Professor Lew is absolutely fantastic.

Having come in with little to no programming experience (AP CS in high school), she makes learning R fun. Especially during COVID, she has been so understanding of students' struggles (e.g. recording lectures, providing opportunities for up to 10% extra credit, dropping lowest grades). Though she might seem intimidating, I would recommend anyone to attend her office hours at least once: she has so much professional experience in the stats field (i.e. not just as a professor) as well as so much wisdom to offer. This class is primarily based on projects and assignments, and unlike the other professor who teaches Stats 20, there are no formal exams. I'd say that it is very easy to earn a decent grade if you put your best foot forward; even if she were not as lenient because of the pandemic, I'd assume it'd be the same. Although I haven't received my final grade yet, I'm very confident about my performance in her class because she makes it clear how to earn points/what she's looking for (tip: don't over analyze instructions!). Some other notes: (1) there is no curve for the course, though I don't see when one would be needed and (2) don't get the recommended textbook. Because of her, I feel like I have a solid understanding of R and have decided to pursue a minor in stats! I'd love to take any future courses with her.

I came into this class with virtually no coding experience. However, I generally enjoyed the class. The class is structured with lectures, discussion, and homework assignments called "lessons". I think the lessons were really useful and helping you learn R by getting you to apply the code you were learning in class in it. Discussions were pretty much the TA going over any questions people had about the lessons and in lecture, Professor Lew went over slides about coding in R. We also had to do a "Lab" that spanned the entire class. It was divided into 4 parts to turn in and the premise was to use the data the Professor gave us to create a shiny app that has an input the user can control and a corresponding output (graph, map, etc.). Professor Lew is also super nice and occasionally tells funny stories and all and all, would highly recommend this class with Professor Lew.

** COVID Review **
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Grading:
- Engagement 15%
- Lessons 15%
- Discussion Attendance 20%
- Labs 20%
- Final 30%
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As someone who came into this class without much programming experience, I can definitely say that Professor Lew is the way to go for Stats 20! She tries to make R easy to understand and learn. All the other positive reviews here speak the truth! She has so much knowledge, experience, and connections in the field of statistics, and it's clear that she cares that what we learn easily translates to marketable skills for real-life jobs and interviews. Sometimes she will mention her experiences and her past students' experiences and relate them to lectures, and then her knowledge and experience become quite clear. I suppose to some extent she is intimidating, but her lectures are clear, she encourages questions, and is very helpful during office hours. Definitely a good professor to engage with, I wish I had talked to her a bit more. The way she structures her class makes it easy to succeed as long as there is some effort, and Jake does not TA for her Stats 20 classes!
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The "Engagement" in the grading scheme is basically participation outside of class, using Campuswire to engage with Professor Lew and the rest of the class. However, you do not actively need to post questions, answers, or responses if you don't want to as she creates a poll every week for minimum participation and simply gives full credit for participating in that alone (but if you have questions on homework Campuswire is a good place to go to). Discussion attendance was fulfilled simply by being present at discussion sections, and our TA Eric Fischer allowed us to attend whichever discussion fit best into our schedule regardless of which one we were officially enrolled in. He basically spent the time answering any homework questions and clarifying concepts people were confused about, and this helped quite a lot.
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"Lessons" were our homework assignments and the lowest 3 were dropped. On each lesson page, she gives some examples of the types of things we are expected to know how to program and then asks some questions which we have to write solutions to in R Markdown. These vary in difficulty but any confusion could be clarified by the TA in discussion or by someone on Campuswire who had figured out a solution. Labs were basically assignments related to an ongoing project over the quarter. The final product was a Shiny app made using a dataset she gave us, which had to have some type of output such as a graph or map in response to user input. I think her Spring Quarter class did this project in groups and had slightly higher expectations, but she allows more flexibility and ease for Summer Session since there's less time and it's not done in groups. The final is modeled on a technical interview and is open for 27 hours. It isn't necessarily super easy, but as long as you have been properly keeping up with the material and the lessons you should be able to produce reasonable solutions to the prompt on the final.
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Overall I would highly recommend Professor Lew for Stats 20. She's kind, clear, and engaging. She structures her teaching around teaching us useful skills, and she tries to make it so anyone can succeed. If you can, take her class for sure!

