Attention: Please read. Juana Sanchez is single-handedly the worst professor I've ever had at UCLA. Of course after 20 years of teaching, the rumors about how awful she is would make one initially hesitant to enroll in the class. However, she was the only professor Spring 2018, and I had to endure it with her. To give you some context, there were over 100 kids enrolled week 1, and during the final there were only 53 kids. OVER 50 KIDS DROPPED THIS COURSE. If this doesn't scare you, please keep reading. During the first lecture on week 1, we were given a pop quiz that counted for a grade. On her syllabus, she makes "participation" worth 8% , and the final worth 35%. If you chose, you can opt out of the in-class participation exercises and make your final 43%. I'm telling you now, this is a TRAP. And it was the first of many I experienced over 10 weeks. Do not drop the participation to make your final worth more, because the final is so anxiety-inducing. To give you an idea of how awful the homework assignments were, she would make you copy-and-paste code from R into a CCLE portal (instead of a rendered HTML or PDF like a normal professor). But if your code had ANY errors at all, she gives you a 0. In terms of the exams, Sanchez puts WAY TOO MANY QUESTIONS for anyone to finish in 50 minutes. Her testing policies are neurotic, and yes, she will read every word on your cheat sheet to make sure it follows ALL of her arbitrary rules. The midterm exams (each worth 23.5% of your grade) are a mix of MC, written response, and analyzing code. She will ask you to read through a page of code and point out ALL of the errors in the code AND fix them. (How was anyone supposed to do this??) Also, proofs are not off limits, and she won't hesitate to ask you for a proof on the exam! (Eyeroll) When it comes to exams, she also gives you the most inconvenient matricies to multiply. We had to multiply a (4x4) and a (4x1) BY HAND. To make it worse, each value had three decimal places. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the exam is that she is very stingy with partial credit. Each exam question is only ONE POINT. So each exam is /15 points. (If you get two MC question wrong, you're already at a B, and it's worth 23.5%). To put things into further perspective, a 95% is a solid A. 94 or below is an A- . I bet you're wondering how the final exam could possibly be worse. Well, to answer that question: IT WAS ENTIRELY CODING. 100% of the final exam was done in R in a computer lab where we had to code algorithms to data sets she gave us. If you are not a strong programmer- this class is not for you. The final was open note (the only redeeming quality of this class), but the exam averages were awful throughout the quarter. The exam averages were: Exam 1) 57%, Exam 2) 61% , Final) 61% . Personally, I did above avg on one exam, slightly below avg on the other, and scored pretty well on the final, but somehow ended with a B- and do not think I deserved it at all. The smartest friends I had in that class also ended with a B- and I do not know anyone who earned a higher grade. 25/53 kids failed the final exam, so there is a high chance that ~50% of this class received a C+ or lower (just a rough estimate given my personal exam scores). If you are still somehow not convinced she is the WORST professor on this campus, keep reading buddy! On top of these awful exams and homeworks, she also is EXTREMELY patronizing and rude during lecture. She walks around the room while she lectures and actually kicked backpacks to walk through the aisles. I'm not exaggerating when I say almost every set of slides / worksheets she gave us had errors in them. Her lecturing style is very unorganized also. She scribbles all over the board illegibly, and does not post her handwritten notes online. There were SEVERAL instances where we would get emails from her saying "found an error in the notes, please correct it" and sometimes she wouldn't even tell us what the error was. She also frequently keeps you over the 50 minute lecture time. The only reason I got through this class was because the TA was decent. For someone who has been teaching for 20 years at UCLA, I find this all absolutely unacceptable. There is no amount of psychological counseling that can help one cope with the bullshit she puts you through for ten weeks. Absolutely avoid this class at all costs. If you are thinking about taking any other class with her, keep this in mind. She truly does not give a FUCK about any of her students- even the ones who show up nearly in tears to office hours. So glad I'm done with this class. See you in hell, Juana.

Half of the junior years who were supposed to take 102B class on this spring quarter jumped straight out to 102C from 102A because of her. There were 105 spots for this class but only 50~60 enrollments filled. I've already heard notorious rumors of her but signed up for this class. She personally treats her students rudely as well as her poorly constructed exams & homeworks ruin your GPA.

In her lectures, she points out not to use smartphone, laptop, and any electronic device during the lecture. The point is, she points out EVERYTIME when someone uses them. It was so distracting she spent 3~5 mins of her lectures on pointing out someone not to use their laptop.

I got my points off on my homeworks for all the ridiculous reasons. Like I lost 10% of my homework scores for not putting ############### sign between questions, another 10% for not saying this is confidence interval(The question was only asking about the mean and the confidence interval). I used to lose my points for not having well-explained comments rather than wrong codes, but her homeworks have full of typos even an important formula such as gamma distribution. It was pretty painful to see losing decent amount of credits for these kind of trivial reasons.

I believe her exams were the worst. Given 50 minutes for the midterms, we were asked to solve time-consuming questions like getting the inverse of 4x4 matrix w/ decimals. What is the point of calculating the inverse of 4x4 matrix w/ numbers like 1.616, -3.7534, 5.6134 for this class??? The students all failed not because of understanding the concepts for statistical programming, but unnecessarily time consuming matrix and derivative problems on the test. She is more interested in failing her students than teaching computational statistics.

