ENEE436 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Richard La ENEE436 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/04/2026	I also disagree with the negative reviews. He's quite a nice guy, and offered some extra credit this semester. His lectures are decently engaging, and the parts of the content he tested on were completely reasonable. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of ML coming out of this class, and would definitely take Dr. La again.
Richard La ENEE436 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/30/2025	Very course dependent of course, but no need to fear professor La for ENEE436, if he's teaching it again. I believe it was different last semester and Ulukus in the coming semester. Machine learning is so broad that it'll be up to the teacher and semester to determine what actually gets covered, but you've basically got a bunch of algorithms for 1) simplifying data and 2) classifying or clustering it. We stayed pretty general in lecture, analyzing what different methods do. Pretty easy to get lost, so I needed to reread stuff a lot, but in the end no need to stress over majority of the details. Exams and homeworks had us do the little bit of computations that humans can actually do (e.g. linear regression is cool, but it doesn't fit into an exam period or even a homework. But verifying a perceptron for a few datapoints does). Pros: - So he's actually a really nice guy but quite shy. Talked to him many times in office hours and after class, and he has lots of interesting things to say and will take care of you with whatever problems you have. Will even explain tangentially related concepts, which of course come up in 436 when we just skim a topic. - Massive drops to grade cutoffs, with a couple different extra credit opportunities. Exam averages are on the low side, but people do get 100s. 20% HW, 20% Group project, 25% Midterm, 35% Final, 5% extra credit personal project - Content was pretty interesting. ML is weird in that you have three things you can spend time on: coding, concepts, or computation. We got to see some code in class and do a little substitution coding in homeworks (take code that works, and show you know what it's doing by taking a new dataset and changing the code so it runs on the new dataset properly). Lectures were mostly for concepts (what is this method, why is it good, why is it bad); we had a little bit of explanation to do on assignments, mainly on the group project. Computation was the other half of the homeworks and much of the exams. Cons: - Yes, he's not the most interesting lecturer ever. But he does have the occasional funny joke. Accent is a little tough at times, but you can always ask for clarification. - Exams could potentially be difficult in the sense that you (probably) have previously seen similar problems to the ones you see on the exam, but if you didn't fully get it or didn't review it (whoops), it's just unlikely that you'll be able to solve it and there's only 4 problems per exam. One midterm, one final. Final has practice problems given to you. - Went after the students a little bit. I was one of ~15 out of 40 people who consistently went to lecture. In order to boost attendance, he stopped posting slides halfway through. The slides are the entire body of the class since it's a pick-and-choose kind of class, so fortunately we eventually convinced him to do pop quizzes instead of not posting the official notes of the class, but it was hectic for a few weeks. Overall, you should be good to take La for at least ENEE436 if not other undergraduate classes (I think he's more involved with signals and 322). I was afraid we were gonna be hung out to dry as so often happens with our favorite ENEE professors, but my experience was not like that. Workload ended up not being that bad either. It sure is a different feeling from the 200s and 300s where you're cranking out tons of problems all day long. Anyways, take, and fear not, but do work hard.
Richard La ENEE436 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2025	I don’t agree with the negative reviews for Professor La. He is a good lecturer, and while his lectures are often over complicated, he tries to make sure his students understand the broad concepts behind all the different ML models. He would often tell us that we only need to have a general understanding of the models, and that was certainly reflected in his homeworks and exams. Overall, I feel like I have a really solid understanding of ML from this course. The course is not easy, but Professor La provides all the material, slides, examples, etc. to be successful in this course. I would highly recommend Professor La and would certainly take another course with him.
Sanghamitra Dutta ENEE436 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/01/2025	The professor is quite knowledgeable on the content and taught the material well. She was always willing to meet with her students to help the, out. Overall the course was alright. Homeworks were could be very challenging and long. The exams were tough. Wish she would have given more practice examples in class though, the homeworks and exams were always much, much more challenging than the material we were exposed.
Joseph JaJa ENEE436 Anonymous 05/14/2024	Professor Jaja has been the worst professor I've ever encountered. His lectures are monotonous and challenging to follow, as he introduces equations without context, assuming prior knowledge from students. The decline in lecture attendance over the semester is a strong reflection of the poor quality of his classes. Attempting to self-study for this course is equally arduous due to the inadequately annotated and illegible notes provided. Furthermore, the absence of a cheat sheet during exams is unreasonable given the vast number of equations we are expected to memorize. Additionally, the professor's refusal to distribute sample exams undermines student preparation. Despite his assertion that his notes are suffice, they are sorely lacking for the reasons stated. I am profoundly dissatisfied with the course and strongly advise others to avoid it if taught by Professor Jaja.
Sanghamitra Dutta ENEE436 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2024	Absolutely fantastic professor. Take her courses at any cost. Insanely knowledgable.
Joseph JaJa ENEE436 Anonymous 03/13/2024	Haven't finished the course, about to take the first exam. I thought I had the worst of it already, nope. This is by far the worst professor and teacher I have had at this University. Hopefully you guys are fortunate enough to disagree but his lectures for this class are horrendous. You can't understand him, nor can you read his writing. On top of that, his lectures are lackluster, he mainly goes over equations and NEVER discusses application. Most of the formulas are mathematical representations of algorithms as well, meaning you need some practice using them to understand but that's typically glossed over. Exams are closed note closed book, no cheat sheet, no calculator. He has no sample exams because he does not believe in them and no practice problems. His homework takes days to finish if you use only the textbook to help (with essentially entire coding projects on each). Avoid this course at all costs if it's with Joseph Jaja, I was so excited to take machine learning but this has surely disappointed me.
Behtash Babadi ENEE436 Anonymous 05/22/2023	He's a wonderful teacher - the lectures are carefully prepared and really interesting, you can tell he's passionate and knowledgeable about the field. He's very nice and always open to questions. Workload and deadlines for the course were always reasonable, and projects are simple and graded leniently. Take him if you get the chance.
Joseph JaJa ENEE436 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/14/2021	Jaja is one of the worst professors I have had. You don't learn anything from him and he doesn't put any effort in explaining the concepts. You are expected to solve complicated homework problems and you have to teach yourself everything.
Joseph JaJa ENEE436 Anonymous 11/22/2021	I came into class excited about machine learning but Dr. Jaja made it painfully boring. He lectures in a monotone, and rather than explaining concepts he just uses math equations. I know machine learning involves math but would it kill him to actually explain concepts like what is a support vector etc His notes are terrible as he writes them beforehand and he expects you to memorize complicated equations for exams. You can't even use the book as he goes beyond the textbook. Overall horrible class. Do yourself a favor and DON'T TAKE HIM!!!

