| Information | Review |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/31/2022 |
Cringe professor. Tries too hard to be funny; has pointlessly stupid questions for quizzes that don't make any sense (i.e. one time there was an answer choice that says "Proof by Human Exahustion"), and for multiple choice questions you have to pick exactly all the write options and none of the incorrect options, or you will lose all points for said question, which makes no logical sense for someone who claims to be a "logician". Another time he said you have to answer 0 instead of "63 choose 64", even though they both equal 0 and are technically correct, simply because "63 choose 64" doesn't demostrate cRiTicAL tHinKInG. Choose him if you want to cringe for a semester. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 06/01/2021 |
Phenomenal course. The course was organized amazingly well. Major kudos to the whole team (Jason + TAs). You learn a lot and you get to practice weekly with homework and quiz to solidify your knowledge. Sadly, I don't think Jason will be back to teach again. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/26/2021 |
Jason's a really good professor. Yes the class is difficult, but that's to be expected. If you're having trouble with concepts, talk to Jason or the TAs in office hours. Jason's easy to talk to and he always keep it real. He also released additional videos outside of lecture to help us understand concepts that we're struggling to pick up. In short Jason really did everything he could to ensure we had a smooth semester. Also quick shout-out to the TAs. They were all phenomenal. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/25/2021 |
Difficult course, prepare to be challenged a lot. If you don't understand a concept fully, ask questions. If something doesn't click for you properly, it will not go well for you on exams. Jason is a fine teacher. He explains everything well though at times it can get a little bit confusing and wordy, discussions and homework were also really helpful to fully understand concepts. Jason tries to relate to his students a lot and he's sort of like the elder brother you never had. He definitely keeps it real with his students. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/25/2021 |
Extremely well recommended. The course was difficult, and I definitely could have done so much better in the class in hindsight, but Jason did extremely well explaining concepts and taking time out to go through student questions and concerns and address them to the best of his ability. He and the TAs did an extremely good job helping us as students and doing their best to provide us a better experience in the course. Exams and quizzes were graded on time, we had a 24-hour window to submit exams which was extremely helpful, we had recordings of lectures and lecture slides available to us, and Jason created a spreadsheet complete with resources, discussion links, relevant textbook sections, etc. All in all, I had a pleasant experience with the course, and would recommend taking Jason as a professor. :) |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/25/2021 |
Pretty difficult course overall, but Jason explains things pretty well and is very receptive to student concerns. TAs are also awesome for this class. Exams are also very fair and were pretty generous, including a 24 hour submission window. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/16/2021 |
One of my favorite professors now. The class is difficult and I definitely could have done better on the exams, but Jason explains everything so well. He and his TAs were always quick to respond to student concerns, and he made adjustments to the syllabus throughout the weeks to better accommodate everyone. He's easy to communicate with and he always gives a straightforward answer when you ask him questions in office hours. Overall I would recommend him to anyone trying to take the course. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/04/2021 |
Say what you will about CMSC250 but I think Jason makes the course all the more enjoyable. The course is difficult (hence my grade, which is due in part to slacking off for the first exam) but Jason explains the material in multiple ways which is extremely helpful. Additionally, there are many resources that are available in the class that exist solely to make the life of students easier. He is a very sarcastic and frank individual, so if these characteristics in a professor don't bother you then Jason is a perfectly acceptable option for this course. Something I wish I had known earlier on was the GSS sessions and 1-on-1 tutor sessions available through the Iribe (ask your counselor). These became especially useful when office hours were full or you're someone who just needs more personalized help. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Anonymous 04/30/2021 |
Jason's lectures are amazing. He is very thorough with his explanations and examples, and he makes an effort to make his lectures engaging. His slides are very detailed. There is a lot of HW, but it is manageable if you don't start it on the last day and all of it really helps with the exams. He is very caring about his students and adjusts the course to fit his students' needs. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/29/2021 |
Jason is a great CMSC 250 teacher. He explains the concepts well and his lecture slides are very descriptive towards the process and logic behind every topic. Jason is very open to feedback and wants his students to succeed even providing extra credit opportunities and video announcements relating to the course. On the topic of Jason he is very down to earth and tries to connect with the students. It's always a good time in his lectures and I look foward to meeting him in person once fall opens up! |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 03/01/2021 |