Maybe I killed someone in my preexistence, and she was sent by Jesus to make me atone. I don't know what to say about her. Seriously, DON'T TAKE HER CLASS. I don't think there is any language in the world that can descript how bad her class is. Her homework is 100 times more difficult than climbing Mount Everest, I'd rather feed the pigs in some kind of yields. Her exams are one of the top 3 tortures in the United States, and the rests are the hw and watch her class video. She requires an attendance quiz. If your answers are wrong, you get 0 on participation. How should people suppose to know what she is saying with her horrible handwriting and get the quiz answers correct? And she doesn't do curve.

I don't understand why the Statistics department still chooses to retain Juana Sanchez as a lecturer for twenty years now in spite of the many complaints students have made about her. She is without a doubt the most ineffective lecturer I have had the unfortunate chance to encounter at UCLA.

Let me give you a rundown of just how horrible this class.

1) Lecture Notes

She assigns a bundle of lecture notes that is plagued with mistakes and typos. She is so severely disorganized that in week 8, she gave us a handout and told us to toss the one she gave in the last class altogether because it every page was filled with typos.

2) Participation

She made a "participation" thing optional for students who don't want their final grade to account for ~40% of his/her final grade. She requires us to "participate" in almost every lecture. The amount of "participation" she makes her students go through on top of the homework as he assigns (I'll get back to that later) is ridiculous. Some participations, such as the one that requires you to look for the k-means, can take 1-2 hours. Also, she is very vain with grading. In one unfortunate occasion, I wrote Var(Cx) and just started calculating the variance-covariance matrix. I got 0.7/1.0 even though the answer was right because I didn't write Var(Cx) again. I asked her for my 0.3 back since technically the answer is correct and I showed her all the steps, her response was "0.7 is not a bad grade".

3) Exams

Her exams are the worst. The amount of material she wants to cover in a 50 minutes examination is ridiculous.

She had multiple choice questions for both midterm 1 and 2 and required us to "give an explanation" to our choice. My explanation for the 2nd midterm wasn't enough so she ducked 0.5 points off even though my answer was correct.

She also makes us go through lines of codes and highlight things. I was unsure of what she wanted us to highlight for midterm 1 for the confidence interval code. I rewrote the section of the code manually. Turns out, she just wanted the numerical solution.

She held a cumulative midterm for the second midterm, which she held, a day after Memorial Day weekend ON week 9. My friends and I thought the questions would build on each other, I mean that's what professors usually do? Instead, she explicitly tests us on materials before midterm 1, EVEN though she also explicitly tests us on post-midterm 1 material. I am unsure of what she is trying to achieve by employing this technique.

She made us "Code" on the final and required us to code about ~4/5 questions in 2 hours. It was lengthy, difficult and time consuming.

Side note: In week 10, she introduced us to Gibbs sampling/MCMC/etc. 2/5 of the final examination questions required us to code the material she introduced in week 10, which she failed to explain and give us sufficient exercises on.

4) Homeworks

Every other Statistics professor at UCLA that I have encountered require us to Knit our homework to pdf/html. Juana Sanchez, is unfortunately, an outlier. She requires us to use an Rscript and copy paste our code to CCLE. On top of the difficult coding assignments that she just throws at us, she would require us to comment on everything and have it compiled with NO ERROR. She doesn't even give us partial credit on anything with an error. Well, if she wants an error-less chunk of code, why doesn't she implement a pdf/html submission???

5) Final Grade

The final grade my friends and I got in this class was ridiculous. Some of my friends "aced" the final by scoring way above the curve and ended up with a B-. I scored right above the mean during the final, below the mean during the second midterm and above the mean for the second and ended up with a C. Does this mean 50% of the class got C or worse?? Isn't this a reflection of how she failed as an instructor?

Fun fact: 50% of the class dropped after midterm 1. But since she is the ONLY instructor for spring and it isn't offered again until Spring 2019, I had no choice but to endure her.

I could go on and on about how this class was the absolute worst for students' mental health and learning experience but I would like to move on with my life. I just wanted to say one more thing, I came to UCLA because I wanted to learn and was open to the idea of making mistakes. The material for 102B was actually interesting. I spent some of my free time reading about it. But her way of teaching makes it SO DIFFICULT to appreciate the material or take away anything meaningful from the class.

Juana Sanchez fails to embody the UCLA spirit and has failed us for an instructor. It is such a pity that UCLA's Statistics Department has tolerated her for 20 years now.

I've never bothered to review my professors on BruinWalk, but Sanchez really needs one.

Don't take her class. Avoid at all costs, unless you're taking it for fun or on P/NP, because you'll be so thrilled during the quarter for all the points you're losing for no reason. Those of you with weak hearts should consider avoiding her because you'll either get a psychological problem or heart attack being her student.

I'm a senior, and Congratulations to Prof. Sanchez for making it to the top on my WORST professor list. She cares more about useless stuff than her students actually learning. Her lecture style is acceptable (as in easy). But her goal is not to have you learn the material. She's there to make sure you have a miserable time looking at your gradebook.

