Reviews for CMSC454

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Aravind Srinivasan CMSC454 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/01/2024	I made a review about how Prof Srinivasan taught this class back in October 2023 so this is an update for the Fall 2023 semester now that it's over (apologies for the late review). My review is basically the same as the midsemester one I made. The first thing I wanted to add was that we got a practice final exam and a final review session via Zoom and in-person. The actual final exam is cumulative and was slightly more difficult than the practice final. I still recommend students to take this class with Prof Srinivasan if you get the opportunity.
Aravind Srinivasan CMSC454 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/18/2023	The professor is very caring about his students, he provides a decent amount of resources for students to utilize throughout the class including another professors' slides that follows the course's topics halfway through the semester, pdfs of class notes, lecture videos, review session videos, and a textbook pdf for the topics that were went over in class. He encourages attendance in his class but it isn't required, and he can be reached outside of class easily with his office hours, email, or Piazza. He and the TAs were also fairly active on Piazza, and were helpful in providing homework hints and topic clarification. The homeworks contained more harder questions that expanded on the topics that were learned for the week that kinda deepened your understanding of certain topics. You also were paired up with a couple of people to complete the homework as a group, and for me it helped me get the concepts better. The exams contained questions that were easier than the homeworks, but do expect questions on topics he hasn't covered on previous exams as drilling strictly previous exam questions may make you fall short of what you actually need to know. The prof does curve the grades at the end of the semester based on how the class has done overall. Overall I would say this class is challenging but very manageable, definitely brush up on probability and linear algebra if you're not too strong with it.
Aravind Srinivasan CMSC454 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/14/2023	Please disregard the 5* rating, this class has been nothing short of unfairly tested! :)
Aravind Srinivasan CMSC454 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 10/27/2023	I think this is the first review of how Professor Srinivasan has taught CMSC454. This is a midsemester review for Fall 2023. I think the class is well-organized as all the lecture notes and recordings are provided, the TAs and Prof Srinivasan have in-person and online OH, and the TAs and professor are very responsive to questions on Piazza and emails. Prof Srinivasan writes his notes in OneNote and records via Panopto and uploads them later in the day so people who were absent can catch up. He highly encourages students to come to lecture in-person though. The TAs did a great job at answering my questions and providing guidance during OH on HW and clarifying concepts. The HW problems aren't too bad as we get to work on them in groups of 3, which is very convenient and a nice effort on Prof Srinivasan's part to help students further learn how to work in teams. The HW solutions are provided a few days after the deadline and we get about 1-2 weeks to work on each HW assignment. We received opportunities to submit regrade requests for HWs. The TAs also organized a review session to go over probability concepts and a midterm review session (those recordings were also made available). We also got a practice midterm from the Spring 2022 semester when Prof Srinivasan last taught the course. Prof Srinivasan does a great job at answering questions during lecture and provides interesting real-world examples for the different data science algorithms we cover. He does a brief review of probability concepts and linear algebra fundamentals as they are essential to the algorithms covered within the class. I would strongly suggest you come into this course having already taken an Intro to Probability & Stats course and Linear Algebra course (STAT400 and MATH240). It will make it easier to keep up with the material. One concern I have about this class is that the actual midterm was more challenging than the practice midterm we received but I'm sure that the TAs and Professor Srinivasan recognize this and will be fair with the grading as they are all very understanding. Aside from that, I would say that this is a manageable and well-structured class. Would definitely recommend taking this class with Srinivasan. He's also a very experienced data science industry scholar.