Reviews of professor Matias Korman

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I've had Matias for comp15 and now 160. Matias is a nice guy, and it seemed that many of the problems in 15 were just from him being new. Now having him for 160, though, the class is bad. I (and others I've talked to) struggle to follow his lectures at all--creating a lot of extra work for material that by itself does not need to be difficult.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Definitely go to TA OH to get help on homework. There are tough concepts to cover in the course, it's not Mati's fault that it's tough. Lectures will get you part of the way there, but there is critical thinking on homework to get you the rest of the way. There's lots of room for partial credit on HW and Exams. Not sure why he got such a bad rap.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Mati is an amazing researcher and a fantastic teacher - he is EXTREMELY good at explaining difficult concepts. Herein lies the issue as to why he is poorly rated - he teaches very difficult things, so people tend to have trouble distinguishing between his shortcomings and just the overall difficulty of what he is teaching. He is great though!

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Not the best but by far not the worst professor. Will write down incorrect code on the board on purpose, and once you've already copied it down he will say its wrong and ask for how to fix it. He's a really good person though and wants to make sure one bad day doesn't ruin your grade.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Lectures, while not great, are generally helpful until the end of the semester. Self teaching was almost mandatory on harder concepts. Homework seemed to have an almost arbitrary difficulty curve, with some assignments requiring lots of time being followed by substantially easier ones, or an occasional extreme ramp up in difficulty.