I waited to take Stats 20 until I found an enrollment slot with Professor Lew and that was the best decision I ever made. First of all, her grading scale is more than fair and she is very considerate with her students. The final is 30% of the grade but she prepares you well and she does not grade harshly. My TA was Eric Fischer and he was amazing! He was very helpful with the lessons, which were due about every 3 or 4 days. Overall, this class was tough but it will be the same difficulty with whichever professor you take it with. Thus, if you get the chance take it with Professor Lew and trust me, you will not regret it.

They changed the way this class is formatted this quarter (no midterms no final, only projects). If you have Jake as TA, DROP IMMEDIATELY. He was the only reason why a lot of people don't want to major in stats anymore and made this class so much more stressful than it is supposed to be. Professor Lew is very nice and approachable but I guess she couldn't really do anything about the TA either. I would take her again but definitely avoid Jake as a TA with all costs.

10/10 would take again. I'm a junior math major trying to pick up a stats minor and I LOVED Professor Lew. She is so kind and engaging. The TA Ashley was also amazing 10/10, she went above and beyond and really cemented the material. Out of any class, I've taken this one is most useful in actually getting a job after graduation. Hopefully I can pick up one or two upperdivs with either Lew or Ashley. If you have an option between Lew and any other Professor the choice is clear.

Professor Lew structured Stats 20 much better than Tsiang. The workload is reasonable. The attendance was counted to extra credits.

Professor Lew is a fantastic lecturer! Every lecture was very clear and interesting and she provides good examples to made sure her students understand the concepts. She does a great job of exposing students to R and gives them practical skills to use in future courses. This class wasn’t extremely difficult and the homework/labs were actually fun to do! I really recommend talking this course with her!

This was a very valuable class. I know that the distributions here seem pretty good, but also pretty hit and miss. I think that overall it depends on how Lew feels about your class, and I think that she liked our class and said that she was going to give 40 or so percent A’s which is pretty good. Overall, the class is pretty valuable! There’s a lot of material covered for the first midterm, like 4 packets of 40 something pages of notes. But after that when it gets to the apply family, distributions, etc. things get a lot easier. Overall, I think the first midterm was definitely harder than the final, especially since everything is open book open note. The material for the class isn’t that hard, there’s just a lot of material and kind of a steep learning curve at the beginning. But once you kind of get into it, it’s not that hard.

Overall, the hardest part about the class is the time constraints. We have 50 minute lab midterms, which can be very stressful, but if you come prepared, then they’re not that hard. “Luck favors the prepared” as Lew puts it. If you do the practice midterms, just have them open during the exams, and a lot of the techniques are the same. There’s a lot of lab and lessons each week, and you have to post to weekly forums. They’re not that hard or time consuming, and if you get stuck, most people post online to the forums.

Overall, can’t complain! It was a great class. You learn a lot from it, and it’s a very fun and useful language. This is not an extremely easy class as it kind of has a reputation for. The lab exams are very stressful, and the multiple choice questions are pretty specific and detailed, so it would definitely help to have a textbook or really intimate knowledge of the notes. Overall, stressful exams, but she is pretty nice about grading. Definitely a worthwhile class to learn. I think Lew is very good at preparing you for future data analysis classes. It’s a strong foundation, and would definitely take again!

After the midterm, I was feeling like I more so agree with the review two below mine. After the final however, I more so agree with the review one below mine. For the first half of the class, the material went very fast, leading to a steep learning curve for me. As programming isn’t quite my cup of tea, I feel behind a lot of the smart people on the lab midterm, which was very punishing to those who knew the solution yet messed up the answer due to mistyping, small logic errors, etc. I managed to crush the lecture midterm though, since Professor Lew threw out questions that were on the unfair side and I had a good grasp of how the code should be structured.

Things took a turn for the better during the later half of the course. Stuff made more sense, and the labs weren’t that bad (though the ggplot2 lab was quite a beast). And for the lab final, Lew changed the format to free response so that more partial credit could be gained, and it wasn’t as punishing to mess up an answer. Lecture final was more fair, though a bit challenging.

Looking back, I really am thankful that Professor Lew is so helpful, caring, and flexible (she even would extend deadlines for holidays). Really, if you follow along for your labs, you’ll get full credit. And for the exams, study your lessons and practice tests deeply. Finally, Professor Lew REALLY emphasizes the outside world and prepping you for technical interviews. Try not to ask her really small questions that you can find the answer to yourself, as she’s super busy. She may sometimes talk firmly, but this is for the best, as she wants you to be able to think for yourself. Work hard, and know how the code works and how to come up with it FAST. If you do this, you WILL get a good grade; it’s definitely possible to succeed in this class.