Nuno Martins | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2024	Very professional. Lectures do overcomplicate things - I eventually stopped going to lecture and just went to TA office hours (which for some reason nobody went to) where he usually could explain everything taught that week in about 10 minutes. He seems to have made exams easier (first exam this semester there were 6 100%s and the avg was an 80, 2nd exam a few 100s and avg 70). The exams this semester were fair, although he did mark a question wrong that I got correct just because he didn't recognize my method. But since he actually hands back exams in class and asks you to check that the grading seems fair, I didn't mind.
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/25/2023	Out of all of the 300-level ENEE courses, I suffered the most in this class. Part of that is due to the rigor of the topics covered in 324, but a large part is due to Martins. The one big positive I can share is that he is actually a pretty good lecturer. He is charismatic and funny while he presents, is rather organized with the topics he presents, and teaches at a good rate. His lectures, however, will not save you from the deteriorating experience throughout the semester. Homework assignments are ROUGH! Homework will take you the span of a few days, so definitely find people to work with; a number of questions were designed for Ph. D. electrical engineering students. He did implement a policy later in the semester where he would drop the lowest homework, which was nice but didn't address the difficulty of the homeworks. The worst parts of the course were the exams. There were two midterms and a final, the averages being 71%, 47%, and 56% respectively. Martins is the only grader for the exams, and he graded incredibly ruthlessly and REALLY slowly. The midterms consisted of 3 T/F questions on the front and 2-3 quantitative questions on the back. For some crazy reason, the professor decided to make each T/F question worth 10% of the exam grade; if you picked F and it was F, you had to provide a counter-example or else you would get half credit on the question. Again, he was really particular about the counter-examples, so it was more likely that you would get half credit than full credit. It doesn't help that the T/F questions were designed to trick you. On the back side, he would only grade based on the answers you wrote in the allocated answer boxes and wouldn't look at any supplemental work on the paper, so don't expect any partial credit on the exams. There was a slight curve but was less than I expected. While Martins is a relatively nice and fun guy, his research tended to conflict with the class. Exams would be graded longer and homework would be assigned later than he would promise; on the contrary, he was pretty lenient on extending homework deadlines when most students were struggling with them. Something else to fit in at the end of this review is that some of my friends had issues with the professor because he was not very understanding towards changing deadlines/giving makeup exams due to personal issues outside of class (family, illness, etc). Among the 324 professors, he may be one of the "better" ones, but this course will be rough no matter who you take it with.
Nuno Martins ENEE324 belowocean 03/13/2023	I think you can disregard a lot of the things that have been said in the past. His admits that his exam style during COVID was not good and already has changed it back to a standard exam format (problems, not MC). He explains concepts clearly and you can tell he cares about his students. He extends deadlines when students tell him that the homeworks are difficult because he wants you to be able to do them earnestly. He cracks jokes and teaches in a very reasonable pace (if not a bit slow sometimes).
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Expecting a P Anonymous 05/14/2021	First time reviewing a professor because the structure of this course and exam format is so bad that I had to say something. The format of the exams is covered in other reviews and I can confirm they are as bad as people said. Exams are worth 75% of your final grade, but about 60-70% of the exam is true or false problems that seem to be designed to trick you. That means that roughly 50% of your final grade is determined by 21 true or false questions that you may as well guess on. The actual problems are very different from what is taught in class and the homework assignments so it is hard to study for the exams as some of it is stuff that is vaguely related to what you've been doing, so doing practice problems from the book doesn't seem to help. He is a pretty decent professor, however, but he does not prepare you for what is on the exams. Since classes are going back to being in person the exam format will probably change so it could be better the following semesters. I would not recommend taking this course with Martins with his current course structure and exam format.
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Expecting a P Anonymous 05/11/2021	I took this class online and his grading criteria is a strange, to say the least. He mentions how it is based on what the class on average gets, so there are no hard traditional cutoffs like 70% being a C-. So the cutoffs can move up. The exams are unreasonable. There are 10 true/false and multiple choice problems worth 10 points each, and missing one problem means losing 2-2.5% of your entire grade, which is silly. There is no partial credit so it may as well be you just guessing an answer (which is pretty ironic for a class on probability). You don't know your grade throughout the semester, so even if you have an 85%, that doesn't really mean you have a B if the rest of the class was doing better than you. In terms of teaching, it is easy to follow what he teaches in the class. He is a decent lecturer. But what he asks on the exams is very different from what he teaches. Lectures are usually derivations of formulas but the exams require you to make a lot of assumptions to use those formulas, but those assumptions were not covered in the lecture. Problems during discussion sessions were examples from the textbook, so they don't do an adequate job of preparing you for what Martins is going to ask you on the exam. Only take this class with him if you have don't have a lot of workload so you can study a lot of probability material outside of class to do well.
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Anonymous 05/11/2021	It's the last day of classes, and we have just been told that grade cutoffs have still not been determined; not even a vague prediction was given. Since this is the last day to decide whether you want to drop or do p/f, this is a little problematic. At the very least, it would be good to have some expectation of the C- cutoff, but even that is too much. The way exams in this class go, I don't even have an idea of whether the final will end up with me getting an A or D. In short, this is the most uncertain grading system I've ever had to deal with, which has caused me some frustration. The only clue I have is that we're graded based on how the overall class does, but that's not enough to work with. Does the average performance in this class merit a B? A C? Who knows? I don't even know if the minimum for a C- might somehow end up being higher than a 70%. In my opinion, the concepts we are tested on are not always adequately explained in class. I understand that these concepts are difficult, but you'd expect midterms consisting of 10-11 multiple choice questions, 6-7 of which are true/false, to go fairly well. This was not my experience. Some questions certainly feel unfair in the topics they cover or the edge cases we need to consider for the true/false questions. This is already a difficult class to conceptualize, so this does not help matters. Ironically, luck is a significant factor on these exams. I'm not certain why Martins believes a large grade distribution is a good indicator of people's knowledge relative to each other when even he acknowledged that the benefit of all-or-nothing multiple choice questions is the ability to guess.
Nuno Martins ENEE324 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/15/2020	Very fair and reasonable professor. He extends deadlines if needed and pretty good at teaching the material. He is a little vague though on what is on exams sometimes until a few days before so you have to ask him. But if you end up taking him you will be fine. 324 is in general a hard class due to the concepts.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/09/2024

