Professor
Lara Kassab
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Genuinely awful class. Just made me miserable and felt like a complete waste of my time. Horrible, unclear lectures delivered with a really depressing tone. The content of the class sucked too -- lacked cohesiveness or direction. Would have really, really benefited from a final project or ANY kind of application. Absolutely no preparation or direction for exams. She wouldn't even tell us how many questions were on it. It's not even that it's super hard -- it's just that you're given no motivation or direction to apply yourself, or any direction on where to spend your time studying. At least a tough class like 131a has a strong foundation and reason for being difficult. This one is just ridiculous. Horrible, don't take Kassab unless you have absolutely no choice. Awful.
Fall 2023 - Genuinely awful class. Just made me miserable and felt like a complete waste of my time. Horrible, unclear lectures delivered with a really depressing tone. The content of the class sucked too -- lacked cohesiveness or direction. Would have really, really benefited from a final project or ANY kind of application. Absolutely no preparation or direction for exams. She wouldn't even tell us how many questions were on it. It's not even that it's super hard -- it's just that you're given no motivation or direction to apply yourself, or any direction on where to spend your time studying. At least a tough class like 131a has a strong foundation and reason for being difficult. This one is just ridiculous. Horrible, don't take Kassab unless you have absolutely no choice. Awful.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - If you are motivated by machine learning, I highly suggest taking this class with professor Kassab. I found her willingness to answer questions extremely helpful. She acknowledges the rapidly evolving nature of machine learning, as well as the textbook's dense approach, so lectures offer a chance to cover additional context, such as building the intuition behind theories, calculations omitted from the textbook, (good) hand drawn visuals, examples of modern applications, connections to recent advancements, best practices, and guiding heuristics. She carries a wealth of information and is clearly passionate about the field, so her lectures always ended up feeling "too short." I certainly feel that I got my money's worth out of this class, and I highly disagree with the previous reviewer's perspective. They are a great example of how cheating is only cheating yourself. For the intrigued, these lectures will provide a tremendous opportunity for you to build a solid foundation in machine learning.
Spring 2024 - If you are motivated by machine learning, I highly suggest taking this class with professor Kassab. I found her willingness to answer questions extremely helpful. She acknowledges the rapidly evolving nature of machine learning, as well as the textbook's dense approach, so lectures offer a chance to cover additional context, such as building the intuition behind theories, calculations omitted from the textbook, (good) hand drawn visuals, examples of modern applications, connections to recent advancements, best practices, and guiding heuristics. She carries a wealth of information and is clearly passionate about the field, so her lectures always ended up feeling "too short." I certainly feel that I got my money's worth out of this class, and I highly disagree with the previous reviewer's perspective. They are a great example of how cheating is only cheating yourself. For the intrigued, these lectures will provide a tremendous opportunity for you to build a solid foundation in machine learning.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - I was pretty shocked by the low reviews. Prof. Kassab is a very fair and kind instructor. Some may complain that the tests were "proof-heavy", sure, but it's not like these proofs were hard at all. There were really only 6-8 of them that you needed to know, and she went over every single one in class (or left it as an exercise that can be found in the book). Really - not bad at all! She gave us a practice midterm which I found helpful. I didn't do too well on the midterm because it was rushed and I made some arithmetic mistakes. (Unfortunately, the exam rubric punishes arithmetic mistakes heavily, so be very careful in your calculations!) However, she has a fantastic, forgiving grading scheme that allows the midterm to be replaced by the final. During the final, there is wayyy more time than the midterm so you can do better. Another thing I found really helpful was that she gave us a list of final study topics. I don't know if it was just because we were online for 1.5 weeks this quarter, but she ended up cutting out a lot of content in the final, which made things super clear. (I think our final was lighter on content than the other 164 class.) She also gave an extra credit opportunity on the last homework! Pretty sweet. But, once again, idk if she only offered this to us because we were partially online. Finally, one more piece of advice: whenever Prof. Kassab recommends a proof, DO IT. Overall, Prof. Kassab is helpful and wants her students to succeed. It is really clear she cares about her students. She would even show us coding examples of some of the algos, which I thought was pretty cool. I am really glad I took this class.
Spring 2024 - I was pretty shocked by the low reviews. Prof. Kassab is a very fair and kind instructor. Some may complain that the tests were "proof-heavy", sure, but it's not like these proofs were hard at all. There were really only 6-8 of them that you needed to know, and she went over every single one in class (or left it as an exercise that can be found in the book). Really - not bad at all! She gave us a practice midterm which I found helpful. I didn't do too well on the midterm because it was rushed and I made some arithmetic mistakes. (Unfortunately, the exam rubric punishes arithmetic mistakes heavily, so be very careful in your calculations!) However, she has a fantastic, forgiving grading scheme that allows the midterm to be replaced by the final. During the final, there is wayyy more time than the midterm so you can do better. Another thing I found really helpful was that she gave us a list of final study topics. I don't know if it was just because we were online for 1.5 weeks this quarter, but she ended up cutting out a lot of content in the final, which made things super clear. (I think our final was lighter on content than the other 164 class.) She also gave an extra credit opportunity on the last homework! Pretty sweet. But, once again, idk if she only offered this to us because we were partially online. Finally, one more piece of advice: whenever Prof. Kassab recommends a proof, DO IT. Overall, Prof. Kassab is helpful and wants her students to succeed. It is really clear she cares about her students. She would even show us coding examples of some of the algos, which I thought was pretty cool. I am really glad I took this class.
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