this class is HORRIBLE with Jane Shevstov. Jane is the WORST teacher ever. She is impossible to understand and should not be allowed to teach ever again. It is absolutely impossible to pay attention in her lectures so you learn absolutely nothing. The grading is extremely unforgiving and the grading scheme for this course makes it really hard to receive a good grade. midterm and final is 75% of your grade and the other 25% is homework that is not graded on completion!! DO NOT take this class! Also, Jane is one of the writers of the textbook and it is horribly written and hard to understand which does not help at all. The only thing helping me in this class is notes that are re-scribed by the TAs. Also the homework is really tedious and repetitive and takes foreverrrr. PLEASE do not take this class with Jane (I have heard good things about other professors but DO NOT TAKE IT W JANE).

Overall: If you liked the coding in the LS30 series, take this class (if the professor is good). If you didn't like the coding, don't take this class.

Grading:
Homework - 25%
Midterm - 25%
Final - 50%
You also have the option to take out the midterm so that the final is worth 75%.
There's also easy extra credit in filling out the evaluation forms and a small meme-making assignment. A-F scale is standard.

Homework - Weekly assignments entirely on CoCalc. Graded on accuracy (though my grader seemed fairly lenient). Much of it (but not all) is coding in Python, usually using the things learned in Lab. First weeks were not too bad but gets longer/more complicated over time. Expect to spend a good chunk of the time with this class on the hw. There was at least one homework where everyone was exceptionally confused about a question, so the Professor Shevtsov allowed us to get points with just an attempt. Homework seems to be recycled from previous quarters, which is fine, but sometimes refer to old things that aren't there anymore which can add to confusion.

Also, these take an extremely long time to grade for some reason. I am writing this review at the end of finals week, and I only got my grades for HW up to Week 5. At least they give you the solutions to all the homework by the end of the quarter to prepare for final.

Labs - Similar to LS30 labs, meant to teach you how to code the conceptual things from lecture (emphasis on simulating sample studies). They're not graded, but they're really needed to understand the homework, so I would recommend doing them. How "good" the lab sections are highly depends on your TA, since they all have different styles of teaching and doing code. Overall, the TA's are mixed bag, but at least one of them probably fits your preferences. If you can't understand Professor Shevtsov, you WILL be relying on the TA's for understanding course content too.

Exams: The midterm is in-person, handwritten, about 2 hrs (though won't necessarily take you that long). Average was a 75%, median 80%. The final is split half and half: a coding section (24 hrs open-everything on Cocalc) and an in-person section (3 hrs, about 1.5x length of midterm). Grades pending on the final. On the written sections for both exxams, I think they decently covered what we learned in class and weren't excessively complicated or anything. Some questions were written quite vaguely though, which seems to be a general trait of Professor Shevtsov's writing, and really has to make you think about what the intent about the question is. She gives you past midterms/finals that are pretty similar to the current exams at least. On the coding part of the final, the difficulty was similar to homework (easy-moderate) though again, a single vaguely written question can turn the difficulty meter way up.

Professor: I think Professor Shevtsov genuinely tries to teach, but I think for a lot of people she's not great. Part of it is her disability, which makes her speak slowly and a bit hard to understand (like an accent). It also really negatively affects learning in lectures, since its sometimes hard to pay attention or connect things that were said. Personality-wise, she's usually understanding if you talk to her personally.

Lectures: Some lectures contain a lot of information while others have barely anything happen. Usually slides have diagrams, Clicker questions, etc. The slides are a bit disorganized but it usually has essential information. She does like to spend a lot of time on clickers though,, and I think she wastes too much time on that when we could just be going over content. (e.g. we once spent 30 min on a single clicker question). The main good thing about lectures is that there is also a TA writing notes on the lecture that acutally explains things decently in bullet-point form and simple diagrams (and is also displayed live while in lecture), and these are uploaded after every lecture, so I would highly recommend looking at these notes when reviewing.

Textbook: Lectures are hit or miss, and I usually used the textbook when reviewing. I personally think the textbook is decent in explaining, but a massive problem is that the textbook is unfinished, so content for a good chunk of the later weeks (which is also the harder section) is just not in the textbook.

Other Notes: Again, just summarizing from above, I think a big problem in this class is that homework and exam questions can be quite vague or confusingly-written. Also, I think that a certain kind of mindset is needed in this class. Personally, everything really clicked for me in this class (remember: null-hypothesis testing and confidence intervals have the same basic steps, just applied to different situations), which is why I think I was able to do the homework and exams fairly easily. But I know that for a lot of others, things really just don't make sense and never click anytime in the course. Frustration from the professor, logistics, etc. also really decreased enjoyment. Also, I actually enjoyed the coding, which is half the class, and I truly think the Python skills are valuable, especially if you pursue further programming skills.

