ENME392 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 10/03/2024	This guy substituted for Bigio on Thursday. Complete asshole. States that requesting a regrade will make your grade worse.
David Bigio ENME392 Anonymous 09/18/2024	He might seem like a nice guy but this man cannot teach. He baits students into thinking he knows how to teach with his "flipped learning" but it is a complete failure. Learned nothing
Dennis Leber ENME392 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/09/2024	I would definitely recommend if you are try to take ENME392. He keeps his classes engaging while bringing in his own personal experience. Prior to this class, I have heard ENME392 was very difficult, but without any prior stats knowledge, Professor Leber was very helpful. The course is not easy, and you need to actively focus on the homework and classes.
Dennis Leber ENME392 Anonymous 05/06/2024	Im not sure if he just always teaches in the spring but if you can take Leber I highly recommend! He thoroughly explains everything and answers questions fully. The only problem is the lectures sometimes run long and the homework is unnecessarily hard.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/28/2024	I think Professor Cukier has taken the past reviews to heart and tried to improve his teaching. He is not mean to students, but he might joke around and have fun when responding to questions or when talking. He seems to be pretty nice and caring about the students' learning and has worked hard with the other professors and departments to improve the class structure. While some explanations would benefit from more detail and sometimes the slides are a little rushed when presenting making it hard to write down notes, I appreciate the effort to improve the class based on feedback and hopefully, this review helps balance out the others.
Dennis Leber ENME392 Anonymous 03/13/2024	THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND. NEED I SAY MORE???
Dennis Leber ENME392 Anonymous 02/24/2024	So far in the semester, Professor Leber is a great lecturer. He's very kind and interactive with the class. He tries to get students to participate in the examples we do and treats us with respect. I do look forward to having his classes throughout the week as I get to properly understand the material and use his examples to help me study for the exams and hw. Definitely recommend having him as your lecturer over Cukier.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 01/26/2024	Very unprofessional and rude. Gives the demeanor that he does not want you to succeed. It is just the first day and I already see little future with this professor and many others feel the same as 8 people have already drop his section since his first lecture. EIGHT!
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 12/18/2023	Not a nice person. Needs to reevaluate why he wants to teach at all. Does not give students sympathy and overall just a dick. Doesn’t take much to be a good person…
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C Anonymous 11/09/2023	Doesn’t create a safe space conducive to learning. He gets intimidated when students ask difficult questions to which he doesn’t know the answers and then retaliates by saying “you figure it out” to instead of saying “I don’t know, let me look into it”. It’s pretty clear he does not like to lecture because he comes to class unprepared and gets confused by his own slides. For some reason he thinks it’s a good idea to have us use Matlab or excel on the HWs but expects us to do it by hand on the tests.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a B- Anonymous 11/03/2023	This professor is so incompetent you wonder how he actually got the job. The sole reason he is probably teaching this class is because the university is forcing him to do it. He puts in below minimal effort and when students are suffering, he does a great thing called neglecting and thinks that it will solve the problem. Really does deserve his atrocious rating.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C- Anonymous 10/19/2023	He can’t even do the HW problems he assigns on prairielearn correctly. I don’t think he actually knows how to calculate statistics because I haven’t seen any evidence of it yet. He may have lied to get this job, UMD should really address this. This class has been a pretty big waste of money.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a B Anonymous 10/16/2023	I think this is the worst professor I have ever had in my entire life. He has no empathy for his students and on the last midterm, nobody in my section that I know of actually finished it. He is a confusing and horrible lecturer and I can see why his ratings are so low. AVOID THIS MAN AT ALL COSTS LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT BECAUSE IT DOES.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C- Anonymous 10/03/2023	There is a reason why this guy has such a low score. It is amazing he still has a job. He doesn’t care that the tests are too long for the time frame given. Nobody finished the test in my section. UMD, fire this man PLEASE!!!!
Akshay Kandakumar ENME392 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 09/27/2023	Top-tier TA. Akshay demonstrates his mastery of the art of statistics during office hours, exam review sessions, or when I ask him questions about the HWs. He carried hard in one of the most difficult mechanical engineering courses!
Dennis Leber ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/06/2023	Leber is much much better than Cukier, and from what I've heard the other profs too. He has real-world experience from NIST and relates the topics to real-world applications. He acknowledges the problems, formatting issues, and typos in the slides he was given from previous semesters and tries to fix them. He talks slowly and we have time to write down all the things he says. That being said, sometimes the lectures are rushed because there is so much content and not enough time to cover it and HW too, so some topics got neglected. His summary sheets really helped me understand the content. He is also really nice and answers all my questions to the best of his abilities.
Dennis Leber ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2023	Professor Leber is a gift from heaven for us in ENME392. He is one of the best professors I've ever had because he really takes his time to explain content/examples and makes sure everyone in the class understands. His lectures were engaging and it felt like he really cared about the students and wanted our input and questions. This was his first semester teaching 392 and he put a lot of effort into making summary slides for us which was incredibly helpful for the formula sheets. He also works as a statistician and would connect the content to his work which was super interesting. Overall, take Leber you will see a huge difference compared to any other 392 professor. The homework can still be incredibly difficult/annoying for no reason and you will need to use MATLAB. The midterms were very long, but it felt like Leber prepared us well for the exams. The class is still hard but with Leber doing well feels achievable.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a D+ Anonymous 05/08/2023	This is the WORST class I have ever taken in my entire life. This professor should be avoided at all cost. His lectures are completely useless and I learned literally nothing from the course. The department should let us take STAT400 instead and honestly this is just a much worse version of the class. If you are planning to take the class and he is the only choice, just wait a semester until he is gone.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting an A- amcmen 05/07/2023	You have to be a legendarily horrible professor to get 1.26-star rating with 20 reviews. This man will make you regret becoming an engineering major because of how dumb and confusing his lectures are. I didn't attend 90% of the lectures and solely survived off of equation sheets. If I had to choose between sitting in his lecture for an hour or stabbing a rusty, deformed, nail into my big toe I would take the latter.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/03/2023	Terrible professor, you can't learn anything from his class.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 04/29/2023	I did not learn one single thing in his class. Lectures are unbearable to sit through and his disorganization makes it nearly impossible to take notes. Probably 4 weeks into the semester about half the class stopped showing up to lecture. All of the stat professors are horrendous, but unfortunately you’re better off with Bigio than Fuge.