CS 4102

I enjoyed the structure of the course and think Professor Graham was a decent instructor as well as a really kind guy. He started the semester off really strong when we were talking about sorting algorithms - you could tell that he knew what he was talking about and he explained it in a way that was very clear. Unfortunately, our first exam was pretty rough and assignments started increasing in difficulty around this time, and he started getting negative feedback from students. I think he let this get to his head and lost a lot of confidence, and then the quality of the lectures started dropping. He consistently would make silly mistakes during lecture, apologize for how bad he perceived the lecture to be, and let us out of lecture 15-20 minutes early. This isn't desirable and hopefully, as he teaches more, he gains some confidence. As far as course structure goes, we had 3 write-ups (theory and math-based algo assignments), two midterm exams, a final exam, and 10 required coding problems. Additionally, if you were able to complete all 10 required coding problems and 4 challenging bonus coding problems, you would be rewarded an automatic 100% in the class. The first and third writeup were pretty laid back but the second writeup was brutal. We were allowed to work in groups though on the second one though. The midterms were challenging - the first one was curved though and the second one was multiple choice, so it was doable. The coding problems were pretty inconsistent in difficulty and no partial credit was given for submissions that didn't pass all of the test cases, but the coding problems were graded on a square root curve, which I suppose would help a little bit. The TAs were helpful the few times I went to office hours. I was able to get all 14 problems and didn't have to take the final exam, so I can't speak to what that was like. Overall, I feel like a learned a lot and would take another class with Professor Graham.

pretty good class actually, he's not a bad lecture but he often second guesses himself, if he had some more confidence then the course would be better. the HW's were fair besides a few that were super hard cause people started to complain they were too easy. the tests were fair and a generous bonus policy.

I think i'll end with a B-/B and thats cool, I had a really stressed out schedule this semester and this course was more relaxed then expected. if anyone was taking comp arch with algo this semester, then this class was miles ahead. Also, the final write up is an extra 1-2% extra credit and test1 and the final had a square root curve which was very generous and test2 had just a standard +6 adjustment. if you did all the HW's and just one extra credit problem it would be an additional +5% on your grades and if you got all the bonuses correct and did all the hW's (some people were able too.....then you automatically get an A), also bonuses could sub in for a missing assignment. Overall very generous grading and bonus policy.

Grading cuttoffs... 0.95 A.
0.90 A-
0.87 B+
0.83 B
0.80 B-
0.77 C +
0.73 C
0.68 C-

Really nice guy but awful professor, almost bordering on incompetent. He has no idea how to teach the class, and everything seems like it's disorganized and done at the last minute. He's not confident with what he teaches, and has frequently either apologized during lecture about the quality of teaching or on really awful occasions just gives up and let's the class out early because nobody is understanding anything. I'm also pretty sure he doesn't know the material he teaches. Many times I've gone to his office hours to ask questions, only to be given WRONG ANSWERS. Assuming he hasn't already given up already. I fondly remember one lecture where the class spent 10 minutes pointing out errors on the code in his slides. Most of his lecture material is straight up copied from Princeton, and the difficulty of his assignments is absolutely insane. Sometimes he literally just gives you the code to copy and paste, while other times he goes out of his way to assign the most difficult problems imaginable (which only around 33% of the class can manage to solve) under the guise of creating a "fun and challenging experience for the class". I could go on, but you get the idea. If you don't care about learning algorithms and just want to pass and move on with your life, then go ahead and risk it with . Otherwise, take it with a more experienced professor like Hott or Brunelle.

Graham is such a sweet person who gives a lot of help during office hours, often staying longer than he wants to. The content of the course was really cool, and you get to learn a lot of cool algorithms and have a chance to actually code instead of learning just theory. However, due to it being the first time he teaches the course and my own learning style, there was a lot of variation in terms of difficulty and understanding of the material. For example, all of our exams are differently styled, some assignments, we just copied and pasted code for some assignments while other ones were so hard that only 1/3 of students could solve it, and our write-up 1 was graded with much much more leniency than write up 0. Overall, my grades feel like a mess and I don't know what to expect. While some people really enjoyed the challenge and could solve the problems with relative ease, I ended up struggling.

I have really enjoyed this course. I think Professor Graham has done a wonderful job of explaining different problems, the obvious (typically brute force) method, and then an optimized method. He explains why the optimization is better and goes over the implementations of these different algorithms. He is incredible helpful and really wants his students to understand the material. He does a good job trying to gauge if the class is still confused and if so, reexplaining the concept.