The title of this class is very misleading as it is about literal social network graphs of people and connections. I personally thought this class was going to be about social media but I honestly feel like I learned some cool stuff about how things go viral etc. Lamberson is a nice professor but the weekly quizzes were not my favorite. They did serve well as a midterm and final study guide, though. When Lamberson explains concepts it’s not always super clear at first as he is very analytical and smart so I feel like I was able to fully grasp concepts working with other classmates and studying in groups. I’m glad I didn’t drop this class after seeing what it was all about on the first day because I feel like it was genuinely interesting but don’t take it if you’re not ready to study hard for the tests. Also the graph assignments take awhile to do, the final project took me 3 whole days alone but I actually enjoyed doing it and seeing the graph come together at the end was weirdly exciting. Overall: good but challenging class that isn’t that difficult to get an A or B in if you study!

8 in class quizzes, during the first minutes of class. they're pretty easy to nail, although wording can be a bit confusing. midterm is harder than final. try to memorise or write down quizzes as he tends to reuse questions for the tests. 3 assignments in total, using a program called gephi. overall, this is one of the easiest classes i've ever taken. just be sure to take good notes!

This is probably one of the most interesting classes I've taken so far at UCLA. Lamberson is an amazing professor and takes time at the beginning of each class to answer questions and engage with students. He says he teaches the course as a modified MBA class so there's a heavy focus on marketing and how social network structures can inform marketing strategies, which was really cool. There's a midterm, final, and three homework assignments (no required readings). The software you have to use for the homeworks can be buggy and difficult, but is overall interesting to use. Would definitely recommend taking this class as the technology and digital systems core requirement!

I think overall Professor Lamberson was pretty understanding and reasonable, which was nice. However, he also made our weekly homework unnecessarily hard and half the time covered concepts he never talked about in his lecture. I also felt that a lot of his quiz questions were designed to trick you rather than actually testing your understanding. As well, the class was listed as synchronous but he actually gives asynchronous recorded lectures and then holds office hours once a week in the scheduled class time. This class is meant to be around 2 hours, but he intentionally kept his lectures short so they were generally 20-30 minutes. I didn’t mind this and I appreciated that he realized it’s hard to sit through long recorded lectures, but at the same time he barely covered the topics which made doing the homework difficult. His tests were fine, we were allowed to use calculators unlike some of the previous times he taught this class. The one issue was since the test was on CCLE, he made it so that you could not move throughout the test and as soon as you submitted an answer it was locked in and you couldn’t go back which was stressful. There was also a group project which he gave very little guidance on and basically completely relied on his TA to work with us on it. The TA Andrea was AMAZING - so helpful and kind and she made section pretty fun. Without her help and her review sessions I think the whole class would’ve been a lot more confused as she was way more hands on than the professor. Overall the class was ok, I think it’s dumb that it’s one of the mandatory classes for the Comm major but since we all have to take it I think Lamberson is fine for getting this requirement out of the way as it wasn’t too hard to get an A.

I took this course fully online, so it may be different than in-person. Professor Lamberson seems like a really nice guy and he is pretty good at teaching. He made the material pretty easy to understand and kept his lectures short and to the point. There is one textbook that is assigned and it is pretty helpful for tests, especially when you want to understand concepts in more detail; however, you can definitely be fine in the class without even touching the textbook. There is a three-question quiz after each lecture, and these points add up! I did not take the quizzes as seriously as I should have, which is the cause of my B+. There were also about five homework assignments, a midterm, a final, and a group project. The homework is really simple and straightforward, the tests were pretty tricky and made you really think, and the group project was quite easy to do. I would recommend taking this course with Lamberson.

I personally had a breeze in this class and really enjoyed it. I thought Prof. Lamberson was very reasonable, clear, and trying to help us out. I also really appreciated Andrew's efforts as TA to help us out as well. Even though I didn't really have a hard time with this class, I made the effort to go to all the discussions and the coffee talks on Wednesday, and it was nice to just chat with the instructors.

I didn't open the textbook ever, all you need to do is take really good notes on the lectures and you'll be set. For the online recorded lectures, he had mini quizzes just to prove you watched them (super duper easy) and one mini problemset each week for homework. One midterm, one final exam, and one mini group project which wasn't too bad (shoutout to my amazing group).

I thought this class was great. I was really scared going in because of some of these reviews, but I ended up finishing the class strong. I took this class online and he held it as an asynchronous course (posted lectures) with weekly "coffee talks" that would serve as office hours. There is just one weekly assignment that is pulled from the textbook that sometimes didn't line up with his lectures, but he would answer any questions about them (and they weren't very hard or long at all). There are two tests: the midterm was very lengthy and difficult because it was so open ended, but being able to review this test before the final helped a ton. The final incorporated similar questions from the midterm and some VERY BASIC stats that we learned in the 2nd half of the class. We could use Excel on our final for the stats portion. We also had ample time to complete the group project, and he only required that we present a PowerPoint, no paper needed. Easiest group project ever. Overall I think everything was pretty clear and very doable as long as you ask questions. Don't be afraid to take this class!

things i liked:
-the professor seemed likable, and seemed to do his best to make lectures engaging

things i didn't like:
-the lectures were not engaging and lasted for three hours (which is fine normally, but he didn't give us any kinds of breaks and the content was extremely tedious so it made it very difficult to pay attention for the duration of the lecture)
-the professor canceled his office hours the day of the midterm because he was "going on vacation." he 'resolved' this by posting a group discussion where we could ask questions. however, he failed to answer many important questions students had posted.
-the ta was an extremely harsh, unreasonable grader. example: a quiz question asked for an equation we had learned in class. i provided the original equation and showed the steps to simplify it down to the one we were most commonly using. i got a zero on that question because i "provided multiple answers and how could she know which one was correct". when i tried to explain my reasoning, i was immediately shut down. furthermore, several questions on our midterm were graded incorrectly and had to be fixed.
-like others have said, the professor failed to provide any sort of study material for both tests and we were left floundering and unsure of what material we would be tested on.
-you must write down every single thing he says during lecture, because while the slides are posted, they make no sense on their own - this would be fine and makes sense, however his lectures were all over the place and we would be tested on concepts that had only been briefly mentioned
-the class uses an extremely frustrating, very buggy software called Gephi that is very unintuitive. making a simple graph would take hours and hours because, having never used the software before, if i made even a tiny mistake, the entire graph would get messed up and i would have to start completely over from scratch because there was no back/undo button.
-the class uses many math concepts that are poorly explained and at the end of the course i still didn't understand a great deal

as a sociology major who was taking this class as an elective because i thought it would be about how people form social networks and interact with each other, i urge you to NOT TAKE THIS CLASS UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO.

The first half of the class was great and taught practical material on social science research, then the second half was predominantly statistics based. It was difficult but definitely doable thanks to Professor Lamberson. His recorded lectures were useful for studying and he was always available for help during office hours. Most of the statistics he taught how to do from Excel, which also helped. Overall I think Professor Lamberson did his best to help us understand material he knows many of us find to be challenging.

The final exam was pretty difficult but he curved it and also our final overall grade. The group project was my favorite part of the quarter and helped boost my grade lol. Would definitely recommend taking Professor Lamberson for this required class if you find stats difficult like I do!