John Aloimonos

This professor has taught: CMSC426, CMSC477, CMSC733, CMSC798, CMSC798F, CMSC828T, CMSC828U, CMSC828Y, ENAE788M, ENPM673, ENPM808T, ENSE799, GEMS296, GEMS297, GEMS396, GEMS397, GEMS496, GEMS497, NACS898, NACS899

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John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/06/2024	Horrible class organization. The slides and piazza are very poorly setup up and lack any sense of order. The entire class is fueled by projects which are so open ended and near impossible to complete or even find direction without office hours. No useful preparation material given for midterm. Cool content but not well taught.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Anonymous 09/03/2024	Imagine for instance a professor who speaks like Dracula with the gravity of voice of an eldritch horror & Ms. Frizzle who out of sheer boredom has become an interdimensional salesman and a mad scientist while barely managing to hide his identity from his students in a twisted version of the magic school bus. Not sure how computers vision, but he hit us with some revelations like: "Zyou are blind!!" "Animals don't have gps!" "What you see is an illusion! We think it is a imitation of reality! We have to! Bc seeing is believing." "Invact! All animals have a home!" "Look at the Amazing jumping spider with 8 eyes!!" "Have you ever seen a 4 dimensional space? No! It is impossible! But there are techniques to understanding..." "I am a self driving car. VRRRRR!" "All of a zudden there iz an elevant invfront of me. Zelf driving car doezn't know shit avout elevants!!" "The zeitgheist!! The spirit of the times! The zeitgheist always effects the way you think!!" "What does it feel like to be a bat?!?!" "But a bat! I have to concept of what these ultrasounds are like! So we can not know what it is like to be a bat!" "[Beez] are doing a number 8. THey do a dance like this (Proceeds to dance in a figure 8 for about a minute in utter silence). The NUmber is on a plain!! Never kill a bee, even it bites you!" "You must have seen this before. (Image of train tracks) ... She doesn't love me anymore. So you find this and you say that you stay here and wait." "What is this? A feris wheel you say? Have you ever been in one? It's very scary! You should be careful going on them. They are very dangerous! They are not well regulated. You could die ... so easily." "If light was going around and doing all sorts weird things would make computer vision very hard." And he says these things in an almost threatening way (not actual threats), but when he says "What does it feel like to be a bat?!?!" it is not a question but rather a challenge that after he's done with you, you will either be unable to comprehend what it is like to be a bat or you will deeply regret your mortal folly after he makes you comprehend what it's like to be a bat. I hope that made sense, this class is more like a TV show than an actual lecture would recommend for funsies.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/15/2024	Horrid teaching. One of the worst I've ever experienced. Heavy accent makes him virtually uninterpretable, and he spends the first 10m to hour talking about his anecdotes or life experiences which, to be frank, I'm not interested in. I remember the one of many instances that I would actually try to understand his stories, he would talk about how WWII and would somehow segue that into Computer Vision. I did not learn anything in the lectures, and I'm sure majority of the class didn't either given the <20% class turnout to his lectures. Moreover, his lectures had very little to no correlation to what we were tested on in projects. I've never had been left more in the dark with a CS project in my entire life. Thankfully and fortunately, you are assigned group members and they seemed to carry me. If you are to take this class, and groups are allowed, choose your group members carefully as there are complex concepts applied to the projects. Also note that he presumed that we knew Python and the projects were in Python (I'd say most CS students are familiar with this language but just to disclaim). Although I am expecting an A-, I did not understand most concepts and relied heavily on my group members (which again I am thankful for); the lectures and scope of this class are horrid and the only reason of such a decent grade distribution was because of projects that could be worked with a group and piazza participation. Yes, as of F2023, there was a 10% final grade piazza participation. The only part of this class I enjoyed was the overtly enthusiastic yet sarcastic follow up "discussions" that people would post just to get this 10% credit. This is the first time I've ever wrote a review about a professor so hopefully you could understand the emphatic and negative feedback I have given.