Current instructor

Yazhen Wang

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.90/5 from 10 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

STAT 461
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
he is interested in the material, but cannot convey that at all to his students. There is no textbook, and he has very little study material offered in his lectures. He says that a very basic understanding of R is required, but has us doing complicated stuff that even some one like me with 2 years of R use cannot figure out. Avoid at all cost
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STAT 461
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
Avoid at all costs. Most disorganized professor I've ever hard. Didn't give any study material for tests and made them extremely tricky. His lectures are impossible to follow, and his homeworks are difficult. He also didn't follow a textbook so there was no way to find outside help.
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MATH/STAT 709
Quality 5/5Difficulty 4/5
This is a very hard class, but Wang was an amazing professor! He always explains difficult material in a very clear and intuitive way, and tests are fair. If you have the choice, take his class!
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STAT 479
Quality 2/5Difficulty 2/5
I'm a stats major, and I wish I had never taken this class. The professor was very unorganized, and the TA was not helpful either. It didn't help that this was a 8:50am class. I got a good grade, but I feel like I learned nothing. I wish I could have chosen another stats course.
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451STAT · course not matched
Quality 5/5Difficulty 1/5
Wang is a great teacher. He is easy to understand and explains things really well. He is good at explaining the hard stuff and the good stuff, as well. It is easy to get an A and the exams are pretty straightforward. Great teacher! Try to get him if you can!
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MATH/STAT 309
Quality 3/5Difficulty 2/5
The "required" textbook was never used once, so don't buy it. Wang is at time difficult to understand. I had taken Math 431 (Theory of Probability) before this class, so I had a pretty good grasp on the material, but I could see it being difficult for those without much of a stats background. Exams are basically the same as the practice ones.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Yazhen Wang

STAT 990

Research

1–12 credits

STAT 990 is an independent research and writing course for graduate students under faculty supervision.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

No recorded grade history

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026STAT 681Senior Honors Thesis
Fall 2026STAT 780Introduction to Quantum Data Science
Fall 2026STAT 990Research

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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