However, if you disliked the LS30 series even a little bit, you probably won't enjoy this class.

If there was a 0 rating, I would give her that. Prof. Stevsov is playing with students lives and taking advantage of her sickness. she should not be allowed to teach students. She is not even trying so the students will pass her class. Lectures are horrible and no one can understand. Notes on slides are terribly made. No one can understand what she wants to teach.
I would recommend not to take this class.

General Idea: If you like coding, you might like this class. If you don't like coding, for the love of god and all things holy don't take this class. Every homework assignment is at least 60% coding and every lab is all code. If you liked the LS30 series then perhaps you'll like this class.

As far as course content goes, the content is relatively easy since you use the textbook to learn a lot. However, Prof Shevtsov's lectures really aren't all that useful, and they only help if you get the chance to actually speak during class to explain your reasoning. You'll be hard-pressed to find a slide given during a lecture that has any more than about 10 words on it. Practically, if you go to a lecture then you might get clarification on something you read in the textbook. Otherwise, good luck justifying leaving your bed since the lectures are recorded anyways.

Now for the homework. The homework itself is rather easy if you like code. It's about 7 questions of data analysis using code you write or just explaining what code you could write. The problem, though? It's been 7 weeks before I got my first homework assignment graded, and some of my classmates haven't even gotten one graded yet. The homework is typically rather disorganized, like how week 7's homework said to look at week 8's homework answers for clarification. Some parts of the homework rely on a one-word difference between what Prof Shevtsov said, the textbook said, and the TAs said. As of finalizing this review it's summer and my 5th homework of 9 was just graded.

Oh boy and here's the best part: the grading scheme. In reality, there are 2 of them running at the same time: [[25% Homework, 25% midterm, 50% final]] OR [[25% Homework, 75% Final]]]
Whichever one you score better with is the grading scheme you use for your course grade. Now just think of it like this: if you don't do well on the first midterm (because you got no feedback on homework or labs in time so you didn't know if you were doing ANYTHING right) then you have the option to drop it and rely on the final to dictate the other 75% of your grade.

My overall view of this class? It's pretty poor in every way you can think. Lectures aren't all that useful, homework isn't just disorganized but it's rarely graded, and my professor disagreed with the textbook and the TAs on critical parts of data analysis. Though, I am a sucker for math/science/biology so I think that my appreciation for the subject really helped me out in sticking with the class.

While it might be hard to tell, I really do tend to see the best in people and assume the best reasons for why something happened. This class has so much wrong that my incessant optimism just isn't enough to cut through the literal slag covering this class's every crevice. (That optimism shows with the "Overall 4" despite the other scores being less than that :D )

If you can tolerate useless lectures, ungraded homework, no comments on such homework, and a grading scheme that monopolizes on your suffering, then this is the class for you! <3

edit: It's now the first week of summer and I still stand by everything I said lol. The Final really wasn't that bad, just that it tested on a couple of fringe topics that we only covered for literally one minute during class. I'm still waiting on my Final exam grade, but I'm fairly confident that I'll get an A (I only missed 1.5 points on the midterm for reference). If you can study on your own time and can teach yourself stats (like I did), then perhaps you'll do well in this class.

Jane is not great. But this class was not that hard IMO. 30b with bennoun was a lot more difficult. If you attend your lab section and the problem solving sessions, you should be totally fine to get an A. I was freaking out when I didn't get stats 13L and was forced to take this as an alternative, but found it was a walk in the park. The weekly homework assignments take super long (4-5 hours) but the midterm and final were fair and easy. The subject matter is not ideal, but getting an A is not that hard. Most of the people in my lab section (with Raunika who is awesome) got A's as well. This is a prime example of kids going on to bruinwalk and posting negative reviews when they get a bad grade in the class.

do NOT take any class with 'Jane' Shevstov. It is literally impossible to understand her during class and so it is therefore impossible to learn. the grade breakdown consisted of homework 25%, midterm 25%, and final 50%. The homework was all coding and was not graded on completion. It wasn't too bad as if you went to lab it gave most of the homework but it did take forever to complete. The midterm went horribly for pretty much everyone even to the point where she mentioned it in class that we performed much worse than she'd hoped. However, even with this knowledge she did not offer any extra credit or curve the test. Instead, she came up with the worst solution ever which was to drop the midterm. This sounds nice until you realize that now the final is worth 75% of your grade!! I am still raginggg over this class and have not met a single person who enjoys jane or likes her. She does not care about student learning at all and is really just the worst teacher ever. If you take a class with her, you will REGRET IT!!! and wow I have to mention that when there was a literal shooting threat at the school, she did not care at all and actually sent a sort of aggressive and rude email even kind of making a joke about it and saying that class and discussion was not canceled and that the shooting was not a big deal at all lol so yea.