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C Anonymous 01/03/2023	This guy really does not know what is going on in this course. He is a terrible professor, and people rarely go to his class just because you can't learn anything in this class. Finding a good study group or using the textbook is much more helpful.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting an A- tortoise7 12/31/2022	To do well in this class you really need to use both the lectures and the book as resources. Bigio's lectures are a bit disorganized and he went through the content a bit slower, which made them easier to follow, but he often didn't cover all the content you need to read in the book. However, I found this teaching style a lot better than the other professor who would speed through all the content to cover everything. Exam questions also seemed fair. From what I can tell, he is probably the best option to take for ENME392.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/28/2022	Cukier really wants to be a good professor, but he can't seem to do anything right. He makes mistakes in lectures, gets confused whenever he is asked a question, and has no confidence in his own teaching style. The homework for this class is absurdly difficult and requires you to do complicated things in matlab despite them not teaching a single thing about how to do things in matlab and the matlab class not even being a prerequisite. I wish the ENME department would get rid of this course and just require STAT400 instead.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2022	This is a terrible and awful professor. Don't take any class with him, that's a waste of time and money. Lazy and doesn't know what he is doing. University should not allow him to teach
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2022	A terrible terrible terrible teacher, does not teach class at all. Taking class with him is just a waste of time and money.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/15/2022	Bigio is by far the best option for ENME392 and it's not even close. You absolutely want to take this with him over Fuge and Cukier. Our class was on zoom, and attendance was optional but you really want to attend these. They're a bit annoying at times and you'll be forced to do group break out participation things. But he will walk you through examples, and most importantly he will tell you exactly what's going to be on the exam. For our class, he told the zoom section a method to do one problem that anyone who didn't watch the lecture would not have known, and definitely got a 0 on the exam for that. So maybe that's not fair, but if you attend the lecture and participate, you'll get a good grade. Lectures are recorded too so you can watch it later. He can be funny at times although I'd guess some will not appreciate his humor and may find it a bit... out of touch. HW is harder than exams by far, so if you can understand the HW you'll be in great shape. He's a pretty lenient grader too, I think even more so if you attended lecture and actively participated. Do the HW, then run through the practice exam he posts and you'll get a good grade. Overall I put in very minimal effort for this class and got an A. I never even opened a textbook (or textbook PDF) for this class.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/27/2022	A genuinely awful professor. I seriously have no idea how he is allowed to teach. He has no idea what is going on half the time. He teaches the course so that you are forced to utilize Matlab, but he never teaches you how to use Matlab. He does not even know himself how to use Matlab. His office hours are useless. He does not know how to answer any sort of question unless it is a question that he has an answer key for. The exams are at least pretty easy. The homework rely on Matlab. but even the TA's do not know hot to grade them properly. We did not know any of our homework grades for a large chunk of the semester. He uses the tiny whiteboard in the class to write notes on, but all his notes are irrelevant and useless because they are all already on the screen. Avoid this guy if possible.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 04/16/2022	Literally one of the worst professors in the ENME department. Seems like a pretty nice guy but does not teach the class at all. Have fun scrambling to teach this to yourself and especially teaching yourself Matlab. All the examples he goes over in class are irrelevant to the homework, which are then worthless for exam preparation. I wish this class was taught that you were rewarded for conceptual fluency, not if your answer is incorrect because you are .0000001 off from the actual correct answer.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/04/2022	Bigio is a funny guy but not a great lecturer. It is not uncommon to walk away from one of his classes feeling more confused than when you walked into class. He often has odd tangents or jokes which do help students to stay engaged for the 75 min class periods. He also occasionally gives a break during the 75 min class periods. Also be prepared for Bigio's very unorganized files page on canvas. There are a lot of past exam problems and other helpful resources, but they are often very hard to find and require a bit of digging. As for the class readings, they are longer than they should be, but they do a really good job at teaching the material, and Bigio is open to shortening them if students ay they are too long. For the exams, I think they were fair and Bigio is a pretty lenient grader as long as you explain your thought process for the question.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/30/2021	DON'T LET THESE REVIEWS SECOND GUESS TAKING DR. BIGIO I honestly enjoyed having Dr. Bigio as an instructor. I would say to be successful in his class, you have to read both the textbook and attend lecture. There are some topics that are not covered in the book that he goes over in lecture such as (Sign Rank and Sign Test, some hypothesis testing problems, and Design of Experiments). He really likes when people engage in his class so make sure to ask questions/work out problems when he says to or he will not be happy. I also used the syllabus to help me plan out what sections of the book I needed to read by a specific date. The homework problems aren't exactly like exam problems but it helps you understand how to solve the problems to prepare you for exams. I know a lot of people say Dr. Bigio isn't the best teacher but I think he is especially how he styles his exams. He doesn't make exams too difficult, it's just knowing the right formulas to use but he is not out to get you. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND taking Bigio in the summer or fall than taking 392 with the other professors who teach in the spring, they make stats more confusing. I tried taking stats in the spring but dropped it because the teaching was horrible and they make you use MATLAB to answer problems. Also, if he sees improvement in your exam grades he's likely to help you pass the class I HIGHLY SUGGEST: - USE THE SYLLABUS AS A GUIDE OF WHAT TO READ SO YOU ARE NOT BEHIND - READ THE BOOK (spend 2-3 hours reading/taking notes and trying to do the homework)