Very professional. Lectures do overcomplicate things - I eventually stopped going to lecture and just went to TA office hours (which for some reason nobody went to) where he usually could explain everything taught that week in about 10 minutes. He seems to have made exams easier (first exam this semester there were 6 100%s and the avg was an 80, 2nd exam a few 100s and avg 70). The exams this semester were fair, although he did mark a question wrong that I got correct just because he didn't recognize my method. But since he actually hands back exams in class and asks you to check that the grading seems fair, I didn't mind.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/25/2023

Out of all of the 300-level ENEE courses, I suffered the most in this class. Part of that is due to the rigor of the topics covered in 324, but a large part is due to Martins. The one big positive I can share is that he is actually a pretty good lecturer. He is charismatic and funny while he presents, is rather organized with the topics he presents, and teaches at a good rate. His lectures, however, will not save you from the deteriorating experience throughout the semester. Homework assignments are ROUGH! Homework will take you the span of a few days, so definitely find people to work with; a number of questions were designed for Ph. D. electrical engineering students. He did implement a policy later in the semester where he would drop the lowest homework, which was nice but didn't address the difficulty of the homeworks. The worst parts of the course were the exams. There were two midterms and a final, the averages being 71%, 47%, and 56% respectively. Martins is the only grader for the exams, and he graded incredibly ruthlessly and REALLY slowly. The midterms consisted of 3 T/F questions on the front and 2-3 quantitative questions on the back. For some crazy reason, the professor decided to make each T/F question worth 10% of the exam grade; if you picked F and it was F, you had to provide a counter-example or else you would get half credit on the question. Again, he was really particular about the counter-examples, so it was more likely that you would get half credit than full credit. It doesn't help that the T/F questions were designed to trick you. On the back side, he would only grade based on the answers you wrote in the allocated answer boxes and wouldn't look at any supplemental work on the paper, so don't expect any partial credit on the exams. There was a slight curve but was less than I expected. While Martins is a relatively nice and fun guy, his research tended to conflict with the class. Exams would be graded longer and homework would be assigned later than he would promise; on the contrary, he was pretty lenient on extending homework deadlines when most students were struggling with them. Something else to fit in at the end of this review is that some of my friends had issues with the professor because he was not very understanding towards changing deadlines/giving makeup exams due to personal issues outside of class (family, illness, etc). Among the 324 professors, he may be one of the "better" ones, but this course will be rough no matter who you take it with.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

