Eitan Grinspun

One of the best, and also one of the hardest, most time-demanding classes I have ever taken. Grinspun is a very well known and accomplished professor who is passionate about his work, as well as an enthusiastic and organized lecturer. Take this class late in your CS career - the more programming experience you have, the better. Homeworks are difficult, but you are provided with a code base that provides visual debugging tools, as well as a grading script with numerous tests that gives you an accurate idea of the performance (and final grade) of your code. All homeworks come with a PDF explaining the physics concepts behind the code for that week, and although there were some errors, the PDFs were for the most part very helpful, especially if you happened to miss a lecture. (In the case of mistakes in the PDF, extensions were often given) To prepare: learn linear algebra, refresh your knowledge of differential calculus (mandatory), be a strong C++ programmer, and, although it is not listed in the course requirements, I STRONGLY recommend some kind of physics background. While Grinspun does go over this material in class, if you start with at least one college-level physics class under your belt, the lectures and homeworks will be much more comprehensible, and you won't waste time learning elementary physics. Grading: I include this section to discuss some grading policies I dis…

Professor Grinspun is old school. His classes will punch you in the face and make you learn out of self defense. He's a very good teacher. This class is definitely the closest I've had to "drinking from a firehose" style learning. There's not really a whole lot else to be said The guest lectures were all great and relevant. Almost half the course was guest lectures, partly because we sort of ran out of things to cover partway through. Start the ray tracer early.

Discrete Mathematics, as taught by Professor Grinspun, is a CS prerequisite I am very happy to be taking. Professor Grinspun's computer graphics research is really cool, but that is outside the scope of this review. The main strength of COMS W3203 is clarity. Professor Grinspun's lectures are so understandable that I have not usually needed to read the textbook in depth. If anything, they are too basic and move too slowly, although there is plenty of time to ruminate on the materials in class. The textbook (by Kenneth Rosen) is also excellent, being both engaging and informative. The difficulty and pacing of the course changed relatively little as the semester progressed, a teaching accomplishment in itself. The curriculum focuses roughly equally on proof-writing and problem-solving--a fair division, although I wish there had been more discussion of how Discrete Math can be applied. The homework was where most of my learning took place, and it would have been a mistake not to do it as thoroughly as possible even if each assignment is only 4 percent of the grade. (Not everyone does their homework thoroughly.) Homework is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for preparing for the three exams, which are long and complicated exercises in problem-solving and proof-writing speed. As a warning, almost no one could finish the second midterm exam. This includes some of the best remaining students. For…

This is the BEST course I've ever taken. Prof. Grinspun is talented, not only on his research, but also on teaching. It seems he can see through your mind, find your weekness and try to fix it with all the material he provides. This course is MUST for students who is in the graphics track or want to enter either the graphics industry or academia after graduation. In addition, I think this course is also a MUST for who want to be a professor in computer science to learn how to be a good lecturer and how to organize your material well in a 1.5-hour presentation. Besides coding and graphics, the course covers a lot in physics, linear algebra and differential geometry. Everything is self-contained so you can start this course even your math is only at high school level.

The premise of Computer Graphics class is to understand the fundamentals and principles of graphics. How we perceive the world in perspective; how we understand surfaces, shape transformations, and shadows interacting with light sources; how we manage to get millions of triangles described in a text file to be displayed nicely as Nemo in 3D model; how we render stunning images from a merely text file; they are all in one class. I cannot believe I have accomplished so much in one semester, and this class is simply one of the best class at Columbia that exceeds tuition fee that I pay for. In this class you will be exposed to pretty much everything in graphics pipeline. The awesome part is that you gotta have to sit down and implement real graphics program from scratch. It is a great class to let you see how technology and art can strengthen each other. And who wouldn't like a class that he/she can enjoy the two at the same time? Enough said with the class. Prof. Grinspun himself is also an extraordinary teacher. With his exclusive background in math, you will blow your mind to let you see how much graphics and math are inter-connected. In addition, because he is an excellent teacher who explains things from the perspective of someone who knows little about the subject, you can't go wrong with the materials. His humor and energetic teaching style will also motivates you to engage…

Great course. Makes a somewhat dry subject incredibly interesting. Very lively lecture... one of the few CS classes I really have enjoyed attending. If you can take this class with Grinspun (he tends to teach in the Spring), so do. Homework is difficult, but not extraordinarily so. Midterms are very difficult, as they are open book so they test not what you could memorize but how adept you are at solving the problems. It is also possible to recover from a bad midterm... I nearly aced the first midterm (missed one or two points), but the second midterm I don't think I managed to get more than 20/90, but with a decent score on the final I still ended up with an A-. Not to mention, the questions on the homework and exams are actually somewhat fun (interesting questions, not dull or boring ones for the most part), which is always a plus.

Heavy. Weekly homework assignments, containing a program and a creative. The programming assignments tended to take me 4-5 days, and the mandatory creative scenes took up the rest of the time until the deadline. Obviously, the more time you spend on the creative scene, the better your assignment grade, so this system favors students who can complete the assignments faster. It is not easy to get an A in this class, but it is possible. Grinspun only gives A+ grades to exceptional students who he believes have gone above and beyond.

Intense. Weekly programming assignments that take about as long as the bi-weekly ones I get in other classes. I'm astounded by the sheer amount of things I had to learn how to do. He doesn't do extensions, save for a general ten-points-off-for-hour-late policy.

Good professor overall. Entertaining in class, made a potentially dry subject quite interesting. Overall workload easier than one would expect; while each HW assignment was reasonably challenging and lengthy, there were only 6 of them in the whole semester. Material was pretty easy, and it would have been useful if we could have moved along a bit faster. Midterms were challenging, but were also open-book which means you wouldn't have to memorize stuff. Recommended, but they should probably make the class a bit faster. And maybe spend some time showing where the knowledge can be applied.

Light at the beginning, but heavier as time goes. Fortunately the assignments have a lot of fun and extremely clear. Each assignment contains some coding job, and designing a demo scene. Usually each assignment will cost you 1~2 days if you want to get an A+. You would become an experienced C++ coder after finishing this course even you don't know how to write a Hello World at the beginning of the term. The grading is partly democratic, say, your classmates will be in charge of evaluating your demo scenes in a double-blind manner, and the remaining part is graded with a robot checking your result. No exam!