Anyone who thought Jason was a lousy professor was simply caught lacking. His lectures are great and the topics are explained well and the HW and exams are not that hard if you've paid attention to the lectures and done the practice problems in the textbook. Yeah if a majority of the class does badly on an exam or HW he will say "wow you all got rekt" or something like that, but it's all in good fun and very clearly not meant to be hurtful. I think y'all are just mad because he made you realize your late-night cram sessions aren't a good way to study and you lost sleep for no reason. Don't slander his name because you got caught lacking. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/11/2021 |
Good lecturer, and explained the topics well, which are important to know. However, online transition was rough. Hard hws and exams, and send emails that berated us. He also downcurved our grades when clearly the opposite should have happened. However, he was getting a lot of abuse from jerk students in the past who felt entitled to a good grade no matter what, so it's not completely his fault; he just cracked. Future semesters should be smoother. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC420 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/05/2021 |
Pretty straightforward class. Jason's slides are EXTREMELY descriptive and he takes his time in lectures to go through material step by step. Exam averages are in the high B's, projects can be a little difficult but nothing too extreme. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a P Anonymous 01/03/2021 |
His name is actually Jason, I don't know why he has a different name here. He is a very passionate and caring lecturer, one of the few that you will come across. He is a millenial, so he will talk to you like a big brother. I took him in Spring 2019 when we went into online classes and thought that he did a great job of teaching. A lot of people had problems with his communication style and complained about him to the department but he was definitely worth my tuition unlike Dr.Yoon. I wouldn't sweat about his long e-mails etc. Take him, he is a great lecturer. His communication channels and methods can be confusing sometimes so that would be feedback to Jason from me. Jason, please keep your communication short and perhaps use piazza since campuswire wasn't any better. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/22/2020 |
I took this course in Spring 2020 Pros: + It is extremely obvious that he is passionate about class content. lecture is never boring. + At the end of the day, he does care about student long term understanding and success. + Pretty funny at times. + Transparent about how he grades questions, and what the curve will be. + Lecture content is extremely digestable. + Is quite adaptable to extenuating circumstances. Cons: - Has made unprofessional announcements which increased everyone's stress levels (if you took the class when I did, you know what I am referring to). If he has problems with individual students, then he should email them individually. - Partial credit is sporadic, sparse, and brutal. On proofs, you can lose 5-7 points immediately for not explicitly stating certain statements. Likewise, some probability problems will cause you to lose 10 points for calculation mistakes, even if your work is correct. In his defense, you may know about these ahead of time, but it's still frustrating to lose a significant amount of points for little things. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B- Anonymous 06/25/2020 |
Great professor. Always prepared for class and puts in so much effort into them. Did have some crazy things happen this semester but Jason honestly tried his best and students needed to cut him a little slack as it's been challenging all around. One of the most detailed and organized professors, I never was confused about what was going on. Sometimes he does make mistakes during lectures but he'll correct it if someone points it out. It was a hard class in general though, unless you pretty much already know what's going on. Grading can also hit hard too with grading proofs and stuff, but there are regrade requests. Acceptable workload and all the assignments were helpful for the exams. Really enjoyed his class and I appreciate him and his class a lot. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 06/09/2020 |
This professor sent an email to his entire class of 250+ people saying ‘all lives matter’, more than 2 weeks after the course ended. This is in the midst of the nationwide civil unrest following the death of george floyd in 2020. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A kjmehta 05/17/2020 |
Really really good lecturer. Class was properly tough. Kinda scary though |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Anonymous 05/11/2020 |
i'M a cOLLeGe sTuDeNt aNd i sTiLL eXpEcT eVeRyThiNg tO bE sPoOnfEd tO mE. bro pick up a book, hop on google, jason is a fine professor. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/07/2020 |
Jason is a really nice professor. He is extremely approachable, he makes jokes in lectures, and his lectures are extremely thorough and easy to follow. He likes to break them up with a small check your understanding type question and does his best to walk around the classroom and answered questions. That being said this is not an easy course. This requires a lot of work and studying. His exams tend to be hard and such that if you mess up one question bad you look at a B. His grading is fair, and I never felt like I lost more points than I should have, but the class was challenging. It makes you think in a way most of us are unfamiliar with doing. If you go to office hours, he will do his absolute best to answer your questions, and I always left feeling better. GO TO DISCUSSIONS -- DISCUSSIONS ARE IMPORTANT they will go over practice problems exactly like the homework WHICH HELPS A LOT and they also will go over material Jason will not cover but expects you to know, or will reiterate material that was complex and confusing in lecture. The TAs are really helpful. The class is hard, but Jason is really nice. I highly recommend taking his class if you have to take this course. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/03/2020 |
