This guy is a pretty terrible teacher. He often makes simple concepts difficult in his explanation. Also, when he tells you his tests are difficult on the first day of class, he's not kidding. The curve does help people who score badly to pass, but barely helps those on the upper end. If you want an A you've got to score near 100 on every exam. Do all the review problems and try to memorize the short answers. Overall, I wouldn't say the class is crazy hard, but it's for sure not easy.

I came into this class having received an A in Stats 10, fairly confident. I worked my butt off, did all of the work, and still came out of the final feeling like I had a brick lodged in my skull. He is a funny guy, but his tests are HARD. Take 100A with Nandy, he is so much more chill and moves through the material slower. I wanted to like McAuliffe, I really did. But he just lowered my GPA.

Professor Mcauliffe was one of the best professors I've taken at UCLA! I came into the class unsure but the material was really interesting and he said that he has changed his testing methods. I was really nervous about taking the course but I didn't have any regrets at all. TAKE PROF MCAULIFFE! you won't regret it.

I hadn't taken stats before this class, and I thought it was a piece of cake. He goes over one topic every lecture then spends the rest of the time doing examples until every single person understands it. After lecture, I went online and did the questions online until I really understood it. I didn't study for any of the exams and got an A in the class. Just pay attention in class, do some problems on your own, and you'll be fine. My TA was pretty useless, so I didn't go to discussion. Also, a lot of transfer students take this class in the fall, so the curve was really easy.

he's not that bad. i'd taken stats before, so i knew most of the stuff already, but we also covered some stuff that i didn't know like t tests and anovas (which were probably the most complicated material), and i found his teaching helpful for those topics. however, i felt like he wasn't very good at teaching basic stuff at the beginning (like z-values) very well, which was fundamental to understanding everything else in the class, so i can see why people might be frustrated with his teaching.

if you seriously suck at math, consider taking stats 10 or 13 with a good teacher before taking this class. then you'll know pretty much everything, and it'll be easy for you. but if can do math, though, don't be intimated by all the negative reivews - half of them are probably by north campusy psych majors that sucked at math before they ever took mcauliffle. he's definitely not great, but he's not as horrible as some of the reviews make him seem.

other thoughts-
discussion was mostly useless, and not mandatory. i never purchased his webiste subscription thing, or even looked at the website, and i did alright. do the review question he posts online. don't buy the textbook, you'll get to class the first day and he'll tell you that you're not going to use it, i don't even know why he lists one. he'll make you memorize all the formulas for the tests (no notecard) (at least when i took him - S09). this sounds horrible, but it actually isn't that bad, just make flashcards. his tests are kind of tricky, there are always a couple "wtf" conceptual questions - things that you learned about, but didn't really practice on the homeworks. not much you can do about them, just make sure you're awake when you take his tests, cause its not quite "plug and chug" for most of them. he curves on the standard math curve, 10% A's, 10% A-'s , so on, but then he gives 20% C's. make sure you don't miss the last day of class, because he'll play his guitar and sing a corny song about statistics for reivew, and he's actually not a bad singer/guitar player.

Professor Mcauliffe was HORRIBLE. He started off the course by saying, "I know a lot of my tests are hard, but uh haha I like that". He carried this attitude of being proud of his difficult tests throughout the quarter but the fact is his tests weren't hard, his teaching was just horrible. I went to lecture until our first midterm and then stopped going for the rest of the class and actually did BETTER when I wasn't going. If you have to take him, honestly his lectures just take something that's straightforward, (seriously it just comes down to memorizing which equations to use and how) and making it complicated and frustrating. Not once did I get the impression that he actually cared about his students at all and he definitely didn't seem to care about teaching the material.

One of the worst professors I've had. He definitely knows what he's talking about but he can't teach so it's utterly useless to go to class. I stopped going after the first midterm and passed with a high B. His tests mimic the course website incredibly closely, so just live on the website and you're all set. I would suggest taking the other 100A professor if you can.

Seriously, having McAuliffe is not bad at all. In fact, it was the easiest class for me this quarter (i took it along with LS3, chem 14D and physics 6A). First of all, DON'T BUY THE TEXTBOOK! We never used it in class, so save your $$$ for something better. To do well in his class, all you have to do is visit the class website regularly and MAKE SURE you memorize the practice problems at the end of each topic. He gives you an option to by an advanced version of the website for $30, but you don't really have to because it is basically the same as the free website. The website is structured to mirror the syllabus, so whenever he finishes teaching a topic, you go to the corresponding topic on the website. On the bottom page of the website, you will find practice problems. Do all of them and MEMORIZE the answers to each one because on the midterms and the Final, he will copy and paste the exact questions from there. In fact, all his tests are copy and pasted items from the website. So if you memorize the answer to all the questions from the website, you will be fine. I've never taken stats before, and i learned it from the website. Going to the lecture is pretty useless, but sometimes he does explain some concepts better than the website does. Also he will regularly post more complicated math problems (with solutions) that you can get access on the paid website. But don't worry if you don't want to buy the paid website because he will post those problems on your myucla web-page. Those math problems are great because they contain step by step instructions to obtain the answer. Make sure you do those because in lecture, he will mostly gloss over the steps very quickly and will leave you confused more than ever. So all I did for the class was I went to lecture, listened to the concepts. When I got home, I studied the practice math problems he posted and did them step by step as the solution instructed. It made life a lot easier that way. Last thing, if you do those problems, you will notice that there are a lot of math involved, especially when you study T-test, and ANOVAs that require you to find stand deviation for each piece of data and other junk. Well on his exams, he will give you those pre calculated info and all you have to do is memorize the formula for and plug in those numbers that he provided for you. You can't ask for an easier teacher than McAulieffe for stats. I wish I studied harder the practice problems on the website so I would've gotten an A+ instead of an A.

Horrible professor.
He knows his stuff - but he can't teach.
Mcauliffe doesn't know how to teach nor wants to. He stands at the front, flips through unfinished & poorly written slides and plays with his website.
The tests are pretty much as awful as this professor.
I took stats before this and he made me UNLEARN everything.
Worst professor. Never take from him EVER.

Contrary to what everyone else is saying on these reviews, Mcaullife is not a bad teacher at all, and his tests are very fair most people just don't understand how to study for them. At the beginning of the course he tells you that most of the info will be coming from the website that he uses to teach, www.thebeststatistics.info and you can purchase the Upgraded Access to the website for $30, or use the free version. Mcaullife takes the EXACT problems from this website and puts them on the midterms and finals. I purchased the paid version and saw the same exact questions on his tests, he just changed the numbers and that was it. Even if you don't purchase the paid version, he posts questions from the paid version onto his own Blackboard website so you can see them anyways. If you spend an hour every other day on this class, you will get an A easily. The best part about this class is that his tests are not tricky, and definitely not hard if you're reviewing the questions on the website. All in all, a fair class taught by a fair professor.