SYS 3021

Required course---class is team taught. Definitely go to office hours for the HW, but it is pretty interesting stuff. Two tests and a midterm. Definitely crushed for time on the tests, but there is a generous curve.

No reading, 2 midterms, 10 homeworks (lowest two grades dropped, but do them all, especially ones at the end of the course).

Open notes, homework, and solutions to homeworks/practice exams on all tests is incredibly helpful. Homework takes a while to complete, but is essential for understanding in this very different type of course. Getting problem formulation down is crucial, and attending Beling's office hours (even if just to bounce ideas and learn from the community of people in attendance) proved to be very helpful in test preparation. Tests are a time crunch, but generally everything can be traced to a similar concept from a homework or lecture, so take 2-3 mins on each question to look back and think about your problem in the big picture before rushing and going with your first instinct, as making a wrong first step can cost you 20 minutes due to the intensive writing and drawing required (or even worse, be essentially unfixable due to the time constraints). Beling does a good job of not moving too quickly during most of the semester, taking entire lectures to just go over practice problems or reintroduce a new network structure.

Pretty decent course. Relatively boring professor but somewhat interesting material. Material is difficult to get all correct, but roughly top 20% get A's so its by no means impossible to do well in the course.

The tests are tough but as long as you keep in mind that they are trying to test things they taught you can be alright (assuming you prepared for the limited number of things that they pretty obviously want to test). Go Hoos

This is a hard class but don't stress too much about it. There are 10 homework assignments, 2 midterms, and a final, but Beling has a few different grading schemes that make sure pretty much everyone passes, even if you struggled with the class the whole semester (aka: you failed a midterm and didn't do great on the other midterm or final). The material of the class can be interesting, but Beling is not the most interesting person to listen to. I would advise trying to listen to lecture to catch some of the points and rules he gives for different algorithms and methods, but know that just doing the homework and going to the TA's office hours are where you will learn the material. (Also the TA's are fantastic for this course when it comes to explaining how to do the homework problems). What really makes this course, especially the exams, hard is that it is more testing your thinking abilities and capability to expand on what has been taught. If you know you're a person who takes more time to process information and work through problems, make sure you're a master at all of the information that has been taught so that you don't have to waste any unnecessary time looking up information (all test are open notes).
Tips for getting through this class are going to office hours to actually understand the material, working with others on the homework but making sure you understand anything you needed help working through, not falling into the trap of not paying attention in class because it will be boring and no one around you will be paying attention, training yourself to answer problems and think fast, and writing something down for every question on tests (they give out generous partial credit on a lot of problems).
Best of luck in this class!

Extremely difficult course, but the professor has a bunch of different grading schemes to maximize your grade. It's doable, but you have to go to office hours for the homework. At the beginning of the semester, the professor says to try to do the homework alone, but don't listen, it takes a lot of practice to understand how to do problems without help. The professor (Beling) is entirely too boring to listen to or learn anything from. Cheng is the greatest.

Beling is super nice and understands the class is difficult. Midterm avgs were below 60 but they run distributions with 5 or so different weights and give you your best grade so your grades thruout the semester won’t be indicative of your final grade. Also I never really went to class. I learned everything from the notes and HW solutions they post after you turn the HW in. Go to office hours Sunday/Tuesday and Cheng will bless you with answers (also, add him on Facebook)