Richard La
ENEE436

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
02/04/2026

I also disagree with the negative reviews. He's quite a nice guy, and offered some extra credit this semester. His lectures are decently engaging, and the parts of the content he tested on were completely reasonable. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of ML coming out of this class, and would definitely take Dr. La again.

Richard La
ENEE436

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/30/2025

Very course dependent of course, but no need to fear professor La for ENEE436, if he's teaching it again. I believe it was different last semester and Ulukus in the coming semester. Machine learning is so broad that it'll be up to the teacher and semester to determine what actually gets covered, but you've basically got a bunch of algorithms for 1) simplifying data and 2) classifying or clustering it. We stayed pretty general in lecture, analyzing what different methods do. Pretty easy to get lost, so I needed to reread stuff a lot, but in the end no need to stress over majority of the details. Exams and homeworks had us do the little bit of computations that humans can actually do (e.g. linear regression is cool, but it doesn't fit into an exam period or even a homework. But verifying a perceptron for a few datapoints does). Pros: - So he's actually a really nice guy but quite shy. Talked to him many times in office hours and after class, and he has lots of interesting things to say and will take care of you with whatever problems you have. Will even explain tangentially related concepts, which of course come up in 436 when we just skim a topic. - Massive drops to grade cutoffs, with a couple different extra credit opportunities. Exam averages are on the low side, but people do get 100s. 20% HW, 20% Group project, 25% Midterm, 35% Final, 5% extra credit personal project - Content was pretty interesting. ML is weird in that you have three things you can spend time on: coding, concepts, or computation. We got to see some code in class and do a little substitution coding in homeworks (take code that works, and show you know what it's doing by taking a new dataset and changing the code so it runs on the new dataset properly). Lectures were mostly for concepts (what is this method, why is it good, why is it bad); we had a little bit of explanation to do on assignments, mainly on the group project. Computation was the other half of the homeworks and much of the exams. Cons: - Yes, he's not the most interesting lecturer ever. But he does have the occasional funny joke. Accent is a little tough at times, but you can always ask for clarification. - Exams could potentially be difficult in the sense that you (probably) have previously seen similar problems to the ones you see on the exam, but if you didn't fully get it or didn't review it (whoops), it's just unlikely that you'll be able to solve it and there's only 4 problems per exam. One midterm, one final. Final has practice problems given to you. - Went after the students a little bit. I was one of ~15 out of 40 people who consistently went to lecture. In order to boost attendance, he stopped posting slides halfway through. The slides are the entire body of the class since it's a pick-and-choose kind of class, so fortunately we eventually convinced him to do pop quizzes instead of not posting the official notes of the class, but it was hectic for a few weeks. Overall, you should be good to take La for at least ENEE436 if not other undergraduate classes (I think he's more involved with signals and 322). I was afraid we were gonna be hung out to dry as so often happens with our favorite ENEE professors, but my experience was not like that. Workload ended up not being that bad either. It sure is a different feeling from the 200s and 300s where you're cranking out tons of problems all day long. Anyways, take, and fear not, but do work hard.