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/27/2021	Dr. Bigio is probably one of the laziest teachers I have had at UMD. That being said, this class can be done without ever attending lectures. Bigio cares and wants his students to succeed, but he is such a useless teacher that his lectures do not help. Barely anyone shows up to lectures, and he wonders why even though we have to learn the material outside of class through the textbook (flipped class). There are textbook reading questions that take much longer than he says they will, and the homework is confusing. He barely goes over the content in lectures, almost never does practice problems in class, and when he does, he skips steps and writes messy, so the work is unclear. He tried to change it up towards the end of the semester by asking the students what to do differently, but he did not adjust accordingly. Also, Bigio is very unorganized as he has so many lecture slides that are each 50 slides long. He picks and chooses which slides to show us and quickly goes over them without explaining in depth since he assumes we read the textbook before coming to class. My suggestion to be successful is to read the textbook, do the homework, and rewrite the homework with the solutions that appear after the homework is due. Lectures are a waste of time, but sometimes he takes attendance. He also applies a curve, but does not say the word "curve." Since the averages are low, the top like 20% get an A, the next 35% get a B, etc.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/16/2021	Nice Professor, patient and will answer questions - but the course layout for his class is really bad. For example, if going over a new topic he doesn't give it a name and kinda just dives into describing how it works. So it never really feels like the lessons had a beginning middle or end. It feels kind of like he just talks at you.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/15/2021	Bigio is a very very bad professor. He cannot work through, and often refuses to work through problems without skipping over important details. He doesn't understand what confuses students, and spends way too much time telling us why we're wrong. Before the 2nd midterm, this dude gave us the worst review material i have ever seen. We got McGraw Hill homework problems instead of exam problems; McGraw Hill is barely even from the same class. The exam problems were unlike anything we had ever been given on homework or in class up until that point. Do not take Bigio, also avoid the other professors like Fuge.
David Bigio ENME392 Anonymous 10/27/2021	As of Fall 2021, Professor Bigio is the most unhelpful professor I have had in my three years at UMD. Spends all of class going off on tangents and focusing on concepts deviating from the book. Super disorganized, misses class like its nothing and wonders why people skip his lectures. Complains constantly about students, when he could spend that time teaching or doing examples. He thinks his MIT degree qualifies him as a god or something. News flash, it doesn't. If you can, try to get a different instructor for 392.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 05/22/2021	They were delusional to believe that there setup for the course was good. Horrendous setup. Fuge seems like a nice guy in person, but the approach for this class was terrible. This class should have doubled for Matlab credit given how heavily we had to use it. So if you ain't have a clue to use it, you're out of luck.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 05/22/2021	Let this be a warning to anyone that has to take it with either Cukier or Fuge. Granted they may teach it differently once things are back in person, but being taught through zoom and asynchronous videos was just a huge mess to deal with it. Cukier, you won't understand his notes at all unless you've been keeping up with lecture to the dot. The notes that he does during lecture are a joke, typing out the solution makes interpreting his work difficult since this class is heavy on the notations. Its quite the headache. The HW you have to do is extremely tedious and time consuming, granted I didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, but they are very long and take time too. By the way, they also catch you off guard with how heavily emphasized MATLAB is used in the course. So if you haven't coded before or barely utilized it you're in for a great time. Tests are extremely challenging, there's a reason why the averages are low, you can't get partial credit, unlike a normal practical exam you can still get some sort of credit for attempting it. Here however, you only can salvage some credit when you get the question RIGHT. So really its either all or nothing with these exams. Ultimately you're gonna take an L with whichever statistics professor you have. This department needs to be investigated.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 05/13/2021	I really wish I could give zero stars for this, but I can't. This course allowed me to get a glimpse of what Hell actually looks like. There is no organization for this class. This semester was a flipped classroom setting which was just awful. Many of the homework processes that they show in class are wrong, but Fuge will deny that it's wrong. The exams were online and there was no partial credit. The averages on the exams were around a D every time, and there are too many long questions on the exams for the small amount of time given. Also, if you ask a question through Piazza or via email you won't get a response ever or you have to wait 3-5 business days. I believe that this course was meant to set students up for failure. Welcome to Hell if you're going to take this course.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 05/10/2021	This is by far the worst course I’ve taken at UMD. The professors are incompetent, constantly retracting their own statements and overall a complete disgrace to the university. The course layout is awful and inefficient. We are expected to watch all lecture videos and do homework before coming to class which begs the question, Why even come to class? Furthermore the professors instruct us to asks further questions on Piazza, which they have frequently neglected to answers for multiple days on pressing issues. Cuckier is frequently wrong in his demonstrations which only further confuses students, while Fuge insults is by only asking for “high level questions” Lastly, no one can ever seem to give a straight answer without having to “confer” which in other words means they will never tell you the answer and are dodging the question. The worst part of all is the use of prarie learn. Each question must be completed twice to get full credit but if a student doesn’t complete one single part of a question, they have no way of earning any points on the second attempt. Furthermore the exams use instant feedback which i will admit is nice, but the professors don’t even bother with partial credit which destroys all hope of earning credit for displaying what you know.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 05/02/2021	This was baaaaad. Asynchronous time made students even more confused and feedback was ignored. The averages on our exams were well below passing and I learned very little this semester.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 04/30/2021	This is by far the worst course I’ve taken at UMD. The professors are incompetent, constantly retracting their own statements and overall a complete disgrace to the university. The course layout is awful and inefficient. We are expected to watch all lecture videos and do homework before coming to class which begs the question, Why even come to class? Furthermore the professors instruct us to asks further questions on Piazza, which they have frequently neglected to answers for multiple days on pressing issues. Cuckier is frequently wrong in his demonstrations which only further confuses students, while Fuge insults is by only asking for “high level questions” Lastly, no one can ever seem to give a straight answer without having to “confer” which in other words means they will never tell you the answer and are dodging the question. The worst part of all is the use of prarie learn. Each question must be completed twice to get full credit but if a student doesn’t compete one single part of a question, they have no way of earning any points on the second attempt. Furthermore the exams use instant feedback which i will admit is nice, but the professors don’t even bother with partial credit which destroys all hope of earning credit for displaying what you know.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 04/19/2021	Possibly the worst setup class taken, ever. I was awfully surprised at the lack of organization and support. At least the TA's and TF's are good. Dr. Fuge is friendly, helpful at times, but goes on way too many tangents that can lead to more confusion.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Anonymous 04/13/2021	One of the more poorly set-up classes I've taken. Not the best teaching style to try and implement in an online environment. Maybe he is better in person, but it was hard to understand these concepts over Zoom.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a C Anonymous 01/04/2021	Just here to say as of 2020, all these reviews for 392 are still accurate. He just simply is disorganized, not prepared to teach effectively, and just reads off slides. Bigio claims he tries, but in all honesty he should just stick to research. I feel for the guy, but man, he might have been the most useless professor I have had. Just make sure you do the HW's and all the practice exam material and you should be good. Also a fire formula sheet will save you, as they give out really nice partial credit on exams.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/23/2019	Dr. Fuge is a really interesting professor and extremely friendly. This class is very difficult but he does his best to explain the material. He is definitely better than most of the other stat professors in the department in my opinion.