This class was honestly pretty disorganized, but it wasn't as bad as some people make it out to be. You definitely need to be self-sufficient in order to be successful in this class, which definitely might be difficult for some people. The labs are not required but seriously help with the homework assignments (I highly doubt you could finish the weekly homework on your own without the lab knowledge). The weekly homework is always a curveball, honestly. Some weeks I finished it in 40 minutes and some weeks it took me 4 hours. Going to office hours is definitely helpful for the homework because you are able to get some help from the instructors to debug your code and figure out what went wrong with this class. Homework is majorly graded on completion, which is nice. The lowest homework grade is dropped. There are two grade schemes for this class. Scheme 1 has 25% homework, 25% midterm, and 50% final exam. Scheme 2 has 25% homework, 75% final exam. The midterm was in person and was a written exam of about 7 questions. I was able to finish this exam in half of the allotted time, and most people did finish early. The final exam consisted of two parts-- a conceptual written exam taking in person during finals week, and an online open-note coding exam that was open during a 24 hour period (also in finals week). The coding exam was really easy as long as you had an idea for what to do. You could reference old homework and lab assignments to see the code you needed to do for each situation. Again, with the final exam, I was able to finish it in half of the allotted time. I felt that it was very fair, and most people finished early. In general, I feel like the class was really disorganized. It could benefit from more communication between instructors. One thing that really bothered me was that we had no homework grades at all until the week of the midterm (week 6). And by then, I only had one (yes, a singular assignment) graded. I had no idea what my grade was at all because 5 weeks worth of assignments were ungraded. By the time the final exam rolled around, I had four homework assignments graded. So once again, I had no idea what my grade was before I took the final exam. Additionally, nobody received their grade for this class until past the due date of final grades. I don't know why it took so long for our assignments to be graded. So if you're cool with not knowing your grade at all until after final grades are due, I totally recommend this class! Sarcasm aside, the class content is pretty straightforward and the coding isn't too difficult (many of the methods are repetitive, plus you can always reference old assignments if you need help getting to the answers). If you did well in 30A and 30B, you'll do well in this class.

This was one of the most useless classes I've taken thus far at UCLA. Lecture information was not very clear of what was going to be on the exams and were also difficult to understand. The actual information was not hard to comprehend, but it was a lot of content and little explanation of exactly what everything actually means. Homework assignments are all coding and weren't graded until the week after finals, so all of us were going into the final exam with no idea of what we needed to get on it. Labs aren't required but really help with homework and exams, so if you take LS40 I urge you to go to these because they were really the only thing that made sense in this class. TAs and professor don't seem to communicate much as the TAs most of the time didn't know what was going on either. Shevstov also doesn't answer her emails which was great! The midterm exam was 7 free response questions and the final was only 8 questions. Exams do give a lot of partial credit which really helped out my grade but I don't feel like I learned any real statistics in taking this class. Take stats 13 or 10, don't waste your time.

Some of these reviews are pretty harsh, but they’re pretty warranted. I’ll try to be a little nicer and level headed in my review. Calling this course a statistics course is pretty misleading, since while we do do statistics, we don’t do normal statistics and mostly focus on statistical simulations we do on CoCalc with coding and that’s basically the whole class. Her lectures are honestly not very helpful and they were poorly attended after the first few weeks and I stopped going after week 3. However, THE LABS ARE EXTREMELY HELPFUL YOU MUST GO TO THE LABS IF YOU WANT TO EVEN ATTEMPT TO BE ABLE TO DO THE HOMEWORK. While the labs are not graded, the TA will essentially give you all the code you will need for the homework that week, which makes your life extremely easier than it is for those who don’t go to lab. I also just felt like I learned infinitely more doing the labs and engaging with the material than listening to her droned on lectures. ATTEND THE LABS PERIOD. The homework was extremely easy at the beginning of the quarter but got harder towards the end, but the professor was very open to extending deadlines which was nice. However, don’t expect absolutely any grades back until the week of the midterm and don’t expect any more before the final. I did not review my week 1-4 hw grades until the week of the midterm, and so I had no idea if I was doing anything right. Everyone did not do very well on the midterm, mostly because it was very conceptual in nature and that was not what we did in labs or at all really. There are not a lot of questions on the midterm either so if you miss one question it was a hit to your grade. The final was the same, except there was another online portion that was like our labs, which was much easier and definitely was a grade booster so long as you know what code to do. Overall, the class was pretty disorganized when it came to grading which was very frustrating but the course load was very light except from those few harder homework’s towards the end of the quarter. She offered extra credit for making a meme that was worth a whole homework and also gave extra credit for the course and la surveys. Overall, so did not enjoy this class in general and it was frustrating at times. However, the work was light and the labs and coding I actually found pretty interesting.

Rough class. Too much work especially with the heavy coding HW during finals week