Reviews of professor Catherine Zhao

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
I have taken her online CSCI2033. She is an amazing instructor and TAs are very patient for any questions and accessible at any time. If you email a question, you will get a response in 30 mins. Her lecture is clear. There are also many online resources you can use. You can definitely learn a lot from her!

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Catherine's lectures were actually not terrible, which is a rarity in the CSci department unfortunately. 2033 as a class is really easy, and Catherine usually makes things easier by explaining things clearly and making fair quizzes and tests. If you do all the homework problems in the book (using Slader for help) this class is as free an A as any.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
The gap between the lecture and coding might be heavy for someone who doesn't fully comprehend the principles beneath it, especially the ones with a relatively weak math base. Requiring basic understanding of linear algebra and multi-variable derivative, not much difficulty in coding itself but students may struggle with realizing math process.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Professor Catherine is a great professor and you can see that she understands and presents the material really well. She also cares about teaching the fundamental of a concept instead of just throwing a bunch of formulas at you. Her tests are easy as long as you attend and understand the lectures. Should be an easy A.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
This is by far the most well organized class I have taken online. All of the exams feel very fair, and lectures are great at conveying the course material in a clear and engaging way. If you see Zhao as an option for linear alg, she is 1000x better than the other professors you can take it with.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Zhao is the best ML professor at the university. Works towards building your intuition while not making you stress too much on mathematics. Homework doesn't take too long if you pay attention to lectures. Grading is pretty lenient. I've never seen a professor take feedback and apply it so well to a course as she does. Highly recommend.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Professor Zhao and the TAs were awesome. The course's material can be very difficult, but the professor did an awesome job of providing examples and simplifying it. The course is very math-heavy.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
She is so great and nice. Clear expectations going in to each quiz and midterm (which were open note). She takes feedback from students and actually implements it which is great.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Prof Zhao did a great job of adapting to online teaching and she even asked for class feedback midway through. Grading was very timely and professional with auto-grading for code. Quizzes were really easy. Exams were in line with homework. Best professor I've had so far at UMN. Highly recommended for Intro to ML.