COM SCI CM124
Computational Genetics
Description: (Same as Human Genetics CM124.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisites: course 32 or Program in Computing 10C with grade of C- or better, and one course from Biostatistics 100A, 110A, Civil Engineering 110, Electrical Engineering 131A, Mathematics 170A, or Statistics 100A. Designed for engineering students as well as students from biological sciences and medical school. Introduction to computational analysis of genetic variation and computational interdisciplinary research in genetics. Topics include introduction to genetics, identification of genes involved in disease, inferring human population history, technologies for obtaining genetic information, and genetic sequencing. Focus on formulating interdisciplinary problems as computational problems and then solving those problems using computational techniques from statistics and computer science. Concurrently scheduled with course CM224. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
CS CM124 Winter 2013 Prof is a nice guy... really relaxed and if you need help just go to him or the TA. The class isn't too demanding, but if you want to work more on the final project you can always make it more challenging for yourself. HW/MT/Final are just there to show you kinda whats going on.. the TA helps you through all of them during discussions. And by helps you through them i mean walks you through the problems, and solutions. Lectures/Discussions are all filmed and posted, which is nice. Final Project: For this quarter, he gave us a list of projects to pick from, and corresponding difficulty levels. If you dont have much time or dont really feel like you know whats going on, just pick an easy one... and if you get the hang of it you can add more to the project to challenge yourself. The project is the majority of the grade, i believe. For future classes he said he might mix it up, but probably similar stuff (pick your own language to code in, etc). There is a presentation for the project at the end of the quarter. 10 min of explain what you did. Not coding details.. just the big picture and your results like accuracy and run time. Kinda strange.. but you vote on your classmates via text. Not sure if this actually affects the grade, but you get participation for doing it. Interesting peak into a different side of CS.. i'd recommend the class. Not hard, good prof, not too stressful... and you learn along the way.
CS CM124 Winter 2013 Prof is a nice guy... really relaxed and if you need help just go to him or the TA. The class isn't too demanding, but if you want to work more on the final project you can always make it more challenging for yourself. HW/MT/Final are just there to show you kinda whats going on.. the TA helps you through all of them during discussions. And by helps you through them i mean walks you through the problems, and solutions. Lectures/Discussions are all filmed and posted, which is nice. Final Project: For this quarter, he gave us a list of projects to pick from, and corresponding difficulty levels. If you dont have much time or dont really feel like you know whats going on, just pick an easy one... and if you get the hang of it you can add more to the project to challenge yourself. The project is the majority of the grade, i believe. For future classes he said he might mix it up, but probably similar stuff (pick your own language to code in, etc). There is a presentation for the project at the end of the quarter. 10 min of explain what you did. Not coding details.. just the big picture and your results like accuracy and run time. Kinda strange.. but you vote on your classmates via text. Not sure if this actually affects the grade, but you get participation for doing it. Interesting peak into a different side of CS.. i'd recommend the class. Not hard, good prof, not too stressful... and you learn along the way.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2018 - I am a CS major, and I took this class as one of my CS upper div electives because the grade distribution seemed pretty good. Big mistake. Firstly, this class is not a computer science. It's mostly just a theoretical math class. The class focuses on rather dense mathematical algorithms to analyze genome sequences. The main problem though is that the class has no textbook. So the only material you have is the lecture slides, and the slides are almost exclusively mathematical formulas. So if you are having trouble understanding a concept, good luck, because there is no class material to read that will help you understand anything. The homework is also unreasonably hard. I think that the homework would have been doable if I had a solid understanding of both the conceptual and practical understanding of the material. The only problem was that I had neither of those things despite attending lecture and pouring over the lecture slides. The tests on the other hand are much much easier. The professor gave us a sample exam for both the midterm and final. And if you could do well on the sample exam you were guaranteed pretty solid grades on both tests. Overall, the class is way too theoretical and very poorly taught. Despite what the grading distribution may imply about this class, I highly recommend that you avoid it.
Spring 2018 - I am a CS major, and I took this class as one of my CS upper div electives because the grade distribution seemed pretty good. Big mistake. Firstly, this class is not a computer science. It's mostly just a theoretical math class. The class focuses on rather dense mathematical algorithms to analyze genome sequences. The main problem though is that the class has no textbook. So the only material you have is the lecture slides, and the slides are almost exclusively mathematical formulas. So if you are having trouble understanding a concept, good luck, because there is no class material to read that will help you understand anything. The homework is also unreasonably hard. I think that the homework would have been doable if I had a solid understanding of both the conceptual and practical understanding of the material. The only problem was that I had neither of those things despite attending lecture and pouring over the lecture slides. The tests on the other hand are much much easier. The professor gave us a sample exam for both the midterm and final. And if you could do well on the sample exam you were guaranteed pretty solid grades on both tests. Overall, the class is way too theoretical and very poorly taught. Despite what the grading distribution may imply about this class, I highly recommend that you avoid it.
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