Professor
Baharan Mirzasoleiman
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - This class is a pretty useless class, since there is a huge lack of practice material. It doesn't help that the homeworks barely test on what is covered in class, leading to like 5 people attending live lecture everyday, while there are 100 people in the class. This class is focused on a bunch of ML models, like M146, except there are no derivations, and you're basically just using models from sklearn / other ML libraries, and running them to see results. To me, this seemed extremely stupid, since I had no idea what any of the models were doing inside. Also, we never even learned how to do random search or grid search for hyperparameter tuning, which made this class even stupider. Honestly, this class material could be learned in like 1 week if there was a good textbook and syllabus to follow, since we barely covered anything in depth in the homework or the tests. There were only 3 homeworks and 3 projects, each probably took less than 2 hours, so a very light workload. The exam was the worst part of this class. If we actually knew anything, the exam would be easy, but because of no practice problems in lecture, like 1 practice problem in discussion, and no textbook, it was impossible to practice for the exam. If there was 1 practice exam, I would have understood what I was weak on .. but no, hence the exam was hard even though I could have studied all the relevant practice problems in like 30 minutes. Also, Piazza communication is super weak here, questions were left unanswered for weeks and hastily answered before the final. Not a good look. All in all, a class not worth taking. If you want to learn how to implement ML models, spend like 5 minutes on sklearn. If you want to learn the inner workings of basic ML models, take M146 (you def do NOT learn it in this class). If you want to learn the inner workings of neural networks, take ECE 247, or spend 15 minutes watching a 3 blue 1 brown video. It's not even an easy A since the test at the end is a total crapshoot and worth 40% of your grade; if you want an ez class take CM122. Rant over!
Winter 2021 - This class is a pretty useless class, since there is a huge lack of practice material. It doesn't help that the homeworks barely test on what is covered in class, leading to like 5 people attending live lecture everyday, while there are 100 people in the class. This class is focused on a bunch of ML models, like M146, except there are no derivations, and you're basically just using models from sklearn / other ML libraries, and running them to see results. To me, this seemed extremely stupid, since I had no idea what any of the models were doing inside. Also, we never even learned how to do random search or grid search for hyperparameter tuning, which made this class even stupider. Honestly, this class material could be learned in like 1 week if there was a good textbook and syllabus to follow, since we barely covered anything in depth in the homework or the tests. There were only 3 homeworks and 3 projects, each probably took less than 2 hours, so a very light workload. The exam was the worst part of this class. If we actually knew anything, the exam would be easy, but because of no practice problems in lecture, like 1 practice problem in discussion, and no textbook, it was impossible to practice for the exam. If there was 1 practice exam, I would have understood what I was weak on .. but no, hence the exam was hard even though I could have studied all the relevant practice problems in like 30 minutes. Also, Piazza communication is super weak here, questions were left unanswered for weeks and hastily answered before the final. Not a good look. All in all, a class not worth taking. If you want to learn how to implement ML models, spend like 5 minutes on sklearn. If you want to learn the inner workings of basic ML models, take M146 (you def do NOT learn it in this class). If you want to learn the inner workings of neural networks, take ECE 247, or spend 15 minutes watching a 3 blue 1 brown video. It's not even an easy A since the test at the end is a total crapshoot and worth 40% of your grade; if you want an ez class take CM122. Rant over!
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