Miles is one of the BEST professors I've had at UCLA. He is extremely smart, clear in his lectures, available for help, and reasonable in grading. The HW exercises actually helped me better understand the material. Simulating a tic tac toe game or a user prompted monopoly game were challenge and time-consuming. But it enhanced my understanding and ability to apply R code to create real programs.

Miles is very approachable. Although his class was challenging, I have learned and retained what he taught and super rewarding at the end. Despite the challenging concepts, the class was very stress-free because he deeply understood that students were human beings. You can tell Miles loves what he does and excels at it! Highly recommend!!

Miles Chen is one of the best professors in this school and he is always passionate!

He is the best professor in UCLA. Lectures are super clear. Even if you miss, you can easily review his video and catch up. Homework is not hard if you can understand lectures. Normally he lets take-home exam, but still easy. Definitely take him!!!!!!!

Surprisingly, the test focuses heavily on minutiae stuff. Rather than testing knowledge on applications and concepts of R, the exam feels more like a collection of trivial R details. Miles said that he would test on details since it would be essential to know in interviews, but the exam material was just way too trivial. Would companies really emphasize on knowing the difference between the types of c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and 1:5? Also, R syntax is unfriendly to those who are from programming languages like C/C++, which can cause confusions at times.

Assignments are really hard. It usually takes me more than 7 hours to do one project. No homework scores will be dropped and each homework is worth 7% of the final grade. So, if you are taking this class, start early on homework. The professor usually posts homework 1 or 2 weeks before it's due.The monopoly one is extremely hard. Participation is worth 3%. People ask/answer a lot of questions on piazza, which was pretty helpful. Professor Chen is definitely a great lecturer. But this class is pretty hard in my opinion.

Okay, I can see why everyone likes Chen. His class is very well done, and all of his content is very clearly explained. The first half of the class is all about how to program in R, and I think that I understand the material much better having learned it from Chen than when I learned it earlier from Lew. Chen is really good for the first part, and the second part is all numerical methods and sampling techniques, which are really easy. Exam wise, the midterm wasn't that hard, but yeah like everyone says, it is based on really small details, so it requires a development of a certain type of R intuition. I really liked the piazza system. The class was made a lot easier with the piazza system, as everyone really bought into it so if there was something tricky on the homework, you could figure it out. Overall, the homeworks could be difficult at times, but as long as you start them early, it's fine. Yeah, class is fine, Chen is a great professor, the homework can be difficult but are manageable, and the exams aren't too bad. A solid upper div.

I think we learned some useful algorithms and techniques in this class that can be applied outside of the classroom. Professor Chen is super clear and is a good lecturer. His assignments can be tough, but he makes sure to give ample time to complete them. His midterm was quite challenging, as it required that you recall super specific details about R, but he was very considerate and curved the test to what he believed was fair. His final was much easier; you study his lectures and you will be golden. Overall, this class was enjoyable and pretty laid-back. Prof Chen is also a very caring professor, as with many other professors in the stats department!

Maybe Professor Chen revamped the class this quarter (so maybe the topics are different now), but I thoroughly enjoyed 102B and thought the curriculum wasn't scattered at all. It's a digestible, effective introduction to popular machine learning concepts and algorithms for constructing models and conducting analysis. No curveballs on the exams, it all depends on how much effort you put into preparing for them. Professor Chen comes to class everyday with a smile on his face, and he does a wonderful job preparing you with a solid foundation and intuition for the course material in case you want to explore any of them in greater detail, and that's honestly all the space there is for a 10 week class. Had a blast this quarter, thanks Professor Chen! :)

I took the entire 102 series with Miles, and I have to say he is one of the clearest professors in the stats department. You can completely follow him and figure out what he expects after one quarter with him.

So this is kinda a review for the entire 102 series with Miles. 102A is mostly about coding, and he taught useful coding techniques and fun staff in class. There was a tic-tac-toe project and a monopoly project that are time-consuming (took me about one day for each) but are really accomplishing when you finish.

102B is the most math heavy, and all the matrix notations are kind of overwhelming at the very beginning. However, Miles really explains all the different machine learning methods out in a way that is easy to understand, and I have to say it is very helpful to have known different machine learning concepts when interviewing for researches.

For me, 102C is the easiest among the entire series. Just follow Miles' hand-written notes in class, and you would be fine.

Miles is also helpful in his office hours (He helped me a couple of times when it wasn't really his office hours but he happened to be in the office!) Also his office is super organized, and I was impressed LMAO.

Generally I really recommend Miles for STATS 102 series.

Somehow, the stats dept has the worst lecturers for the proof based classes, but for the coding side, they have the best professors around. Like Tsiang, Chen is one of my favorite professors here at UCLA.

His lectures, while potentially dry, are actually interesting, and you build on a lot of the concept you learn from Stats 20. You start going into optimization techniques, different common packages, and some object oriented topics.

Chen may come off cold in office hours, but tbh, the questions people ask him are kinda dumb. He's not going to troubleshoot your code, nor blatantly tell you how to do it. And honestly, his homework is definitely doable - you just have to understand the notes front and back, and know how to apply it(basically, don't be lazy). But he's an interesting person, and once you start talking to him, it's really chill. He's very open to helping with letter of recommendations, and is an interesting guy(loves basketball, grew up in LA, and had a crazy life). He actually cares about his students, telling you to sleep, letting you skip some classes without penalty, etc. Just don't try and cheat his attendance system - it's barely worth any points, and it's worse to be caught skipping and forfeiting all your attendance points for the quarter.