I feel bad saying this, but it was difficult to understand Zhipeng because of his accent. It made going to lecture pointless, so I exclusively used the slides. That being said, the slides are very comprehensive and give you almost everything you need to know for the class. The workload is decent, but is mostly graded on completion. The labs supplied all the code necessary for assignments, so an understanding of R isn't really needed. Overall, a decent class with a high ceiling, if the subject material really speaks to you and you want to learn more.

Avoid this guy at all costs, I wish I listened to bruinwalk reviews. I knew he was bad but had no idea how bad he could be. The teacher did not teach and none of his notes made sense. He didn’t even make sense. His accent makes concepts that are already complicated even harder. Do not take this course with him. please save your self

Professor Liao is a good instructor. He explains concepts from the first principles and is very knowledgeable about the material. However, this course is more theoretical than practical, so avoid this course if you want to get hands-on experience in financial engineering.

Grade-wise, Professor Liao is a lenient grader. It is quite easy to get A/A- but requires a lot more work to get an A+.

Overall, a decent quantitative upper elective. Would take it again.

This class requires a lot of discipline to keep up with the work, as there are no mandatory assignments. Grade is 30% midterm 70% final, or just 100% final, whichever is higher. Final grade is nearly entirely rank-based so a downward curve is possible. As far as the class itself, Liao's class is pretty hard to pay attention in, but I still recommend you go and at the very least, just follow along the slides, notes aren't super necessary. Everything until the midterm is VERY easy. Over a quarter of the class got 100% on the midterm. However, after that, things ramp up really quickly and this is where you really want to pay attention. Final average was about a 65% and you will almost definitely be short on time during it. Both practice exams were very similar to the real ones. No cheat sheets on tests. Overall, the class is not too bad to get an A as long as you are keeping up with practice problems and can memorize a good amount of formulas. He can be kind of tough to understand but he is a very sweet guy who wants you to succeed.

take his class if you took AP STATS in high school. His class has over 70% content same as AP STATS. I got 5 in AP so I easily got 100% in midterm which takes up 30%. However, after midterm, he started talked about something new and real shit. Those were tough, but u can memories the solutions and saw the same question on final from practice and hmw. DO THE HMW , rememember this shit. As a Chinese, his accent is not strange to me. I can easily understand about his talking and if you have no time for class, you can have recordings freely. But his voice in recording is not that clear. the discussion is not that helpful but mark it if you need. The final test is time limited and really tough. I got 45/51 in final and curved to A. However, on final, I just skimmed the test and did each question for only once, no time for thinking or reviewing or checking. Do the practice well and be familiar with the tests itself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Liao is good and familiar with his content. So if you are good at stats, take his class and kill the game.

After reading the reviews for this class, I was very worried it was going to be super difficult. Especially given that your grade is 30% midterm and 70% final (or 100% final if you do better on it). I also have never taken a stats class before and have only ever taken calculus. For me, I found this class to be far easier than both econ 11 and econ 101. However, I also tend to struggle with the conceptual content in econ classes rather than the math, and this class did not have any connection to econ concepts at all besides a few slides he threw in that were not tested on. Although he has a pretty strong accent and was hard to understand at times, if you just read along with the slides while he lectures, it does help a lot. I went to mostly all of the lectures in person but was not really paying the closest attention, so you could definitely just get on the Zoom or watch the recordings and be okay. There are optional homework assignments with every lecture. I would recommend doing these as he completes the lectures. Most of them are pretty short and do not take a long time besides the last few chapters, which did take quite a bit more time just because the content is more difficult after the midterm. The midterm was almost exactly like the two practice midterms he provided. I do not think there were any problems from the homework, but it gives you extra practice, so I would recommend doing the homework problems as well. For the final, he did switch it up a bit. However, there were still many questions that were very similar to the practice exam questions and the homework questions. I would recommend doing the practice final and practice midterms many times. If you memorize the questions and the formulas you need to solve these problems, it will help you go through the exam much faster since he only gives you two hours for 51 multiple choice questions and you have to go pretty fast to finish. There were also a few questions on the final that were very similar to some of the homework questions, so doing those helped me a lot as well. Like I said, he does throw a few curveball questions in there, but I assume that was to bring the average down a bit since the average on the midterm was a B+. The average on the final was around 68%. I do think he ended up curving the class up slightly since I should have ended up with an A-. Overall, I think Zhipeng is not a bad professor. He seems to always want to help his students and is very good at replying to emails. If you listen to his advice about what to study, you will do well.