Baishakhi Ray

~6 hrs a week on average. Terrible grading style, only about 3 things were graded before the final exam so you had no idea how you were doing. Not even sure how they graded the projects, because it seemed like everyone got 100% even though that shouldn't have happened, so that resulted in her curving the grades down: A = 97+ (~93rd percentile) A- = 93+ (~78 percentile) B+ =90+ (~70th percentile) B = 86+ (~40 percentile) B- = 80+ (~14 percentile) C+ = 72+ (~3.6 percentile) C = rest So basically, if you did average on the exams, you got between B- and B.

Avoid this professor at all costs, take with another professor if possible. Very unprepared professor, constantly had mistakes when teaching the class. The content was interesting, however it was just not taught very well. Very poorly written exams, with very poorly written rubrics. Sometimes there was no space given to write your solutions to the questions. No midterm/final practice exams. There was a midterm/final review but they were nothing like what was on the exam. We didn't recieve homework solutions (main homework) before the midterm, so it was really hard to study for. There's extra credit, but it doesn't make up for the curving of the grades down. The extra credit wasn't graded for the pop quizzes/ assignment until several weeks after the final exam.

3 assignments which felt like too little. Very little prep is given for exams. On average I spent about 5 hours a week on this class (outside of class)

I liked the content of this class, and Professor Baishakhi is nice and approachable and her lectures are somewhat entertaining. However, she does not care about her students and does not know the content well at all. She made countless mistakes throughout the lectures that students would correct. She would take an agonizing amount of time going through content that was covered in required prerequisites. Her homework was fun and challenging but graded without feedback. And the final grade was curved down. She is a nice person but not a good professor. If you can, take this class with a different professor.

3 written hw, 3 programming assignments (4 but the last one is optional), 1 midterm, 1 final

One of the worst professors I’ve ever had at Columbia. She is highly disorganized, with slides often not being uploaded, even as late as the week leading up to finals. The teaching team is extremely unresponsive to emails and ed posts. Exam, homework, and project instructions/questions are often not worded properly, and requests for clarification often go unanswered. Grading deadlines are rarely met - by the time finals approached, only HW1 and Programming Assignment 1 had been graded. While the course content is interesting, the professor’s poor management makes this class one of the worst at Columbia.

There are 4 written assignments, each is at least 4 pages long, and each assignment is only worth 2.5% of overall grade...

3 written homework assignments; 5 programming assignments 1 midterm, 1 final on the last day of classes

Very disorganized professor - every homework/programming assignment needed last minute clarifications. Teaching was disorganized (didn't learn a single thing from lecture), and what was discussed in lecture was completely different from the homeworks. Doing the homework assignments depended on going through the source code of LLVM, navigating around documentation on your own, and trying to figure out what was going on. This was justified by the professor because she said that obviously theory taught in class will be different from applications on homeworks. But had a student not posted a Google Doc on Piazza of research that she had compiled and shared with the class, honestly I wouldn't even know what LLVM is. Grading was very arbitrary. Overall, I think the professor cares very much about teaching her students and making sure that we understand. This is apparent because she took time in class to ask for and answer questions. However, I had no questions because I didn't even know what to ask. All her slides are also adopted from other professors and better versions can be found online. I would recommend taking PLT with any other professor if possible.