CS 3501

This class is definitely a bit weird, I finished with an A but somehow feel I didn’t understand things super well. I think Prof Fletcher is a good teacher, but the material builds on itself so quickly that if you don’t understand a certain part it becomes extremely hard to comprehend later lectures, at least for me. Most of your grade is HW, and my advice for those would be to start early and get help. It’s a bit annoying cause it’s very hard to check your answers for the HW, or understand if your answer is reasonable. The homeworks don’t take super long, but if I wasn’t from a CS background I may have found it way more difficult, as it’s very programming heavy. Overall pretty interesting class, I guess I wish I gained more out of it.

The class isn't too bad, however, Tom spends most of the lecture time rambling about low level math concepts that are really difficult to comprehend most of the time. The homework are mostly doable but the last homework was really long and tedious for no reason. You won't be using most of the stuff you learned from lectures in the homework since the homework only cover a small part of the lecture. There are also four quizzes that are fairly straightforward. Overall I didn't really like this class, it was a programming heavy class that tested your knowledge of statistics and mathematical concepts.

If you're looking for a relatively easy CS elective, this is it. The course consisted of 4 take-home quizzes, which were easy and were open note, and 5 programming assignments. Most of the programming assignments are pretty straightforward and easy to implement, as you basically just implement the formulas Fletcher lectures about in class. However, sometimes the question writeups are a bit unclear or Fletcher doesn't explain things well enough, as sometimes he just rambles on in lecture. But overall, Fletcher is a nice guy and assignments are not that bad. #tCFspring2021