Richard La
ENEE436

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/24/2025

I don’t agree with the negative reviews for Professor La. He is a good lecturer, and while his lectures are often over complicated, he tries to make sure his students understand the broad concepts behind all the different ML models. He would often tell us that we only need to have a general understanding of the models, and that was certainly reflected in his homeworks and exams. Overall, I feel like I have a really solid understanding of ML from this course. The course is not easy, but Professor La provides all the material, slides, examples, etc. to be successful in this course. I would highly recommend Professor La and would certainly take another course with him.

Sanghamitra Dutta
ENEE436

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
01/01/2025

The professor is quite knowledgeable on the content and taught the material well. She was always willing to meet with her students to help the, out. Overall the course was alright. Homeworks were could be very challenging and long. The exams were tough. Wish she would have given more practice examples in class though, the homeworks and exams were always much, much more challenging than the material we were exposed.

Joseph JaJa
ENEE436

Anonymous
05/14/2024

Professor Jaja has been the worst professor I've ever encountered. His lectures are monotonous and challenging to follow, as he introduces equations without context, assuming prior knowledge from students. The decline in lecture attendance over the semester is a strong reflection of the poor quality of his classes. Attempting to self-study for this course is equally arduous due to the inadequately annotated and illegible notes provided. Furthermore, the absence of a cheat sheet during exams is unreasonable given the vast number of equations we are expected to memorize. Additionally, the professor's refusal to distribute sample exams undermines student preparation. Despite his assertion that his notes are suffice, they are sorely lacking for the reasons stated. I am profoundly dissatisfied with the course and strongly advise others to avoid it if taught by Professor Jaja.

Sanghamitra Dutta
ENEE436

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/08/2024

Absolutely fantastic professor. Take her courses at any cost. Insanely knowledgable.

Joseph JaJa
ENEE436

Anonymous
03/13/2024

Haven't finished the course, about to take the first exam. I thought I had the worst of it already, nope. This is by far the worst professor and teacher I have had at this University. Hopefully you guys are fortunate enough to disagree but his lectures for this class are horrendous. You can't understand him, nor can you read his writing. On top of that, his lectures are lackluster, he mainly goes over equations and NEVER discusses application. Most of the formulas are mathematical representations of algorithms as well, meaning you need some practice using them to understand but that's typically glossed over. Exams are closed note closed book, no cheat sheet, no calculator. He has no sample exams because he does not believe in them and no practice problems. His homework takes days to finish if you use only the textbook to help (with essentially entire coding projects on each). Avoid this course at all costs if it's with Joseph Jaja, I was so excited to take machine learning but this has surely disappointed me.

Behtash Babadi
ENEE436

Anonymous
05/22/2023

He's a wonderful teacher - the lectures are carefully prepared and really interesting, you can tell he's passionate and knowledgeable about the field. He's very nice and always open to questions. Workload and deadlines for the course were always reasonable, and projects are simple and graded leniently. Take him if you get the chance.

Joseph JaJa
ENEE436

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/14/2021

Jaja is one of the worst professors I have had. You don't learn anything from him and he doesn't put any effort in explaining the concepts. You are expected to solve complicated homework problems and you have to teach yourself everything.

Joseph JaJa
ENEE436

Anonymous
11/22/2021

I came into class excited about machine learning but Dr. Jaja made it painfully boring. He lectures in a monotone, and rather than explaining concepts he just uses math equations. I know machine learning involves math but would it kill him to actually explain concepts like what is a support vector etc His notes are terrible as he writes them beforehand and he expects you to memorize complicated equations for exams. You can't even use the book as he goes beyond the textbook. Overall horrible class. Do yourself a favor and DON'T TAKE HIM!!!

Reviews for ENEE436