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/28/2023	This is the worst professor I have ever had, and this is the worst class I have ever taken. Here are a few things that went terrible this semester: - Projects are 20+ hours each (per person, assuming a team of 4) - Most of the time on the project is spent figuring out what you're even supposed to do for it-- the professor's desired output is never provided - Projects often have missing, incomplete, or incorrect directions, which are only corrected after we plead on Piazza - There were multiple occasions where the TAs made key clarifications halfway through that completely changed our understanding of how we needed to approach the project, which forced us to redo major parts. This made me incessantly check Piazza for the next "gotcha" post from the TAs. - 50% of Piazza questions were never answered, a lot of those that were "answered" had some nothing answer that misunderstood the question, and only a small portion of questions were actually answered (and these answers came hours or even days after the question was asked) - The professor did not answer a single question on Piazza. I don't think he even opened the Piazza once. - TAs just say that we could "probably figure it out ourselves" if we look up how to do the project (which isn't true since the roadblock was usually figuring out what the professor wanted us to do) - Professor says "figure it out" if you ask him for help on projects - Need to write report on our code's output given test data, and the test data is not provided until 2 days before the deadline. So, you can't finish the project until 2 days before the deadline. - Last 2 days of Project 1 coincided with Yom Kippur (one of our classmates could not work on the project for religious reasons) - Final project (machine learning) was graded on a downward curve based on your output (i.e. even if your code worked, you would get marked off if your machine learning model didn't learn as well as everyone else's) - Final project required a 3 page LaTeX report and 10 minute video presentation for no reason - Lectures have little or no relation to the projects - Professor often rambles for 15+ minutes about random topics during lecture - Lecture slides not posted - The professor jumps straight into material without explaining why it matters or how it relates to computer vision - No concept is ever explained in detail-- the best we get is a long formula that we neither derive, get an explanation for, or inspect longer than a few seconds - Professor jumps randomly between topics during lectures-- half the time, you're playing catch up trying to figure out why in the world the professor is writing what he is on the board. - Material covered in lecture barely relates to computer vision - Professor (accidentally?) did repeat lectures where he went over the same exact slides and content again - Professor did review session where he discussed 4 questions that would 100% be on the midterm exam--only 1 of the 4 questions were actually on the exam - Other 5/6 questions on midterm exam were either never discussed in lecture or discussed in passing for 1-2 minutes in one lecture. - Students did not get grades back until exam week-- we had no idea what our grade was in the class until it was too late to do anything about it I have had nightmares about this class. I pray for anyone who has the misfortune of happening upon this class. If you value your sanity, never take this class and absolutely DO NOT take it with Aloimonos.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/27/2023	Interesting subject but not a very organized class. Not much material to prep for the midterm and near the end of the semester, they changed the syllabus from having a final exam and final project for extra credit to a choice between a final exam and final project. If you are one of those students that skips lectures, I wouldn't recommend it for this class, at least before the midterm, because they aren't recorded. The projects were very difficult and time consuming, although they were all in Python instead of MATLAB like previous semesters and we were given 8 free late days across the first 3 projects. The grading criteria was unclear, especially for the final project, but if you do your best to complete the projects and write good reports, it should be fine. There was a pretty big curve at the end. If you are interested in computer vision and are willing to put in the work for projects, I would overall still recommend the class.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2023	In short, Professor Aloimonos gave us a decent idea of some of the fundamental theory involved in computer vision, but when it came to coursework and projects he was pretty much uninvolved and we were on our own. If you want information about the course syllabus, you can just search up "cmsc426 prg" and you should see the Perception and Robotics Group which has links to all of the syllabi from when this course was taught. Pros: - The lectures were helpful for doing well on the midterm, and marginally helpful for the projects. I went to most of the lectures, and I would say they were better for getting a conceptual idea about certain topics. He also writes stuff on the board (equations, diagrams, derivations) that are not in the slides so I would suggest going because just reading the slides alone is pretty confusing. They did help me in some of the projects, and going to them likely boosted my score on the midterm. The professor also did some review before the midterm which was pretty helpful. The lectures also became very close-knit after a few weeks since most people didn't bother coming to them, so if you had questions it was pretty easy to ask. - The projects were at least about interesting topics in computer vision. The last project even involved using a machine learning model for a practical application, so I think they were probably the most interesting and helpful part of the course. Also, we had 8 late days total to use for the first 3 projects, so that we could get full credit even if we used a few late days. - Grading was lenient in my opinion (The professor says he "doesn't believe in grades"). The median grades for all projects besides the last one were all 100%, producing some output and writing a good report was good enough to get a good score. The midterm