Ramani Duraiswami

This professor has taught: AMSC460, AMSC660, AMSC662, AMSC698D, CMSC422, CMSC460, CMSC660, CMSC662, CMSC798, CMSC798E, CMSC798F, CMSC800, CMSC801, CMSC828N, CMSC828R, CMSC878, CMSC878B, GEMS296, GEMS297, GEMS396, GEMS397, GEMS496, GEMS497

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Ramani Duraiswami CMSC422 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/23/2021	I took this course in Fall 2021 Pros: + Generally nice guy Cons: - Is a meh lecturer, I do not feel as though his explanations of concepts were sufficient - Lectures are handwritten, and is often hard to read - Lecture notes are not easily available in one place, they were on Piazza but not readily organized, and half of them weren't even there. - Lecture barely helps with coding assignments - THE CLASS IS VERY DISORGANIZED! Along with what I've already said, lectures were delivered during the Tuesday morning section and the Thursday afternoon section. However, since you are only scheduled for either the morning or afternoon section, you would either have to find some way to get there in time, or (most likely), watch the lecture videos which are extremely long. They did not make it clear how exactly content was split up between both of those classes, or what quizzes were on what concepts, and it took me about a month and a half to figure out how the class was organized. - Workload is very high, even for a 3 credit CS class
Ramani Duraiswami CMSC422 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/09/2021	Lectures are handwritten, which is horrible. They request you read the textbook before the lecture, but then review it verbatim, therefore making reading the textbook feel a little frustrating. However, he is quite knowledgeable and communicates content pretty effectively. He combines his lectures with the other professor, and it just ended up being really annoying. Especially since the other professor was significantly worse at teaching than he was.
Ramani Duraiswami CMSC422 Anonymous 01/14/2021	Worst taught course ever. This course was co-taught by him and David Jacobs, and I ended up skipping my other CS class to go to Jacobs' discussions. If you have the option please take Jacobs instead. Dr. Duraiswami simply reads over slides, didn't truly teach anything, especially if it related to the weekly quizzes or the final, and wouldn't go over quiz answers because somehow we're magically supposed to "understand" what we were never actually taught. He also would make a lot of errors, which is perfectly human, but it was never corrected, and some of us can't tell what's right/wrong to be able to immediately correct him. As a result, I never had any real material to study off of and didn't learn enough to know whether what he did was actually correct or not. Also, office hours were very limiting and didn't help much with problem sets. Overall, poorly taught class, and would not take a course with him again.
Ramani Duraiswami CMSC422 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/19/2019	Ramani is a friendly teacher, but I don't think he taught 422 that well. Lectures were sort of boring, and he doesn't really explain concepts in an intuitive, understandable way.
Ramani Duraiswami CMSC422 Anonymous 12/18/2019	Friendly guy, not the best teacher or course. Curves well
Ramani Duraiswami AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2012	Duraiswami is a VERY friendly person and a great professor (almost an Indian Winnie the Pooh!). Class periods are spent going through powerpoints of the material. He explains the material in a very down-to-earth way so that everyone can understand it easily. Homework tests your ability to apply the concepts in class in MATLAB. All homework is from the book, so if you don't understand either the lecture slides or the book, you can use the other one as a second resource. Homework is not BS-able, and every question is graded. Exams do not have many questions, and thus each question is weighed heavily. The material tested is straight out of the powerpoint slides, so put as much of the slides as you can on your notesheet(s). Grades are as follows: 25% Midterm (use one note sheet), 35% Final Exam (use two note sheets), 40% homework assignments.
Ramani Duraiswami AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/13/2010	make sure you know matlab before you take a class with him. his exams are straight out of his notes and not from the book. so make sure you make cheat sheets from his notes. he is a very nice guy and does his best to teach you. he will extend homework due dates as long as you give him a reason a couple of days before it.