Great guy who seems to truly care about his students. Interesting lectures |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/27/2020 |
Jason is easily the best prof i've had here so far. PROS: - lectures are engaging and slides have extensive explanations (he goes at a good pace and occasionally stops to answer questions, has his TA's in the lecture so they can reach all the students w/ questions efficiently) - exams are very fair (95% is loose variations of problems from lecture/quizzes/HW, 5% is a challenge question) - jasons a solid guy -- pretty funny, caring, etc. (really wants to set up his students for success in 351 and other upper levels) - i personally like the math part of cs more than the programming & found the logic/proof aspect of the material in 250 very interesting, and jason presented it in a pretty clear way. CONS: - the grading with this class can be annoying occasionally, i remember losing 10-15 points on HW's for small mistakes here and there, but the TA's are solid with accepting regrade requests - his daily (or hourly lol) elms announcements can get annoying but thats really just because he doesn't want anyone to fall behind/forget about an assignment/exam |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/21/2019 |
Fair professor but can be really unapproachable/rude with the way he responds to students' piazza posts and elms messages. There are pop worksheets (basically quizzes to make people attend lectures) that are graded on "participation" but are actually graded on accuracy. Sometimes he is nice and tells us when to expect a worksheet. He goes over fairly easy examples in class but the homework and worksheets are usually much harder so if you didn't take good notes or rewatched his lecture, you'll be very unlucky for the worksheet. He also curved DOWN the entire semester since people were doing pretty decent in the class but since students didn't too hot on the final, there ended up being a slight curve up. Main pro: records lectures and has great TAs Main con: expects you to know the material completely once it's taught (hence the timed worksheets the following lecture) and expects you to know confusing notation that was barely taught |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a P Anonymous 11/28/2019 |
Imagine being the reviewer beneath me, and criticizing Jason for making mistakes, but you being the one who made the mistakes. I could never. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/30/2019 |
Easily one of the worst instructors I have ever had. Makes silly mistakes nearly every lecture and uses nonstandard terminology that makes no sense to mathematicians. For a discrete math class, I feel like the topics could have been introduced more rigorously with precise definitions and more formal proofs. This guy once said that "the rationals are closed under multiplication" and that "the derivative of a sequence is undefined, so it is zero everywhere," or something along those lines. Instances like these made me question if this guy was even qualified to teach a discrete math class. In fact, they should change the name to "introductory proof writing for computer scientists," or just allow the math department to teach the topics instead (in fact math310 covers more content in greater detail so it is a mystery why it does not exempt students from cmsc250). The quizzes that he has started doing in Fall 2019 are basically joke questions whose only purpose is to force students to attend his lectures. Also, the guy is super passive-aggressive and sends out ELMS announcements pretty much every day. One of the head TAs is extremely cringy, and although I would say he's overqualified for the role, he's super unprofessional and tries way too hard to be likable. Also, homework problems prepared by this TA in question often use ambiguous terminology such as "simple" or "new" that is never given a precise definition in class. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC420 Anonymous 07/08/2019 |
Pros: Class is fair (not difficult) Material is interesting Grading is fair (our first midterm was hard, but then the final was a joke) His TA's are generally good Cons: Jason can be a bit disorganized Super understanding (especially if you go to his office hours) Projects can be challenging (again talk to him if you're struggling) I would definitely recommend taking Jason's class! |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC389E Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/11/2019 |
Jason doesn't teach this course. Just supervises the student instructors, who are good. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- zainbhaila 04/06/2019 |
Good lecturer. Exams were fair, but you need to study and stay on top of things. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/30/2019 |
Jason was a decent teacher and I liked his style of handwriting problems step by step during lecture. However, sometimes he could be unclear about the small details, such as how to write an inductive hypothesis for strong vs weak induction, and the TAs would have to clear that up during discussion. He also could get very defensive or annoyed if people asked a lot of questions during lecture, which was entertaining once in a while. The homework problems could be hard but go to office hours early in the week and some of the TAs were very helpful (I figured out early in the semester that some of the TAs were very confusing and explained things in a super complicated high-level way while other TAs explained the problems clearly so be careful which office hours you go to). A lot of the times Jason would make mistakes on the homework questions and then have to send out an announcement, that happened quite frequently throughout the semester so pay attention to your ELMS announcements. At the end of the semester Jason dropped our lowest homework grade which was a pleasant surprise because it wasn't in the syllabus and he didn't tell us until then he was going to do it. The two midterms were quite fair and very similar to the homeworks, so the best way to study was to go over the homework problems and then if you have more time go over class and discussion problems. I thought the final was much more difficult because a bulk of it was on a topic (countability) that we had learned at the very end of the semester and had only learned very briefly. I did the worst on the final but ended up getting a B in the class because Jason curved a decent amount (6-7%) considering I didn't think he would curve at all. In general for this class I would say keep on top of your studying and every week go over the problems from lecture and discussion. Ask a lot of questions in discussion and office hours (but be careful who you ask your questions to if you want a clear concise answer lol). |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC420 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/25/2018 |