exam was a little difficult (median 80%). Also, we had a "participation" grade where all you had to do was say something in the Piazza at least 15 or so times, which literally everyone got full credit for. The final project had a median of 75%, that was definitely one that they graded more harshly, since your grade depended on the performance of your model. I heard the final exam was tough, but I can't speak to it since I decided to do the project instead. The overall average course grade was an A- according to the TAs. This semester, 90% was an A, 76% was a B, and 66% was a C+. - The professor is pretty nice and friendly. He is also very involved in computer vision and robotics research at UMD if that's something you are interested in. Cons: - I said the lectures were helpful, but they definitely could have been much better. The professor had a habit of skipping over some details and that could sometimes make things hard to understand. You also better remember your linear algebra or else you won't be able to follow this class. The lectures also barely covered anything about the projects, he NEVER went over any actual code, so you had to figure out how to implement the things he's saying in Python on your own. - The TAs completely ran as far as projects, exams, and grading go. We had a piazza that the professor probably was not even a part of, the TAs were responsible for responding to questions there. Sometimes they only provided clarification for projects ON THE DAY THEY WERE DUE, which was very stressful. Sometimes they would even provide conflicting information. I would highly suggest starting these projects early especially if you don't know what you are doing. Otherwise, you will struggle. - We did not have great preparation for the midterm besides the lectures and all of their slides. At the very least, the slides, our notes, and the projects were decent material to study. The TAs provided a practice midterm, which would have been helpful had they also given us the answer key. They couldn't properly answer the questions in office hours either, rendering that practice midterm basically useless. There was no practice final, however the professor covered some questions in class that he indicated would be on the final. - Grading took an extremely long time and was not organized at all. We were split onto groups in ELMS, and somehow the TAs were always confused on who was in it what group. Project 1 was due in late September but I'm pretty sure we only got our grades in early December for that one. I'm pretty sure some people didn't even get project 3 grades by the time they submitted grades to Testudo. The midterm exam was multiple choice, because according to the TAs it would be "faster to grade." It still took several weeks to grade and when we got that back, there were numerous grading errors and confusions. I'm almost positive the TAs didn't have an answer key when grading that test. After all of the regrading, my score went up by 17%. - This course barely scratches the surface of computer vision. He introduces some research in computer vision, but we are barely given any understanding of it as it is very brief in the lecture. Overall, this Professor was decent for this subject but the way he ran this class had several flaws. If you choose to take him, my suggestion is to go to lectures, take some notes, get a decent project group, and start early.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/22/2023	The professor seems to ramble about material related to the field but unrelated to the exams and projects, which sounds cool until you realize there are also hundreds of slides to look through for projects. On top of that, the administration was horrible, with grades for most assignments and projects released right before finals. In previous semesters, students would be allowed to use libraries like OpenCV on their projects. Still, this professor decided to have us implement those algorithms by hand, increasing the difficulty of this class significantly. Overall, I would avoid this professor at all costs as this was my least favorite course during my entire undergrad.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/09/2023	This man cannot teach. His lectures honestly put me to sleep and had nothing to do with the projects or exams. I went to class for a few weeks before realizing that his lectures are not helpful in any way. He does not record lectures by the way. The exams are multiple choice but are nothing like the "practice". I say "practice" because they were just a few questions thrown together by the TAs. The TAs do all the work from handling the exams to answering questions on Piazza. I'm pretty sure the professor isn't even on the Piazza. And don't bother emailing the professor about something, just email the TAs. I have never seen a class more run by the TAs. Also, I hope you or someone in your group knows something about image processing before taking this class or are really good at googling, or else you are not completing those projects.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/06/2023	Terrible course which is unfortunate since it could be an amazing course offered by UMD. TAs aren't helpful, lecture material is irrelevant for projects, projects take about 40-60 hours to somewhat complete. Professor thinks repeatedly showing formulas on a board for 15 seconds with 8 variables, 4 matrices, 3 coordinate systems, and a picture of a pinhole camera is how students learn. This class has been the biggest regret of my UMD CS track and I am an above average student (not that it really matters much).