Mark Fuge ENME392 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/04/2019	Weak professor. He has been consistently behind in lecture meaning we need to learn how to do most of the HW on our own then have him go over it the following week. Only upside is that for my class each lecture was streamed and saved so we could access it later.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/19/2015	He initially seemed to be one of the better professors from the mech E department, as he appears to genuinely want students to succeed and learn the material. He is also one of the only professors to go through examples and really try to hammer in each step of the problem. Unfortunately he is also one of the most petty and egotistical professors. He took people skipping his class as some sort of personal grievance, and took it out on the rest of the class. He started spending more and more time complaining to the class, and made exams unreasonably long in order to punish students for skipping. This just resulted in more people skipping his lectures because they weren't useful. He asked for feedback on how to improve, and took any suggestions and threw them back at students' faces, refusing to take any responsibility on his end.
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a B parade 01/13/2015	Absolutely awful professor. Half the class ends up skipping his lecture and he will constantly whine about people skipping failing to realize that it is because of his terrible teaching style. You will learn nothing from his class and he has a bad personality. Do NOT take him!
David Bigio ENME392 Expecting a B cheesecake 12/15/2014	Horrible professor. His lectures are disorganized and rushed. He skips half of the material in the PowerPoints that he made and tell you to learn it on your own. He is smug, arrogant, and condescending to students. Constantly complains that attendance is poor in his lectures, but doesn't realize that it's because he is a bad teacher. Avoid if possible!
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 12/11/2010	This is by far the worst professor I have ever taken. Homework assignment on the second half of the semester to up to 10 hours to do. And they had nothing to do with the exams because you cant use excel on the exams, but he expects you to know how excel calculated it and for you to show it on the exam. He did not give ANY practice exams. We all just groped in the dark, guessing for questions for practice. I think he's lazy and tries to recycle materials from semester to semester and doesn't want students to see the past ones. Also he does not give you your exams back. If grading was incorrect you will never know about it. He makes the exams cumulative but he doesn't give you back exams so you have no idea what you need to work on more for the next exam. The formal sheet he gives you for the exams have nothing labeled. If you don't know what the equation is for already you are pretty much screwed. Summary: Way too much work for a 3 credit class. Hard exams that are even harder to study for.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Anonymous 11/23/2010	Wow Frostea took the words straight out of my mouth... His own HW problems are horrendously awful and take incredibly long to complete (HW is worth 25% of your grade). Like Frostea said, you waste half your time figuring out what he wants! The TA's were such a blessing. I wish Mary was teaching the class.. This is the worst class I've ever taken and statistics is an incredibly important subject. Its a shame this guy is so awful, avoid him like the plague. Dr. Barker teaches this class sometimes, he's an excellent professor.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting a B Frostea 11/13/2010	I honestly get the impression he is teaching this course not out of desire, but necessity. Be very careful with this teacher; he purposefully quickly glosses over information and AVOIDS explaining it when he intended to have a clicker question on it or emphasize it on the exam. This isn't always the case, but often is. He is very passive aggressive in his teaching style. When he makes a mistake on his custom made homework problems since he worded it unnecessarily vaguely, he says it's your fault for not assuming X, Y, or Z, when it could very well be that the assumption could be invalid if you interpret the data differently. Students actively argue with him about his homework problems, which are often UNNESSARY. If he assigned just book problems, they would be bearable. But a HUGE amount of time always goes into trying to interpret his custom problems, NOT into actually applying the material. I did very well on the first exam but awful on the second exam as I had ZERO sleep due to staying up all night trying to play catch up for my other classes after one of his god awful homeworks that I had to spend my entire weekend + monday in order to complete with some understanding of the material. So I was a complete wreck for his exam. In a nutshell: he has a very typical professor-complex where he considers his class the only one in existance and expects you to "get rid of conflicts" if you can't attend the problem solving sessions on friday. Sorry sir, you cannot ask a student to drop classes just to attend the friday sessions. That is not only egotistical but also unethical. This a 3 credit class that you assign 6-9 credits worth of work per week. I've researching the necessary paperwork to report this teacher to the academic board; his unethical practices are negligent and destructive. If you do not like to teach, please leave. I shouldn't pay you tons of money to berate us in class.
Michel Cukier ENME392 smefeman 11/02/2010	This guy is a horrible lecturer. His lectures don't help (learning from the book is better) and he is bad at answering questions. When asking questions during class, he will be easily confused with your question and probably give you a BS answer like "it depends what you're doing" and continue on with lecture. He gives the worst clicker questions at the end of his lectures (usually 2 or 3 questions) which are on some mundane detail of his lecture he went over for 30 seconds. These count for 5% of your grade (syllabus is not clear). He gives more homework than my other engineering classes (like 12-20 problems per week along with analyzing raw data). Also, he'll take off 2% of your final grade if you don't pick up your homework from his office. Seriously, wtf?? Tests are tricky on purpose, so you'll need to be very careful reading the problem over and over. They are long and you'll need to be proficient to finish on time. He does hold problem solving sessions on Fridays (can't go to them because of class), but I hear they are largely useless like his lectures. Overall, one of the worst professors I've had, especially for a course that needs a lot of careful explanation.
Michel Cukier ENME392 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/29/2010	Michel is a difficult professor to put a grade to. His lectures are largely useless even though he does put them online. They are very scattered and doesn't show work, so often it looks like he just jumps to the answer with no explanation. The worst part of the lectures was the clickers at the end. There are 2 questions that are graded as quizzes. The questions are usually about some very minuscule detail and his wording is sometimes very unclear. If you have him, I recommend bringing the textbook or his lecture notes and looking up the answers because he allows this. Sample exams: "How do you mean sample exams?" was one of his quotes from the year. He does not give sample exams and his regular exams are very hard and curves them to around a 75% average. Homework: Gives a lot of homework but pays more attention to effort, though the correct answer does count. Availability: He makes himself very available to students and is very approachable and a nice guy, and is always willing to help out students. His accent was somewhat of a barrier, but once you learn what certain words are, it's not too bad. The curve at the end seemed pretty large because the average grade was very low. I'm sure you could do worse than Cukier, but I'm sure you could do better as well.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
10/03/2024

