CS 4501

I disagree with the negative review. I had no prior experience with machine learning and that didn't make the course difficult. Professor Nekipelov is a very kind professor who made the class very manageable. There are no exams, and he removed the final project and had just 5 problem sets so that the pacing would be fine for everyone who was struggling to understand the coding and math aspects. If you went to office hours if you were struggling, you would be just fine because the TAs were super helpful. Also, looking at lecture slides helped a lot with completing the homeworks as they sometimes contained the formulas that you needed. Overall, this class was not bad at all and provided a pretty good introduction to machine learning techniques. #tCFS24

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS
This class is a mess. The lectures are split between two professors - one of whom does not know how to lecture. All material is shoved down your throat and you are given no deep explanation about anything. You will best succeed if you have taken Linear Algebra and Machine Learning. If you are an econ kid, run away. The whole grade was based on the 5 problems sets that we had throughout the semester (we were supposed to have a project but we ran out of time and thank goodness we did because that would've been a mess). All the problems sets are created by the grad TAs who are a mess - they don't have a consistent grading method and 50% of them don't know what is going on. The problem sets are rarely related to what we are talking about in class and make no sense/are wording really poorly - half the problem sets are done with python and the other half are just derivations that you write out. Again, no consistent grading method so lots of variation. You are allowed to work with other people so at least that was good.
TLDR: don't take this class unless you already understand Machine Learning and are extremely interested and devoted to the topic