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/04/2023	He seems like an interesting guy, but the course is completely unorganized and extremely difficult. Lectures are barely relevant to the projects, forcing students to teach themselves how to complete them.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting a B Anonymous 10/26/2023	The professor simply does not cover content that is pertinent to the exams or to the projects. The course lecture slides are not ordered and you are expected to just know which ones are which? We also had to pressure him for an exam guide because he said "the lectures are your review" (not really sure how that works?). When we got the exam guide they (teaching staff) refused to put out an answer key and we were expected to dig through the unorganized notes to find the answers (again, why?). He banned a ton of the functions that previous semesters were allowed to use and it truly made the projects excessively difficult to do--seriously, look them up. Make sure you know your linear algebra skills because any misrememberance will be met with "you should've internalized this information" in a truly incomprehensible accent.
John Aloimonos CMSC477 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2023	This was the first time that CMSC477 ran, and I think it was pretty good overall. The projects were challenging, but interesting and pretty fun. He tends to ramble a bit in lecture and the way he presents the material isn't super engaging, but he's a super nice guy and very helpful.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/30/2022	I do not even know where to start with this class. The lectures were just the professor rambling about some random bullshit. He would draw some functions and diagrams on the board and then show some math but it was all pointless. It went to the point where out of 80 students only like 20 would come to class. I came once to class just to see wtf was happening and I found half the kids watching the world cup match. There was 1 Midterm in the class and it was worth like 10% of the grade, I studied and reviewed the slides and projects about 3/4 days before and I got a 75 on it. The class average was a 60% on it. There was no final so there really was no point coming to class after this. There were 4 projects in the class, all seemed pretty interesting at first glance until you actually did them. Each project was done in groups of 3-4 people, and it was all in MATLAB. You were pretty much left in the dark, the concepts from class did not help at all and your only salvation was to hope there was something online to help you. The TA's did not even look at the code, this was pretty evident because for some reason the class avg on these projects was a 90-95%. They primarily graded based off of the reports. To add to the glory of this weird class, for the fourth project the TA's never updated installation instructions and after a week of complaints they just decided to give everyone a 100% and anyone who managed to get something working extra credit. And thus every group got between 100-220% on this project worth 20% of the grade. I cant say I really learned anything from this class tbh. It seems cool and the topics seem cool but I really didnt learn or gain anything besides maybe losing sanity. Though i will say minimal effort is required for this 3 credit 400 level cs course
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/26/2022	ive been to a total of 2 lectures: the first day and the midterm lol. the class itself is super chill, 4 projects that mainly dictate what your grade is and only 1 exam that's worth 15%. projects can be done in groups, but make sure u guys stay on top of things. yes u are given 8 late days u can use to push back a deadline for a project, but dont rely on it too much as the projects can take an extremely long time and need a lot of assistance in OH. as for john himself as a professor, i found them very unrelated to the projects, thus y i never went. he seems like a funny guy and is nice but his thick accent was also another reason why i decided to not come. overall, not a bad class as long as u have a solid group
