I have always heard great reviews of Chen but as I took his class this quarter, I find it understand why so many people rave about him? He's a good lecturer, its obvious that he's passionate about the topic and we do appreciate that he podcasts his lecture on youtube. On the other hand, his midterm was not fair - we were tested on things we would never be tested on in R. And he no longer does take home test, we had a final in which he graded very strictly on. He seems hard to approach during office hours and came off as annoyed when I asked him a question. Maybe he had an off day or two, but not the greatest impression. We don't seem to be tested on our hw projects, which are very time consuming and the grader takes a really long time to grade and thus its hard to see what we did right / wrong. Maybe he's better for lower div.

Professor Chen is one of my favorite professors at UCLA. His lectures are very clear and assignments are designed to help students understand the materials. The concepts and algorithms covered in this class are very useful and practical. Overall, I highly recommended this class.

I've taken three classes with Professor Chen and I would say this one is the most interesting ones. For the assignments, you are required to build your own tic-tac-toes and Monopoly game with R. I admit that it took me a long time to finish these assignments, but I would say it definitely worth it. His lectures are well-structured and assignments are well-designed for students to understand the concepts. The midterm was a bit hard but the final exam was very fair. As long as you study the notes before the final, you will be good. Overall, I highly recommend STATS 102A with Professor Chen. Definitely one of the best professors at UCLA.

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!