belowocean
03/13/2023

I think you can disregard a lot of the things that have been said in the past. His admits that his exam style during COVID was not good and already has changed it back to a standard exam format (problems, not MC). He explains concepts clearly and you can tell he cares about his students. He extends deadlines when students tell him that the homeworks are difficult because he wants you to be able to do them earnestly. He cracks jokes and teaches in a very reasonable pace (if not a bit slow sometimes).

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Expecting a P
Anonymous
05/14/2021

First time reviewing a professor because the structure of this course and exam format is so bad that I had to say something. The format of the exams is covered in other reviews and I can confirm they are as bad as people said. Exams are worth 75% of your final grade, but about 60-70% of the exam is true or false problems that seem to be designed to trick you. That means that roughly 50% of your final grade is determined by 21 true or false questions that you may as well guess on. The actual problems are very different from what is taught in class and the homework assignments so it is hard to study for the exams as some of it is stuff that is vaguely related to what you've been doing, so doing practice problems from the book doesn't seem to help. He is a pretty decent professor, however, but he does not prepare you for what is on the exams. Since classes are going back to being in person the exam format will probably change so it could be better the following semesters. I would not recommend taking this course with Martins with his current course structure and exam format.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Expecting a P
Anonymous
05/11/2021

I took this class online and his grading criteria is a strange, to say the least. He mentions how it is based on what the class on average gets, so there are no hard traditional cutoffs like 70% being a C-. So the cutoffs can move up. The exams are unreasonable. There are 10 true/false and multiple choice problems worth 10 points each, and missing one problem means losing 2-2.5% of your entire grade, which is silly. There is no partial credit so it may as well be you just guessing an answer (which is pretty ironic for a class on probability). You don't know your grade throughout the semester, so even if you have an 85%, that doesn't really mean you have a B if the rest of the class was doing better than you. In terms of teaching, it is easy to follow what he teaches in the class. He is a decent lecturer. But what he asks on the exams is very different from what he teaches. Lectures are usually derivations of formulas but the exams require you to make a lot of assumptions to use those formulas, but those assumptions were not covered in the lecture. Problems during discussion sessions were examples from the textbook, so they don't do an adequate job of preparing you for what Martins is going to ask you on the exam. Only take this class with him if you have don't have a lot of workload so you can study a lot of probability material outside of class to do well.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Anonymous
05/11/2021

It's the last day of classes, and we have just been told that grade cutoffs have still not been determined; not even a vague prediction was given. Since this is the last day to decide whether you want to drop or do p/f, this is a little problematic. At the very least, it would be good to have some expectation of the C- cutoff, but even that is too much. The way exams in this class go, I don't even have an idea of whether the final will end up with me getting an A or D. In short, this is the most uncertain grading system I've ever had to deal with, which has caused me some frustration. The only clue I have is that we're graded based on how the overall class does, but that's not enough to work with. Does the average performance in this class merit a B? A C? Who knows? I don't even know if the minimum for a C- might somehow end up being higher than a 70%. In my opinion, the concepts we are tested on are not always adequately explained in class. I understand that these concepts are difficult, but you'd expect midterms consisting of 10-11 multiple choice questions, 6-7 of which are true/false, to go fairly well. This was not my experience. Some questions certainly feel unfair in the topics they cover or the edge cases we need to consider for the true/false questions. This is already a difficult class to conceptualize, so this does not help matters. Ironically, luck is a significant factor on these exams. I'm not certain why Martins believes a large grade distribution is a good indicator of people's knowledge relative to each other when even he acknowledged that the benefit of all-or-nothing multiple choice questions is the ability to guess.

Nuno Martins
ENEE324

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/15/2020

Very fair and reasonable professor. He extends deadlines if needed and pretty good at teaching the material. He is a little vague though on what is on exams sometimes until a few days before so you have to ask him. But if you end up taking him you will be fine. 324 is in general a hard class due to the concepts.