Overall, this class was fun to take and Professor Ozel is very understanding and accommodating of current circumstances. I was doing well in the class until the final, which I think is partially my fault. As another poster mentioned, there are weekly quizzes, 5 in total, and the lowest 2 are dropped. The midterm was a little tougher than the quizzes, but the average was very high, and I don't know if he overcorrected for the final but I found it brutal, but that could be because I lost all motivation towards the end of the quarter. If you stay on top of your stuff, it's a very doable class.

I took this class as an online summer class and it was definitely a positive experience. It was my first upper div and I was a bit nervous in the beginning but honestly Prof. Ozel is pretty straightforward with his lectures.

Sometimes he got ahead of me when it came to following the proofs so I would recommend watching the recording if you take it while classes are still being offered online but being there live is definitely also helpful because he always stops to answer every question before moving on. The pace was doable even with it being a 6 week summer course.

I may have been kinda way too nervous so I more or less did all of his (TONS of) assigned hw problems even though it wasn't required for submission. I'm here to say the hw problems weren't thaaat useful and if you got the concept after around 4-5 questions then you're probably in the clear.

His midterm/final don't actually follow the pattern of the hw so getting used to that pattern is not necessary. Mostly, it just makes sense to -understand- the concepts enough to be able to deal with some manipulation that you will have to do with the exam papers. I can't exactly explain it but you do have to re-read the exam questions tons of times because they're not as straightforward as the hw and you'll have to move things around sometimes. I'm actually ~impressed~ at how he managed to make the papers difficult while still being fair. The average for the midterm was around 90-something but dropped to 80-something in the final - so beware?

BUT on the bright side his quizzes were pretty straightforward and def helped boost my grade (quizzes were 20% of the grade) and cement my understanding week-by-week. He even lets you drop 2/6 quizzes so that's super helpful.

Overall, it was a super useful intro to all the different types of distributions and a really good way to see how helpful it is to understand what goes on behind the scenes with data analysis. I really liked how he explained Bayes in the context of false positives with tests like COVID one - so that's good. He even explained the famous Monty Hall problem for almost half an hour in the last class so that was super interesting and made me realize how much I'd learnt over the whole course so that's fun :)

Ozel is a super nice professor, who really cares about his students. His tests are a bit difficult, but nothing out of the ordinary here at UCLA. Overall, my best advice is to just stay on top of doing the homework, and you'll be fine. Also, sometimes the lectures can get dry, but if you can just listen and stay focused and take notes the whole time, the homework won't be too hard. However, the tests are honestly not super similar to the book problems, so for those, all you can do is hope that the questions will test material that you understand well.

Professor Ozel is very helpful and he explains things very well. Lectures are clear. Problems on quizzes are pretty easy; midterm is easy as well. Final exam is harder.