Jason's project description is very unclear, which made projects even more difficult, but the midterms and final are fair. Also, you can skip all the classes since there are recordings and slides. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/13/2018 |
Jason is disorganized and disrespectful. I would not recommend taking him. Also, don't even bother to go to class. He records all his lectures and even so you won't learn anything from them that you couldn't learn from reading the slides. |
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Jason Filippou
Expecting a C Anonymous 12/11/2018 |
I took Jason for 250. It was a traumatic experience. I dont know what it is about this guy but I cannot seem to avoid any sort of traumatic experience when I take a class with him. I took him again this past semester (because it was either the devil Hamat or that dreadful Meesh) so I figured things would be better and they SLIGHTLY were. I still find his teaching style for the most part ineffective. I have to do a bunch of outside research on a topic on my own to understand the concepts. The first midterm, I did not understand the AVL tree rotations very well no matter how many times i asked on piazza and talked to him about them and as a result I got a 26%. That was my traumatic experience and I hope to not have any more with him. The class is mostly weighted towards projects which is wonderful since most of my time was spent doing those. The projects are tricky but not impossible (just hope you don't get his Threaded AVL Tree project or his KD-tree/PR-Quad tree projects). I managed to get perfect scores on all of them. One of the most peculiar instances was when Jason mocked a student on piazza for asking a question about a practice midterm solution key that was given to us but had wrong solutions (go figure). The student said "i was shocked to see...." and jason in turn responded in a condescending manner "YOU WERE SHOCKED!? OH NO JASON I WAS SHOCKED!" This was probably the worst thing I've seen an instructor do when it comes to communicating with students. Honestly after taking CMSC250 and CMSC420, I'm happy to say that I might finally be done with him as a lecturer which is kind of ironic to say because he definitely is the kind of guy i would grab a beer with. If you're trying to take 420 and get a manageable grade in the class, take Jason. Otherwise enjoy Hamat's death grip or Meesh's mapquest project... |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2018 |
I took 250 Fall 2017, my 1st semester of freshman year (no joke here). I thought he was a great teacher. The homework I recall could be difficult at times, but if you did them then you'd be ok. Even though my TA was terrriiibble, I still got an A. So I guess a mix of Jason + working hard. I'm taking 420 now and I have Jason again. It is lit |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC420 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/19/2018 |
His lecture style was hard for me to follow. Sometimes it felt like he had just learned the material that morning. His slides that he posts on ELMs are excellent to teach yourself if that works better for you. I think he will improve as semesters go on because he seems to take notes of what he does wrong and tries to correct his teaching style. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/15/2018 |
Had him for 250 in Fall 2017 and he was great. Jason's homeworks can definitely be long, but they're straightforward if you pay attention in class or know how to search for information you don't know. Exams were also very fair. His exams always had a free bonus point question on topics unrelated to class as well. Overall, I would definitely recommend Jason for 250 |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a D Anonymous 12/30/2017 |
I had the misfortune of taking Jason for CMSC250 in the Fall 16 semester. It was not a pleasant experience. We had quizzes in discussion every wednesday and it was on material we would review then and there and be tested on it immediately after. Not how I learn. His lecture slides were too...brogrammer like. He made "post lecture" quizzes every time after lecture due online 10 minutes before our next lecture. These were pretty stupid and I never did well on any of them. The homeworks were really hard and I could never do them on my own. I found myself in the TA room doing them every week which was really frustrating. As a lecturer he is very dull. Very technical and doesnt explain things very clearly. I had to rely on TA's a lot just to understand the whole point behind proofs and induction. And when it came time for combinatorics, I was eaten alive.... Jason is pretty immature. At the end of my semester, not only did he NOT CURVE but he sent out a message on ELMS where he defended himself for his lousy teaching and blaming it on what he called a "un sexy bowel decease". I understand he has become the only option for 250 and he apparently sounds better for 420, but if you have to take him for the former, I suggest you spend a lot of time studying with a group or become buddies with a TA. If you have other options, avoid Jason. |
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Jason Filippou
CMSC250 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/15/2017 |
Jason is very knowledgeable in this course, it's just that the there's a lot of material and it's difficult |