This guy substituted for Bigio on Thursday. Complete asshole. States that requesting a regrade will make your grade worse.

David Bigio
ENME392

Anonymous
09/18/2024

He might seem like a nice guy but this man cannot teach. He baits students into thinking he knows how to teach with his "flipped learning" but it is a complete failure. Learned nothing

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
05/09/2024

I would definitely recommend if you are try to take ENME392. He keeps his classes engaging while bringing in his own personal experience. Prior to this class, I have heard ENME392 was very difficult, but without any prior stats knowledge, Professor Leber was very helpful. The course is not easy, and you need to actively focus on the homework and classes.

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Anonymous
05/06/2024

Im not sure if he just always teaches in the spring but if you can take Leber I highly recommend! He thoroughly explains everything and answers questions fully. The only problem is the lectures sometimes run long and the homework is unnecessarily hard.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
03/28/2024

I think Professor Cukier has taken the past reviews to heart and tried to improve his teaching. He is not mean to students, but he might joke around and have fun when responding to questions or when talking. He seems to be pretty nice and caring about the students' learning and has worked hard with the other professors and departments to improve the class structure. While some explanations would benefit from more detail and sometimes the slides are a little rushed when presenting making it hard to write down notes, I appreciate the effort to improve the class based on feedback and hopefully, this review helps balance out the others.

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Anonymous
03/13/2024

THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND. NEED I SAY MORE???

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Anonymous
02/24/2024

So far in the semester, Professor Leber is a great lecturer. He's very kind and interactive with the class. He tries to get students to participate in the examples we do and treats us with respect. I do look forward to having his classes throughout the week as I get to properly understand the material and use his examples to help me study for the exams and hw. Definitely recommend having him as your lecturer over Cukier.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
01/26/2024

Very unprofessional and rude. Gives the demeanor that he does not want you to succeed. It is just the first day and I already see little future with this professor and many others feel the same as 8 people have already drop his section since his first lecture. EIGHT!

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
12/18/2023

Not a nice person. Needs to reevaluate why he wants to teach at all. Does not give students sympathy and overall just a dick. Doesn’t take much to be a good person…

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C
Anonymous
11/09/2023

Doesn’t create a safe space conducive to learning. He gets intimidated when students ask difficult questions to which he doesn’t know the answers and then retaliates by saying “you figure it out” to instead of saying “I don’t know, let me look into it”. It’s pretty clear he does not like to lecture because he comes to class unprepared and gets confused by his own slides. For some reason he thinks it’s a good idea to have us use Matlab or excel on the HWs but expects us to do it by hand on the tests.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
11/03/2023

This professor is so incompetent you wonder how he actually got the job. The sole reason he is probably teaching this class is because the university is forcing him to do it. He puts in below minimal effort and when students are suffering, he does a great thing called neglecting and thinks that it will solve the problem. Really does deserve his atrocious rating.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
10/19/2023

He can’t even do the HW problems he assigns on prairielearn correctly. I don’t think he actually knows how to calculate statistics because I haven’t seen any evidence of it yet. He may have lied to get this job, UMD should really address this. This class has been a pretty big waste of money.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a B
Anonymous
10/16/2023

I think this is the worst professor I have ever had in my entire life. He has no empathy for his students and on the last midterm, nobody in my section that I know of actually finished it. He is a confusing and horrible lecturer and I can see why his ratings are so low. AVOID THIS MAN AT ALL COSTS LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT BECAUSE IT DOES.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
10/03/2023

There is a reason why this guy has such a low score. It is amazing he still has a job. He doesn’t care that the tests are too long for the time frame given. Nobody finished the test in my section. UMD, fire this man PLEASE!!!!

Akshay Kandakumar
ENME392

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
09/27/2023

Top-tier TA. Akshay demonstrates his mastery of the art of statistics during office hours, exam review sessions, or when I ask him questions about the HWs. He carried hard in one of the most difficult mechanical engineering courses!

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/06/2023

Leber is much much better than Cukier, and from what I've heard the other profs too. He has real-world experience from NIST and relates the topics to real-world applications. He acknowledges the problems, formatting issues, and typos in the slides he was given from previous semesters and tries to fix them. He talks slowly and we have time to write down all the things he says. That being said, sometimes the lectures are rushed because there is so much content and not enough time to cover it and HW too, so some topics got neglected. His summary sheets really helped me understand the content. He is also really nice and answers all my questions to the best of his abilities.

Dennis Leber
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/17/2023

Professor Leber is a gift from heaven for us in ENME392. He is one of the best professors I've ever had because he really takes his time to explain content/examples and makes sure everyone in the class understands. His lectures were engaging and it felt like he really cared about the students and wanted our input and questions. This was his first semester teaching 392 and he put a lot of effort into making summary slides for us which was incredibly helpful for the formula sheets. He also works as a statistician and would connect the content to his work which was super interesting. Overall, take Leber you will see a huge difference compared to any other 392 professor. The homework can still be incredibly difficult/annoying for no reason and you will need to use MATLAB. The midterms were very long, but it felt like Leber prepared us well for the exams. The class is still hard but with Leber doing well feels achievable.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a D+
Anonymous
05/08/2023

This is the WORST class I have ever taken in my entire life. This professor should be avoided at all cost. His lectures are completely useless and I learned literally nothing from the course. The department should let us take STAT400 instead and honestly this is just a much worse version of the class. If you are planning to take the class and he is the only choice, just wait a semester until he is gone.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting an A-
amcmen
05/07/2023

You have to be a legendarily horrible professor to get 1.26-star rating with 20 reviews. This man will make you regret becoming an engineering major because of how dumb and confusing his lectures are. I didn't attend 90% of the lectures and solely survived off of equation sheets. If I had to choose between sitting in his lecture for an hour or stabbing a rusty, deformed, nail into my big toe I would take the latter.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
05/03/2023

Terrible professor, you can't learn anything from his class.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
04/29/2023

I did not learn one single thing in his class. Lectures are unbearable to sit through and his disorganization makes it nearly impossible to take notes. Probably 4 weeks into the semester about half the class stopped showing up to lecture. All of the stat professors are horrendous, but unfortunately you’re better off with Bigio than Fuge.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C
Anonymous
01/03/2023

