Interesting class due to the poker applications and his passion for the subject makes the class even better. Two midterms which are not that bad and the final was slightly more difficult. Only three homework assignments and they do not take that long, only complaint is not sure if he prepares you well enough for the next class in the statistics sequence.

Easy class for an A, but went through materials superficially. Not sure if he prepares students well for subsequent stats classes.

Honestly this is the best class for Stats 100A. First, he’s not Sanchez. Second, the class is really chill and easy. Quick logistics: 15% HW, 5% project, 25% MT 1, 25% MT 2, 30% Final. Really nice and generous breakdown, straight scale grading. There are only 3 homeworks, each around 5 questions, and they’re not even that hard. Awesome! Automatic 100% on the project if you turn it in, that’s great. But the midterms though are just awesome. If you look at some of his old midterms, then you’ll see that the questions are extremely easy. He definitely upped the difficulty this quarter, as there were definitely a couple questions that I could not solve. However, he often links questions, and you can back solve the first answer using the answers from the previous question. He also doesn’t try to trip you up by purposefully putting potentially confusing answers (like he doesn’t think of a common mistake that you’ll make on a question and make that the answer choice – your choices are going to be the answer, and then three random, similar numbers). So that’s really nice and it definitely saved me on a couple questions.

The actual statistics part is quite easy, and the hard questions came from thinking about poker. That’s the best and the worst part of the class. Is it fun to watch a lot of poker and do poker problems? Yes. But the questions can get pretty convoluted. One question was something along the lines of probability of a full house or a straight on the turn or not making a pair with board cards and your hole cards (but you can make a pair on the board), so questions could get pretty confusing. However, the exams are multiple choice, and they’re OPEN BOOK OPEN NOTE. Honestly, it was a life saver, it meant you had to study so much less. There are also questions pretty much straight from his slides, so I don’t understand why people just didn’t print out his slides and bring them to the exam, because you can literally just copy the methodology from his slides and change the numbers. The exams aren’t as easy as previous years, but they’re still not that hard since they’re open book open note. Over 50% of people got a 100 on the first exam, around 50% got a 90% above on the second midterm (plus he gave us extra credit on that one), and the final was the hardest of them all, but still straight forward, just a couple tricky ones based on thinking about poker. However, if you’re not good at poker, don’t be discouraged because you have to know the very basics, and the hard part is just having to think of all the different possibilities that you could have.

Class is optional, but he goes over questions that will be on the exams that he purposefully doesn’t put on the slides that he’ll put on exams. Plus, it’s fun to watch the poker hands, I actually really got into high stakes poker. Slides are very well-organized and well done. Textbook is optional, and he actually wrote the textbook, but if you want it in exams, then you need to buy it. I found a lot of good practice problems from the textbook, so I definitely recommend getting a copy as it’s not egregiously overpriced.

Overall, highly recommend the course. It wasn’t my most interesting class, but it was pretty fun and easy. Definitely recommend this course over other 100A professors!

Very Interesting class. Everything is about Texas Hold'em. You get the chance to pick up a few interesting ideas and the basic rules for the poker game if you are not familiar with those kinda stuff. It is worth mention that you actually do not need to be a good poker player to master all the idea and content. Most of the questions require VERY VERY little poker knowledge. i.e. what is the probability of getting a pair of Ace? Highly recommend to take this class with him!

So I really enjoyed his class. I thought he taught very well and I like how all the examples were applied to poker. Not too hard to do well on the tests, he tells you which problems in the book to go over, and even 1/4 of the questions were EXACTLY from the book. The HWs were hard (only 3 of them) but you have a lot of time to do them and there were only 6 questions on each. The tests were open notes and calculator, all multiple choice - not too bad. He even said that the right answer is there, and the rest are just random numbers (he does not try to trick you). Very fair class.

Grade breakdown:
HW - 23%
Midterms (3 of them) - 25% each
Project (in R, took 2 mins to do) - 2%
No final

Highly recommend taking him

Side Note: Selling his required book (especially since it is open note open book tests!!). email me at *************

Pretty easy for 100A, all the tests are multiple choice!