Prof. Mahdavi has extensive knowledge of Research Methods in Political science and offers great examples. Lectures are clear, especially for tough course content. Assignments include 4-5 coding problem sets - I strongly suggest you work with friends in the class - as well as a midterm and final. Keep up and pay attention and you will succeed.

Professor Mahdavi seems to be the only political science professor at UCSB with any quantitative skills. The class is hard in terms of math for a political science class, but very easy if you have any prior understanding of basic statistics. Coding is in R studio and is pretty trivial.

Prof Mahdavi is an awesome professor! He really wants his students to succeed and everything he does is very fair. Lectures are super helpful and same with the coding labs, so for sure go to class and section if you want to do well. He also gives so many extra credit opportunities which was great.

I won't lie, the class is hard. That being said, he makes sure to take his time combing through hard concepts and ensuring that students truly understand them. His grading criteria is very clear: it relies primarily on weekly problem sets, which you have ample time to complete. He's also incredibly helpful in office hours, would def take again

Boring lectures; doesn't make coding any easier or exciting to learn. It's a required class, so do your best and get it over with...

He's great. Does a great job of making intimidating material understandable. Much of the grading came from weekly problem sets with R, which aren't difficult but can take time and you MUST do them to pass. Midterm and final were just like the problem sets. Definitely take him for 15 if you can!