This guy really does not know what is going on in this course. He is a terrible professor, and people rarely go to his class just because you can't learn anything in this class. Finding a good study group or using the textbook is much more helpful.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting an A-
tortoise7
12/31/2022

To do well in this class you really need to use both the lectures and the book as resources. Bigio's lectures are a bit disorganized and he went through the content a bit slower, which made them easier to follow, but he often didn't cover all the content you need to read in the book. However, I found this teaching style a lot better than the other professor who would speed through all the content to cover everything. Exam questions also seemed fair. From what I can tell, he is probably the best option to take for ENME392.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a C
Anonymous
12/28/2022

Cukier really wants to be a good professor, but he can't seem to do anything right. He makes mistakes in lectures, gets confused whenever he is asked a question, and has no confidence in his own teaching style. The homework for this class is absurdly difficult and requires you to do complicated things in matlab despite them not teaching a single thing about how to do things in matlab and the matlab class not even being a prerequisite. I wish the ENME department would get rid of this course and just require STAT400 instead.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2022

This is a terrible and awful professor. Don't take any class with him, that's a waste of time and money. Lazy and doesn't know what he is doing. University should not allow him to teach

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/19/2022

A terrible terrible terrible teacher, does not teach class at all. Taking class with him is just a waste of time and money.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/15/2022

Bigio is by far the best option for ENME392 and it's not even close. You absolutely want to take this with him over Fuge and Cukier. Our class was on zoom, and attendance was optional but you really want to attend these. They're a bit annoying at times and you'll be forced to do group break out participation things. But he will walk you through examples, and most importantly he will tell you exactly what's going to be on the exam. For our class, he told the zoom section a method to do one problem that anyone who didn't watch the lecture would not have known, and definitely got a 0 on the exam for that. So maybe that's not fair, but if you attend the lecture and participate, you'll get a good grade. Lectures are recorded too so you can watch it later. He can be funny at times although I'd guess some will not appreciate his humor and may find it a bit... out of touch. HW is harder than exams by far, so if you can understand the HW you'll be in great shape. He's a pretty lenient grader too, I think even more so if you attended lecture and actively participated. Do the HW, then run through the practice exam he posts and you'll get a good grade. Overall I put in very minimal effort for this class and got an A. I never even opened a textbook (or textbook PDF) for this class.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/27/2022

A genuinely awful professor. I seriously have no idea how he is allowed to teach. He has no idea what is going on half the time. He teaches the course so that you are forced to utilize Matlab, but he never teaches you how to use Matlab. He does not even know himself how to use Matlab. His office hours are useless. He does not know how to answer any sort of question unless it is a question that he has an answer key for. The exams are at least pretty easy. The homework rely on Matlab. but even the TA's do not know hot to grade them properly. We did not know any of our homework grades for a large chunk of the semester. He uses the tiny whiteboard in the class to write notes on, but all his notes are irrelevant and useless because they are all already on the screen. Avoid this guy if possible.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
04/16/2022

Literally one of the worst professors in the ENME department. Seems like a pretty nice guy but does not teach the class at all. Have fun scrambling to teach this to yourself and especially teaching yourself Matlab. All the examples he goes over in class are irrelevant to the homework, which are then worthless for exam preparation. I wish this class was taught that you were rewarded for conceptual fluency, not if your answer is incorrect because you are .0000001 off from the actual correct answer.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/04/2022

Bigio is a funny guy but not a great lecturer. It is not uncommon to walk away from one of his classes feeling more confused than when you walked into class. He often has odd tangents or jokes which do help students to stay engaged for the 75 min class periods. He also occasionally gives a break during the 75 min class periods. Also be prepared for Bigio's very unorganized files page on canvas. There are a lot of past exam problems and other helpful resources, but they are often very hard to find and require a bit of digging. As for the class readings, they are longer than they should be, but they do a really good job at teaching the material, and Bigio is open to shortening them if students ay they are too long. For the exams, I think they were fair and Bigio is a pretty lenient grader as long as you explain your thought process for the question.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/30/2021

DON'T LET THESE REVIEWS SECOND GUESS TAKING DR. BIGIO I honestly enjoyed having Dr. Bigio as an instructor. I would say to be successful in his class, you have to read both the textbook and attend lecture. There are some topics that are not covered in the book that he goes over in lecture such as (Sign Rank and Sign Test, some hypothesis testing problems, and Design of Experiments). He really likes when people engage in his class so make sure to ask questions/work out problems when he says to or he will not be happy. I also used the syllabus to help me plan out what sections of the book I needed to read by a specific date. The homework problems aren't exactly like exam problems but it helps you understand how to solve the problems to prepare you for exams. I know a lot of people say Dr. Bigio isn't the best teacher but I think he is especially how he styles his exams. He doesn't make exams too difficult, it's just knowing the right formulas to use but he is not out to get you. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND taking Bigio in the summer or fall than taking 392 with the other professors who teach in the spring, they make stats more confusing. I tried taking stats in the spring but dropped it because the teaching was horrible and they make you use MATLAB to answer problems. Also, if he sees improvement in your exam grades he's likely to help you pass the class I HIGHLY SUGGEST: - USE THE SYLLABUS AS A GUIDE OF WHAT TO READ SO YOU ARE NOT BEHIND - READ THE BOOK (spend 2-3 hours reading/taking notes and trying to do the homework)

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/27/2021

Dr. Bigio is probably one of the laziest teachers I have had at UMD. That being said, this class can be done without ever attending lectures. Bigio cares and wants his students to succeed, but he is such a useless teacher that his lectures do not help. Barely anyone shows up to lectures, and he wonders why even though we have to learn the material outside of class through the textbook (flipped class). There are textbook reading questions that take much longer than he says they will, and the homework is confusing. He barely goes over the content in lectures, almost never does practice problems in class, and when he does, he skips steps and writes messy, so the work is unclear. He tried to change it up towards the end of the semester by asking the students what to do differently, but he did not adjust accordingly. Also, Bigio is very unorganized as he has so many lecture slides that are each 50 slides long. He picks and chooses which slides to show us and quickly goes over them without explaining in depth since he assumes we read the textbook before coming to class. My suggestion to be successful is to read the textbook, do the homework, and rewrite the homework with the solutions that appear after the homework is due. Lectures are a waste of time, but sometimes he takes attendance. He also applies a curve, but does not say the word "curve." Since the averages are low, the top like 20% get an A, the next 35% get a B, etc.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/16/2021

Nice Professor, patient and will answer questions - but the course layout for his class is really bad. For example, if going over a new topic he doesn't give it a name and kinda just dives into describing how it works. So it never really feels like the lessons had a beginning middle or end. It feels kind of like he just talks at you.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
12/15/2021

Bigio is a very very bad professor. He cannot work through, and often refuses to work through problems without skipping over important details. He doesn't understand what confuses students, and spends way too much time telling us why we're wrong. Before the 2nd midterm, this dude gave us the worst review material i have ever seen. We got McGraw Hill homework problems instead of exam problems; McGraw Hill is barely even from the same class. The exam problems were unlike anything we had ever been given on homework or in class up until that point. Do not take Bigio, also avoid the other professors like Fuge.

