Professor Wainwright is absolutely one of the best professors at UCSB. 120A is a hard course but he makes it interesting and clear to learn. If you have any questions, he will explain them clearly and nicely during office hours, really accessible outside of class. The midterm and final are hard, but, again, just ask questions and you will improve!

Class was structured nicely with section attendance and homework (gave you answers) making up almost half of your grade. Practice exams, homework problems, lecture examples, etc. did not match level of difficulty of the tests though, gave old tests as practice & last yr students had it way easier with their exams.

Prof. Wainwright is really chill, and my 120A experience with him is honestly pretty nice. 50% of the final score is basically free if you do the work, and the exams are not difficult either. Highly recommended.

Wainwright kinda just felt like he was ripping off Swenson the whole quarter. When he was out for a week for Covid at the beginning of fall quarter, he literally just gave us Swenson's prerecorded videos instead of using his own. For this class, going to TA office hours are basically a must, as his notes are long-winded and sometimes confusing.

Professor Wainwright was a great professor but talks a lot during lectures. The course material was difficult but not impossible, and the homework was pretty easy. Tests and quizzes are very fair. Loved listening to his stories during class!

Pretty easy grading scale. Section attendance, fair midterm and final. Dont have to put too much work in to pass, put in an average amount of work and get an A. Lectures are okay, but I appreciate Dr. Wainwright, probably best professor to take 120a with.

Lectures are only focused on the main topics and easy questions that will help you understand but not solidify the material. He doesn't give you studying material for any exam at all so you must find other ways to study beyond the weekly homework. The textbook is at the library and is essential for studying, tests make or break your grade.

Hardly gives you anything to prepare and study for midterms. Final exam was incredibly difficult and we weren't given anything to prepare for it. Lectures are very slow, examples aren't always concise. He's a good guy but not a good professor for this class. This class requires you to understand coding which is ridiculous, it's a statistics class.

This class was so easy.

PSTAT 5A was a difficult course. Wainwrights lectures were no help in learning the material. I spent most of my time reading the textbook for this class and teaching myself concepts. There are very limited resources to help you study for exams, which entirely make or break your grade. The final was insanely hard. 0/10 recommend.

Midterm consists of 5 problems with 4 subproblems each. Expects us to finish in 50 min (actually less than that because he ended it earlier than he was supposed to). Idk about others but I could only finish 4. Even if you perfectly know how to do them all, the time was simply not enough.

As someone who has never learned to code before, this class was the best way for me to learn to code. If this is your first time coding, take this first! The lecture slides have everything you need to know to get As. Quizzes are tougher but doable. 90+ is an A which helped. Go to section and understand how the code works if you want to succeed.

2 mandatory lab sections/week graded solely on showing up. Isn't 100% the best prof, but definitely cares about students and wants them to succeed: no A-, B-, etc (90-99 = A). Midterm/final VERY fair and straightforward/reflect practice problems and are mostly on R/SQL coding syntax. Little workload and easy to catch up, but quizzes are hard :/.

He very obviously cares about his students. He is super sweet, helpful, reasonable with grading/regrades and does not give A-'s. His lectures could be longwinded at times, but he posts them online so I always just watched them double speed and it was super helpful/convienent. Just do the reccomended homework problems and you'll for sure get an A!

Lectures were pointless since he reads off the slides. Going over the slides and studying async is more worth the time to passing. Also do recommended book problems to do well on progress checks in class since that is a large chunk of your grade!

My first stats class and it was so much better than I expected. His lectures were basically just reading his slides so I never went to class but GO TO SECTION! Attending section is like half of your grade, free points basically. Doing the homework practice problems and light review will get you at least a B on the tests: 2 midterms and a final.

I thought it was hard at first, but if you pay attention to the lectures and worksheets with some practice, you will be good in this course. The professor is kind, and TAs are really helpful.

For 5LS I would highly recommend if you want an A. It's an extremely doable A and his grading is fair. His tests are copies of the homework so there are no surprises. I've seen tests from other stats professors for 5A and Wainwright's is way easier and straightforward. His tests also give credit on work shown so partial credit is given :))

horrible

Crazyyy final

Wainwright is a good prof who really cares about his students. Lecture is not mandatory, but is EXTREMELY helpful. I agree with other posts regarding the weekly check in quizzes -- I would have done better on a couple of them if it weren't for the 10 minute time limit. One TA held review sessions for both exams which was essential to doing well.

Honestly, he isn't a bad professor, he's chill it's the class that's boring. He does tend to dwell over topics tho. All expectations are clear. Grading is fair. Recommend reading the textbook for harder topics.

Professor Wainwright's class is very manageable and the expectations are very clear, but his class is super boring. Lectures are very slow and he takes forever to cover the easiest topics. With that said, the class is not difficult and if you attend section you'll be fine.

Very clear and relatively generous grading criteria, 35% labs which are free points, 20% weekly check in quizzes (can be tricky), 20% midterm (very technical and specific, average was in the 70s) and 25% final (haven't taken yet but assume it's like midterm). 90%+ is an A so that's nice. Lectures not mandatory, can learn through section.