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2022	Reeks of tenure. TAs did literally everything for this course. Lectures had nothing noteworthy in them, and we were not able to practice these concepts. Projects had very odd grading schemes and had no input from the instructor. Midterm exam (conceptual and explanatory) was extremely different from the one given as practice (computational and short). The only reason students did well was because he did not give installation instructions for a MATLAB package for M1 Macbooks, so after 2 weeks of no information we've been told our final project (20% of the final grade) has been made optional. Very uninteresting course and experience.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/07/2022	Lectures are great for learning concepts, clearly has a ton of knowledge and is passionate and kind. For the projects most of the learning has come from TA led overviews/course notes for projects also written by TAs. Projects done in groups of 3-4 and are challenging but I personally feel they are rewarding. Midterm was fairly tough but according to the TAs it will be curved fairly well. Would recommend for anyone with a passion for learning or interest in these topics, would recommend starting projects early with your group.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/12/2022	Great professor if you are there to actually learn real concepts and not just trying to memorize some text book. Like one of the best educational experiences I've had in all my years at UMD. He is the reason I persued a Combined BS/MS degree and was a great guy to work with.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 Anonymous 11/07/2021	He does not cover anything that the course requires. He is arguably one of the worst professors I have ever had.
John Aloimonos CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2012	He admittedly does not cover the material he is supposed to, and whenever he does, it is always a very cursory overview whereas Fawdi Emad's section comprehensively went over all of the material, yet we were all given the same exams and quizzes, all written by Fawzi. Seems pretty unfair, eh? On the bright end, Yiannis is a very nice person who appreciates other people's input. He may not be the best professor, but thankfully this class is extremely easy to begin with and you can be fine by just teaching yourself everything from the textbook.
John Aloimonos CMSC426 aaa123 11/06/2010	Very interesting, entertaining person, which is why I didn't realize sooner that the class was not going to go anywhere. We went over the basics of all topics, but so little that you never really learned more than "huh, that's interesting". Projects had no deadlines, and weren't too difficult, except that we had no basis to go off of, and it's just stabs in the dark to try to get something working (still haven't figured it out, even though he tried to help me once that wasn't enough and I'm still completely lost). Take home midterm was a rehash from the grad level class 10 years ago, plus 3 more pages, and way beyond the scope of what we'd learned in class. I wish I had noticed sooner that this class was worth dropping, because I learned nothing worthy of my tuition money and am very disappointed as I was looking forward to this class.
John Aloimonos CMSC250 Expecting an A+ xenonscreams 05/20/2010	He is the most accommodating person I've ever met. If you have a problem and you address it to him, he will absolutely help you out. He is completely engrossed in the success of his students. This is an extremely rare quality in a professor. There are only a few things holding me back from giving him five stars. Firstly, he goes on a lot of tangents. If you are the type of student who learns solely from lectures, it might be difficult since sometimes he does not cover all of the material. Secondly, he seems to have difficulty teaching the students who have difficulty grasping the concepts. If you really have trouble with theoretical math and logic, it might be best to take it with a different professor.
John Aloimonos CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/06/2009	Dr. Aloimonos is a great guy, good teacher, and interesting to listen to in lecture. Like some of the other reviews said, he covers the material really quickly and perhaps not in as much detail as they should be, but if you do the worksheets in discussion and/or study, you'll be fine. His lectures are good to go to because he covers a lot of stuff that other professors don't, and talks about philosophy and stuff sometimes (its always somewhat relevant though). He knows a lot, but if you don't want to study and don't already know some of the material, then maybe someone else would be better.
John Aloimonos CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/20/2009	He is a great professor and a teacher. I mean he may not cover the subject material in any detail (u HAVE to read book to get stuff and practice for this class). But it is a fun class with him coz' he brings in so many higher level fun topics into the discussion. he is very knowledgeable and funny. recommended if u like logic math.