I agree with some of the descriptions the previous person put for Fall 2020. However, this professor was one of the least helpful and open-minded professors I have ever experienced at UCLA. After numerous weeks of the entire class talking to him about his very unclear, difficult "low-stake" quizzes, he always responded with a very defensive attitude towards us. He is a nice guy, but I really think he needs to be more understanding of his students' feedback. On the "low-stake" quizzes topic, these quizzes were very unclear of what he exactly was asking as well as very specific (which he said he was not gonna ask). Additionally, we never got any of our grades back on time (from the critiques) which made it very difficult to see exactly where we were at in the class, especially since each point missed on the "low-stake" quizzes equated to 1% off our overall grade. It made me and my classmates worry a lot about these quizzes when the own professor stated "Yeah you guys are doing better on the quizzes, sometimes Karen (the TA) and I do not get 100s on the quizzes ourselves".

I did relatively well in this class, but this entire quarter I found myself investing more time into this course than my PhySci 107 course (which is known to be extremely tedious). I scored almost perfect scores on all the critiques but since I missed more than 6 points from the quizzes (>6%), it automatically put me out of the A range. I guess Professor Frye wanted to maintain his status as an "extremely rigorous PhySci Professor at UCLA" (as he stated in class) instead of being open-minded towards his students.

Overall, he is a nice guy and is very passionate & knowledgeable about these topics; however, I do think he needs to be there for his students a little more as well as be more open-minded towards them. Ultimately, I probably will not take a course with this professor again due to this quarter's experience. I would not recommend taking this course unless you are prepared to get 100s on ALL the quizzes with little to no room for error.

I thoroughly enjoyed the content in this class, and it is very obvious that the professor is passionate about what he is lecturing. On that note, I wouldn't take this class again because it was way too stressful for an elective. I don't know if it was better in person, but the online grading format was not good.

Grade Breakdown (100 points, an A is 94+)
-10 Weekly quizzes: 70%
- Lecture attendance: 5%
- 8 Paper Quizzes: 8%
- 8 Paper Critiques: 16%
- Discussion attendance: 1%

Weekly Quizzes
The professor advertised these quizzes as "low-stakes" (due to online learning) and emphasized that we would not be having any cumulative exams. So, we got quizzed every Tuesday morning (15 minutes) on the lecture material from the week before. The problem was that these quizzes were 7 questions and multiple choice; getting one question wrong corresponded to a 1% loss to your grade, and when an A is a 94%, these quizzes quickly became extremely high stakes. Furthermore, we did not have any lectures the week of Thanksgiving, and the professor decided to give us a cumulative quiz right after break which was frustrating because we had been told there would be no cumulative exams and we had to study 7 weeks of material for a 7 question quiz (class average was a 5/7). The professor did offer a way to make up points with an optional paper quiz that would replace your lowest score no matter what you got on it; personally I took advantage of it but most of my classmates did not. The professor also offered 2% extra credit for the evaluations. Overall, these quizzes were NOT low stakes, very stressful, and sometimes convoluted.

Lecture Attendance/Discussion Attendance
Straightforward, we had to attend 90% of the lectures and he usually let us out early on Thursdays. We had to go to discussion 1x a week and it was also pretty chill.

Paper Quizzes
These were usually pretty simple 2 question quizzes on the paper we had to read. It also kind of sucked if you interpreted something wrong since missing 1 question dropped your grade .5%.

Paper Critiques
Each week we had to write a one-page critique on the paper we talked about during discussion. They were scored out of 20 points and it was fairly simple to get 18+ as long as you followed the TA's instructions/went to OH if you were confused. This would've been less irritating if each one was worth more than 2% of the grade. To put it into perspective, not turning in the critique one week corresponds to missing 2 quiz questions. I wish the critiques were worth more to balance out the quizzes.

Overall, the content is very interesting, but I found myself putting more work into this class than the other two STEM upper divs I took this quarter.

Great professor, very easy to talk to, and he truly encourages his students to LEARN and ask questions. The class was also very straight-forward, no tricks on the midterms, and as long as you study the slides well, you'll do fine in the class. He is definitely recommended!