This is a self-studying class. Hoa-Ho's lecture slides are confusing AF. You struggle the Ho quarter trying to figure out Hoa the slides are talking about. He often throws in Ho math formulas without explaining how you derive them and Hoa is the purpose of it.

if you must take stats 100a, take hao instead of cheng. lesser of the two evils between him and cheng. 🐐🐐🐐

Hao Ho is a pretty smart guy with pretty good natural charisma. He accommodated requests for help and regrades, but I wouldn't say he's the best option for this class. The TA this quarter was also relatively unhelpful and overall very unenthusiastic about the subject. The quarter starts with an emphasis on probability and set math involving independent and disjoint events. The midterm was very fair and covered Combinations and Permutations, Basic Probability, and Bayes' Theorem. Once the second half of the quarter hits, all intuition goes out the window. Hao Ho was a pretty strong professor for the first half of the quarter, but the second half became a self-study simulator when he started reading slides for an hour with math derivations and minimal intuition. The saving grace of this class is that 50% of the overall grade was homework, and he dropped the lowest score from the ten assignments. Essentially, everyone went into the midterm with 50% locked in, and the midterm was worth 20%, meaning the final only left 30% to study. However, the final exam was pretty insane. The questions were significantly harder than homework, the practice exam, and the examples in slides. Many clarifications and a topic list were posted with less than a day left to study for the final, meaning it became a cram session to fix all the mistakes involving intuition that he posted earlier in the week. He allowed cheat sheets for the exams, one page front and back for the midterm, and two pages for the final. Overall, a lot of people walked away feeling like they understood the probability portions of the class, only to underperform on the final exam, where the problems required geometric intuition in addition to the rigorous calculus we had practiced. Overall, leaving with a B- or higher isn't terrible, as much of the overall grade is guaranteed by doing the homework well and simply aiming to pass each exam, but you would probably get more value out of a professor who gives deeper explanations than surface-level math proofs. Another alternative is to take EC Engr 131A or the math equivalent, as many classes satisfy the Samueli Engineering Probability Requirement. You'll have more enjoyment and better luck getting an A in one of those classes.

I agree with the other reviewer here that Hao Ho is a pretty smart guy. But I don't think a lot of smart people are really great professors. The grading of the class is 50% hw, 20% midterm, and 30% final. Homework should be manageable since he doesn't assign a lot of homework problems (usually under 10 per week). As for the midterm, we had ours on basic probability stuff like permutations, combinations, bayes theorem, and total probability. You also get one cheat sheet front and back. He gives out a practice midterm and some review notes. I honestly did not do really well on that test since I thought I could just use my high school stats knowledge for it but it ended up being way harder than high school AP Stats. The final this quarter was pretty difficult. You get 2 cheat sheets front and back this time. He also gives out a practice final and some review notes. The final was somewhat like the practice but more challenging. I had a lighter course load this quarter so I kind of spent the entire finals week cramming for stats and just memorizing certain formulas that were not intuitive. I'd say it's not impossible to do well in his class but it takes A LOT of studying. I never went to the other professor's lecture so I don't know how he is. I guess we just all have to suffer through 100A.

ps. one of the equivalences of this class is math 170e. One of the professors for that class has a really good rating so I'd recommend taking that if you can. I think that class is a bit more proof heavy but it might be better than pure suffering in 100A