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Todd Rowland DATA250 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/31/2025	If you are a Data Science minor or thinking of becoming one PLEASE just read this. If you have credit for MATH240, or CMSC250 DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS with Rowland, instead just take the other class you haven't taken because you will learn NOTHING in this class and it will suck. If you don't have any coding experience, especially with python, try taking DATA120 first or just don't take this class and maybe even drop the minor because 80% of the homework are complex coding problems that he claimed at the beginning of the semester that you won't need to know (and he doesn't teach you how to code). If you genuinely want to learn something don't take this class. Because his teaching style is to just fumble around material, because honestly I doubt he can even do the things that he is teaching. His exams aren't terrible but he will gatekeep every single piece of info on the exam that will stress you out because you go in not knowing what you're even doing, even after 200 minutes of lecture a week that you probably didn't understand a single thing that was happening on the board because neither does he. Oh and he doesn't even really write his own notes he has Wolfram code it for him. A lot of comments say how nice he is, and how he is accommodating. It doesn't help to be nice if you can't teach. The best example: he would assign HW due each Wednesday and would have to push it back to Friday each time because NO ONE could do it. Don't take this class unless you are dead-set on using all your energy to learn what he's saying, and instead do anything you can to circumvent this class.
Todd Rowland DATA250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/09/2024	like the other reviews say, he's a very nice professor. probably one of the nicer professors i've had. that doesn't mean he can teach. the amount of struggling in this class is insane. its a MWF class with two 50 minute lectures on F, yet we always run out of time. he goes on random tangents that don't relate to what we need to know. during one exam review, he spent at least 30 minutes telling us what we DIDNT need to know for the exam/the class overall, then started teaching us those topics instead of what is actually on the exam. homeworks are completely different from anything we do in class and are mostly python based. everything ive learned has been through youtube or some other online resource. as a person, he's great but he cannot teach even if his life depended on it. his notes are typed for the most part which is strange for math. he sometimes handwrites notes using the projector but they are practically illegible because of his handwriting and how much he crosses things out. if u miss class, good luck trying to understand what he wrote. all in all, don't take him unless you have to.