David Bigio
ENME392

Anonymous
10/27/2021

As of Fall 2021, Professor Bigio is the most unhelpful professor I have had in my three years at UMD. Spends all of class going off on tangents and focusing on concepts deviating from the book. Super disorganized, misses class like its nothing and wonders why people skip his lectures. Complains constantly about students, when he could spend that time teaching or doing examples. He thinks his MIT degree qualifies him as a god or something. News flash, it doesn't. If you can, try to get a different instructor for 392.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
05/22/2021

They were delusional to believe that there setup for the course was good. Horrendous setup. Fuge seems like a nice guy in person, but the approach for this class was terrible. This class should have doubled for Matlab credit given how heavily we had to use it. So if you ain't have a clue to use it, you're out of luck.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
05/22/2021

Let this be a warning to anyone that has to take it with either Cukier or Fuge. Granted they may teach it differently once things are back in person, but being taught through zoom and asynchronous videos was just a huge mess to deal with it. Cukier, you won't understand his notes at all unless you've been keeping up with lecture to the dot. The notes that he does during lecture are a joke, typing out the solution makes interpreting his work difficult since this class is heavy on the notations. Its quite the headache. The HW you have to do is extremely tedious and time consuming, granted I didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, but they are very long and take time too. By the way, they also catch you off guard with how heavily emphasized MATLAB is used in the course. So if you haven't coded before or barely utilized it you're in for a great time. Tests are extremely challenging, there's a reason why the averages are low, you can't get partial credit, unlike a normal practical exam you can still get some sort of credit for attempting it. Here however, you only can salvage some credit when you get the question RIGHT. So really its either all or nothing with these exams. Ultimately you're gonna take an L with whichever statistics professor you have. This department needs to be investigated.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
05/13/2021

I really wish I could give zero stars for this, but I can't. This course allowed me to get a glimpse of what Hell actually looks like. There is no organization for this class. This semester was a flipped classroom setting which was just awful. Many of the homework processes that they show in class are wrong, but Fuge will deny that it's wrong. The exams were online and there was no partial credit. The averages on the exams were around a D every time, and there are too many long questions on the exams for the small amount of time given. Also, if you ask a question through Piazza or via email you won't get a response ever or you have to wait 3-5 business days. I believe that this course was meant to set students up for failure. Welcome to Hell if you're going to take this course.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
05/10/2021

This is by far the worst course I’ve taken at UMD. The professors are incompetent, constantly retracting their own statements and overall a complete disgrace to the university. The course layout is awful and inefficient. We are expected to watch all lecture videos and do homework before coming to class which begs the question, Why even come to class? Furthermore the professors instruct us to asks further questions on Piazza, which they have frequently neglected to answers for multiple days on pressing issues. Cuckier is frequently wrong in his demonstrations which only further confuses students, while Fuge insults is by only asking for “high level questions” Lastly, no one can ever seem to give a straight answer without having to “confer” which in other words means they will never tell you the answer and are dodging the question. The worst part of all is the use of prarie learn. Each question must be completed twice to get full credit but if a student doesn’t complete one single part of a question, they have no way of earning any points on the second attempt. Furthermore the exams use instant feedback which i will admit is nice, but the professors don’t even bother with partial credit which destroys all hope of earning credit for displaying what you know.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
05/02/2021

This was baaaaad. Asynchronous time made students even more confused and feedback was ignored. The averages on our exams were well below passing and I learned very little this semester.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
04/30/2021

This is by far the worst course I’ve taken at UMD. The professors are incompetent, constantly retracting their own statements and overall a complete disgrace to the university. The course layout is awful and inefficient. We are expected to watch all lecture videos and do homework before coming to class which begs the question, Why even come to class? Furthermore the professors instruct us to asks further questions on Piazza, which they have frequently neglected to answers for multiple days on pressing issues. Cuckier is frequently wrong in his demonstrations which only further confuses students, while Fuge insults is by only asking for “high level questions” Lastly, no one can ever seem to give a straight answer without having to “confer” which in other words means they will never tell you the answer and are dodging the question. The worst part of all is the use of prarie learn. Each question must be completed twice to get full credit but if a student doesn’t compete one single part of a question, they have no way of earning any points on the second attempt. Furthermore the exams use instant feedback which i will admit is nice, but the professors don’t even bother with partial credit which destroys all hope of earning credit for displaying what you know.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
04/19/2021

Possibly the worst setup class taken, ever. I was awfully surprised at the lack of organization and support. At least the TA's and TF's are good. Dr. Fuge is friendly, helpful at times, but goes on way too many tangents that can lead to more confusion.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Anonymous
04/13/2021

One of the more poorly set-up classes I've taken. Not the best teaching style to try and implement in an online environment. Maybe he is better in person, but it was hard to understand these concepts over Zoom.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a C
Anonymous
01/04/2021

Just here to say as of 2020, all these reviews for 392 are still accurate. He just simply is disorganized, not prepared to teach effectively, and just reads off slides. Bigio claims he tries, but in all honesty he should just stick to research. I feel for the guy, but man, he might have been the most useless professor I have had. Just make sure you do the HW's and all the practice exam material and you should be good. Also a fire formula sheet will save you, as they give out really nice partial credit on exams.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/23/2019

Dr. Fuge is a really interesting professor and extremely friendly. This class is very difficult but he does his best to explain the material. He is definitely better than most of the other stat professors in the department in my opinion.

