Sarrafzadeh is a clear lecturer. He often likes to pretend he doesn't know how to solve problems to try to encourage discussion. While he is pretty good at answering questions, there were a couple of times people raised points or answered in a way he did not expect and he was dismissive of the problems.
Homeworks can be a bit time consuming if you're not super adept with algorithms beforehand. They tend to be graded generously though.
Tests are mostly based on lectures.
Also heard he basically does not show up to office hours unless you contact him beforehand.

Majid may be a better professor if this class was taught in-person. But I really don't think he's anyway god-like and I actually think this class was overrated.

I was quite disappointed cuz I really put lots of time+efforts in this class but ended up ruining my perfect 4.0 gpa by a lot. I received A+ for CS 32 and A for CS 97 but I did not do well in this class. Why? I don't necessarily think I did not master the content of this class. I did quite decent on the midterm and homework. But I did really bad in the final because of the instructions...He only wrote that we need to provide proofs on the first page of the exam which was really easy to overlook. On the midterm, there was also such a statement on the first page but we did not lose points for questions without "providing proofs."

Not just me, 3+ of my friends also missed that. Yes it was our fault, but I just think a lot of students like us would have done better if every question was phrased better and if he let us ask questions for clarification in the exam

In the end, he also refused to curve the class cuz the average was high and everyone receives scores on the absolute scale. I really doubt that if there are 30% of students receive As in the class as in the past years cuz ppl may ace one exam but bomb another and we did not have participation points which was a grade booster as in the past years. If not, isn't that quite unfair for ppl who take this class this quarter? Most ppl around me received Bs. I just felt quite ironic when he said "I'm ok if everyone did great and gets an A" in the class. This class was the class that I devoted the most efforts+time in ever and I just felt that my efforts&time was kinda in vain

Yes, undeniably, his lectures were quite clear and the TA's discussions were nice. But his notes were kinda messy and there was no online communication platform like piazza which would have made the interactions better. The homework took lots of time to finish but was a good practice.

Overall this class was very interesting and also very challenging. Even with the online format due to COVID, Majid’s lectures are engaging and paced very well. You come away with a good understanding of the material since he explains things pretty intuitively, without too much technical stuff. Majid’s lecturing style is pretty sarcastic, but he does take the time to fully explain things and make sure all questions are clarified. Be prepared to spend 10-15 hours on each weekly assignment. If you procrastinate, your life will be hell. The homework does a very good job on giving you practice on the concepts and preparing you for the exams. I stress that you should not sleep on this class and make sure you know your algorithms inside and out, since the time limit on the midterm and final will sneak up on you and totally screw you up if you’re not prepared. (I got screwed on both midterm and final since I lost track of time, rip.) Note that he is very strict about homework and exams: if you submit your homework or exam even a second past the time limit, you will get no credit. He also says he is strict on grading, but the graders actually grade pretty leniently even if you're mostly wrong, as long as you try.

Also, shoutout to my TA Lionel Levine for being awesome! He really put in a lot of time to make discussion interesting and helpful, and he really understands that many of the circumstances we've faced this quarter are not ideal. I also appreciate how he tried to recreate the social setting of an in-person classroom by trying to break down the awkward barriers of Zoom through breakout rooms / icebreakers / memes / etc.

TLDR: If there’s anything I learned in this class, it’s that we all need to mute ourselves.

Sarrafzadeh is a great and kind lecturer. He values class engagement a lot so he will answer all your questions and try to get everyone to work through problems as a group instead of just lecturing to you. I didn't end up going to lecture much because I'm a bad student, but I think they were valuable and there were definitely things I missed on the test that he went over in lecture.

Homework is pretty time consuming and hard, think like 8 psuedocodes and proofs for algorithm problems. Grading for the homeworks wasn't a big deal though so maybe I stressed too hard about them.

Midterm was pretty straight forward if you did the homework and paid attention. Final was much harder but doable. It had a handful of Leetcode hard problems for reference.

To succeed in this class (and in technical interviews) I would recommend doing the homework thoroughly, and then if still don't feel comfortable, look up the topics on Leetcode and try to work through some problems. This won't get you practice proving your algorithms, but it will help you come up with the right ones.

This class is good prep for interviews. Take it ideally before you do interviews, or at the same time as when you're doing them. Majid is p good. I found his lectures to generally be very helpful. Much better than trying to figure it out on my own through youtube or the textbook. It probably would've been possible to take this course w/o going to class and teaching myself through the textbook, but it would've been a worse time. Useful class, glad I took it w/ Majid.

