, same goes for the final. The grade breakdown was: HW=20%, In class activities=15%, Quizzes=20%, midterm=20%, final=25%.