Mark Fuge
ENME392

Expecting a B
Anonymous
04/04/2019

Weak professor. He has been consistently behind in lecture meaning we need to learn how to do most of the HW on our own then have him go over it the following week. Only upside is that for my class each lecture was streamed and saved so we could access it later.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/19/2015

He initially seemed to be one of the better professors from the mech E department, as he appears to genuinely want students to succeed and learn the material. He is also one of the only professors to go through examples and really try to hammer in each step of the problem. Unfortunately he is also one of the most petty and egotistical professors. He took people skipping his class as some sort of personal grievance, and took it out on the rest of the class. He started spending more and more time complaining to the class, and made exams unreasonably long in order to punish students for skipping. This just resulted in more people skipping his lectures because they weren't useful. He asked for feedback on how to improve, and took any suggestions and threw them back at students' faces, refusing to take any responsibility on his end.

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a B
parade
01/13/2015

Absolutely awful professor. Half the class ends up skipping his lecture and he will constantly whine about people skipping failing to realize that it is because of his terrible teaching style. You will learn nothing from his class and he has a bad personality. Do NOT take him!

David Bigio
ENME392

Expecting a B
cheesecake
12/15/2014

Horrible professor. His lectures are disorganized and rushed. He skips half of the material in the PowerPoints that he made and tell you to learn it on your own. He is smug, arrogant, and condescending to students. Constantly complains that attendance is poor in his lectures, but doesn't realize that it's because he is a bad teacher. Avoid if possible!

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
12/11/2010

This is by far the worst professor I have ever taken. Homework assignment on the second half of the semester to up to 10 hours to do. And they had nothing to do with the exams because you cant use excel on the exams, but he expects you to know how excel calculated it and for you to show it on the exam. He did not give ANY practice exams. We all just groped in the dark, guessing for questions for practice. I think he's lazy and tries to recycle materials from semester to semester and doesn't want students to see the past ones. Also he does not give you your exams back. If grading was incorrect you will never know about it. He makes the exams cumulative but he doesn't give you back exams so you have no idea what you need to work on more for the next exam. The formal sheet he gives you for the exams have nothing labeled. If you don't know what the equation is for already you are pretty much screwed. Summary: Way too much work for a 3 credit class. Hard exams that are even harder to study for.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Anonymous
11/23/2010

Wow Frostea took the words straight out of my mouth... His own HW problems are horrendously awful and take incredibly long to complete (HW is worth 25% of your grade). Like Frostea said, you *waste* half your time figuring out what he wants! The TA's were such a blessing. I wish Mary was teaching the class.. This is the worst class I've ever taken and statistics is an incredibly important subject. Its a shame this guy is so awful, avoid him like the plague. Dr. Barker teaches this class sometimes, he's an excellent professor.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting a B
Frostea
11/13/2010

I honestly get the impression he is teaching this course not out of desire, but necessity. Be *very* careful with this teacher; he purposefully quickly glosses over information and AVOIDS explaining it when he intended to have a clicker question on it or emphasize it on the exam. This isn't always the case, but often is. He is very passive aggressive in his teaching style. When he makes a mistake on his custom made homework problems since he worded it unnecessarily vaguely, he says it's your fault for not assuming X, Y, or Z, when it could very well be that the assumption could be invalid if you interpret the data differently. Students actively argue with him about his homework problems, which are often UNNESSARY. If he assigned just book problems, they would be bearable. But a HUGE amount of time always goes into trying to interpret his custom problems, NOT into actually applying the material. I did very well on the first exam but awful on the second exam as I had ZERO sleep due to staying up all night trying to play catch up for my other classes after one of his god awful homeworks that I had to spend my entire weekend + monday in order to complete with some understanding of the material. So I was a complete wreck for his exam. In a nutshell: he has a very typical professor-complex where he considers his class the only one in existance and expects you to "get rid of conflicts" if you can't attend the problem solving sessions on friday. Sorry sir, you cannot ask a student to drop classes just to attend the friday sessions. That is not only egotistical but also unethical. This a 3 credit class that you assign 6-9 credits worth of work per week. I've researching the necessary paperwork to report this teacher to the academic board; his unethical practices are negligent and destructive. If you do not like to teach, please leave. I shouldn't pay you tons of money to berate us in class.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

smefeman
11/02/2010

This guy is a horrible lecturer. His lectures don't help (learning from the book is better) and he is bad at answering questions. When asking questions during class, he will be easily confused with your question and probably give you a BS answer like "it depends what you're doing" and continue on with lecture. He gives the worst clicker questions at the end of his lectures (usually 2 or 3 questions) which are on some mundane detail of his lecture he went over for 30 seconds. These count for 5% of your grade (syllabus is not clear). He gives more homework than my other engineering classes (like 12-20 problems per week along with analyzing raw data). Also, he'll take off 2% of your final grade if you don't pick up your homework from his office. Seriously, wtf?? Tests are tricky on purpose, so you'll need to be very careful reading the problem over and over. They are long and you'll need to be proficient to finish on time. He does hold problem solving sessions on Fridays (can't go to them because of class), but I hear they are largely useless like his lectures. Overall, one of the worst professors I've had, especially for a course that needs a lot of careful explanation.

Michel Cukier
ENME392

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/29/2010

Michel is a difficult professor to put a grade to. His lectures are largely useless even though he does put them online. They are very scattered and doesn't show work, so often it looks like he just jumps to the answer with no explanation. The worst part of the lectures was the clickers at the end. There are 2 questions that are graded as quizzes. The questions are usually about some very minuscule detail and his wording is sometimes very unclear. If you have him, I recommend bringing the textbook or his lecture notes and looking up the answers because he allows this. Sample exams: "How do you mean sample exams?" was one of his quotes from the year. He does not give sample exams and his regular exams are very hard and curves them to around a 75% average. Homework: Gives a lot of homework but pays more attention to effort, though the correct answer does count. Availability: He makes himself very available to students and is very approachable and a nice guy, and is always willing to help out students. His accent was somewhat of a barrier, but once you learn what certain words are, it's not too bad. The curve at the end seemed pretty large because the average grade was very low. I'm sure you could do worse than Cukier, but I'm sure you could do better as well.

Reviews for ENME392