Don't miss class! Make sure you give enough time and attention to this class. I had a terrible and stressful quarter and I'm probably going to retake it just to show myself I can do it :/ Also, make sure you like your TA. I stopped going to discussion and missed out on a lot of review and practice because I thought my TA wasn't very helpful and going would be wasting my time.
And here's a resource: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~wayne/kleinberg-tardos/ . Use it together with the textbook. Good luck.

A lot of reviews are from people who got A's, which is around the top 1/3 of the class. I was literally in the MIDDLE of the class, so maybe I can offer a more accurate perspective. Majid is a decent professor. Not super-amazing like some of these reviews say, but not that bad either. His lectures are good, and the textbook is good too. The homeworks are hard and time-consuming, but doable. I recommend splitting the problems into 2 or 3 sittings rather than trying to do all the problems in a single sitting. The midterm wasn't too bad — it was mostly based on problems he did in class. I got the exact average score on it. The final was much harder and was unfortunately cumulative. I did much worse on it, but so did most of the class. I ended up getting the exact average score once again. Now, Majid often jokes about how he'll only give 1 or 2 points of partial credit for 20 point problems if you don't get everything right, but THIS IS NOT TRUE! He's actually a pretty lenient grader. I got a problem completely wrong on the final but he gave me half-credit just for TRYING the problem. So he's nicer than he seems!

I got an A in this class, but honestly I did not like it very much. The professor gives engaging lectures, but often times when I would look back over my notes for the class, I realized that they are very surface level, and I didn't actually learn much about proofs and stuff like that in class. I have no idea why everyone loves the prof so much, he is a cool guy but I learned WAY WAY more from the textbook (which is amazing) and from podcasted lectures online I found on youtube.

The homework is a good difficulty -- I did it the night before for most of the weeks, and most of the answers are online, so it really isn't too bad. However, it teaches you a decent amount. It's worth a lot, so make sure you check your answers online (they are easily available on stack overflow and other free resources) before you turn it in. I would try not to copy because they are fairly similar to midterm/final questions.

The professor initially says its important to attend his lectures every class. This is NOT true. Everything he covers is in the textbook, except P/NP, which is extensively covered online. He even tells you the chapters he covers for the midterm/final. I skipped a fair bit of lectures because I realized I was learning nothing from his class, and the textbook covers it a lot better at times. However, he will keep you entertained in lecture, and a few key points (which he covers really fast) are pretty insightful, so maybe in the future I would skip less if I had to take the class again.

The midterm was an absolute joke. I actually have no clue how everyone didn't get a 100% on the midterm. The tests are crazy similar to a few tests easily available on test banks, and the practice midterm. So just review those and you should be fine.

Finally, the final. Honestly, it was a complete shitshow. I swear I got every question wrong but somehow the graders gave me an insane amount of points on every question, it made no sense. I'm posting this before regrade requests come in, because I know a lot of my friends got screwed over for no reason, but for me, I somehow got a good score? Final breakdown: 1 (very easy) network flow question, 1 (lowkey impossible) P/NP, 2 DP, and 2 divide and conquer. Honestly they need to grade the final better because there were 0 comments on any of the questions, and I still have no idea how I got so many points.

So, all in all I'd take this class because the hws/midterm are ez 100%s, and that is 60% of the final grade. And the avg for the class is crazy high, something like median A- or something. But I don't think Majid is really that good of a lecturer, I felt like I didn't learn in depth much from any lecture, just a weak surface level understand. So be prepared to rely on the textbook + online resources for this class, hope you do well on the final, and feel free to skip lectures, and you should be chilling with an ez A.

Sarrafzadeh is the best professor to take for CS 180 (though his class isn't perfect). He doesn't cover too many concepts in each lecture, and he lectures in a sort-of narrative style, showing us erroneous ways to solve a problem before revealing the correct method. You have to pay attention to what he's saying, because he doesn't write sentences on the board/screen. Our midterm was easy— we had already seen all of the problems except one. The final was harder, but I found that reading the (really marvelous) textbook helped for it. I liked this class.

Sarrafzadeh is a solid professor. Lectures consist of mostly him going over problems and their solutions to demonstrate whatever chapter we're focusing on. There's not as much conceptual background but he's very clear and well-organized in going through the questions.

The midterm was fairly easy. Majority of the questions were literally problems he did in class, or otherwise extremely straightforward (ex. show the steps of BFS on this graph). The final was more difficult - I recommend going to UPE's review session to get a better grasp of the course material.