Points are deducted for everything. Some examples:
- She randomly calls on me to answer a question (reading from the roster) and completely messes up the pronunciation of my name. I didn't know she's calling me. Points off. (for HER mistake.)
- Forgot to comment a super-self-explanatory line of code in homework. Points off.
- Couldn't fit a whole problem on one sheet of paper. She ignores everything on second and count as I didn't finish. Points off.
- Have a graph/example on your cheat sheet? Points off.
- Homework not stapled? Points off.
- Came to class late on a homework day? Points off.
- Emails her about grading problems? No response, and POINTS OFF, for the syllabus saying you have to do it in person.
- Phone beeps in class? Points off.
- Brought a laptop to class and have it on desk? She'll smack it close WITHOUT ASKING, then points off.
- Have a wrong answer in homework? Maybe no points off if she doesn't see it!
- No second chance for the above. Ask her once, answer is no. Ask again, threatens to take points off.

She also ignores email SENT outside business hours. So essentially, if you can't find her in her office, then you won't find her via email either! Want to set up an appointment? Good luck trying to do it by email! In fact my TA even couldn't get a hold of her outside of class and had to catch her during office hours! I don't think it's possible for any professor to get more irresponsible than that.

Having said all that, her lectures are okay and the material's not too hard, so if you follow her instructions (those written on syllabus, on homework, talked about every single lecture, and those in her mind that you have to read) and get lucky (which is far more important), you might get an A.

She's really not as bad as all the reviews say. She's also helpful in office hours and if you ask questions in class and she's a kind person who wants her students to do well and to understand the material. All the little assignments and quizzes make things a little complicated, but I do feel like I learned a lot in that class. The course is not easy, you do have to work, but she mostly provides you with the code you need to complete her assignments and do well on the Midterm and Final. My one major complaint was the length of the Midterm and Final. Despite the class being in person both exams were remotes and we had about 3 hours for the midterm and 6 hours for the finals. They were both long and exhausting and I think it would've been better to do a take home project/assignment rather than a continuous 6 hour exam.

I signed up to Bruinview for the sole purpose of leaving this one review. I was quite discouraged to take prof. Sanchez's class after reading all of the horrible reviews here. But prof. Sanchez is a surprisingly great professor (at least as of now). As the reviews below suggest, she does mark points off for small things (not putting ##### between questions etc.), but these are all written and announced beforehand. There is literally a paragraph of bullet point that tells you what points will be taken off for. So as long as you read those instructions, you shouldn't lose points! You could say that the requirements are strict, but they certainly aren't unfair. And, a note about all of the rudeness that is mentioned in reviews below: I don't know where you're getting that from. She's quite the opposite of rude. The class often laughs at her jokes and all in all her class is currently a great experience. People jump out to the front of the class to answer questions and receive extra credit. Look at the past grade distributions. They show that a lot of students get As. It really isn't that hard to get an A if you give the course reasonable time to study. If you want to ask questions about this class, text me at **********.

I never give any reviews to my professors, but Sanchez really needs one. I took 102B with her this spring and she literally ruined my whole life. She gave a lot of homework with unclear instructions. You will be thrilled about all points you lose during the quarter. She even took points off for not copying questions down without asking you to do so. Really beware with her exams and finals (if you really want to take with her which I do not recommend) because there was no way for you to finish it and she would take points off if you did not show exact steps that she wanted. I got points off because I did not write down names of matrices even though I got the correct answer plus it was a MC question. I have read the reviews that she would give a generous curve to the class, but not to my class. My friend could not graduate on time because of her. Just try to avoid her and don't ever to think about taking class with her.

Prof. Sanchez is beyond doubt the worst professor I've had at UCLA. Do yourself a favor and avoid her.

She's disorganized, unclear and, what's worst, a terrible person. She delights in stressing students out, and her testing methods – a week 9 cumulative midterm that is far too long to be completed in the given 50 minutes – show that she is not interested in student learning; she is merely on a power trip. To top it off, she can't frame a question to save her life and penalizes students heavily for not understanding her. She obsesses over the smallest details, especially in and about exams, which is when students are stressed enough as is; they don't additionally need to be terrified about not meeting her extraneous specifications. All this takes a toll on students' mental health; I've had to actively ignore her class to keep myself from feeling miserable.

If UCLA plans to keep her around – which it clearly does, as it's been 20 years – it should probably ensure CAPS is better staffed.

She is an awful professor not in terms of teaching but of things in general about her. She doesn't care a shit about you but is just very concerned about your subordination to her authority. She's also strictly biased toward male Asian students. Her lectures are okay, but her notes contain a lot of mistakes that she never gives a shit about making corrections.

Some good things about her: 1) she does, however, correct her mistakes here and there. 2) Homework is easy 3) Not that many people go to her office hours because her materials aren't that difficult and because she has temper tantrums time to time 3) Her exams are not that bad (although she barely gave partial credits on the coding part, MCs were very easy) 4) Her curve is generous.

She is a pretty good lecturer, but her personality has given me so much stress throughout the quarter. I would never ever take her class again and never recommend her classes to my friends.