Reviews of professor Vasant Honavar

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Unlike others, I did not find the prof to be difficult. As long as you are comfortable with basic math (calculus, probability, matrices), the course is not difficult. The prof. explains key ideas very well. Problem sets and labs really help you learn. The prof. goes out of his way to help students, e.g., when we miss classes because of illness.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
This is a new introductory freshman level general education course on artificial intelligence. I was unsure how such an advanced topic could be taught to students with little or no computing background. Dr. Honavar  makes complex ideas simple and easy to understand and connects AI  to philosophy, psychology, and computing. Do not miss this course.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
The class is a little heavy on math. But that seems unavoidable if you want to really learn machine learning. Dr. Honavar is great at explaining the what, why, and how of machine learning. He is super approachable and is always happy to help - you just have to ask. This is the best course I have had as a Data Science major.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Dr. Honavar does a great job of balancing the conceptual/theoretical with the practical aspects of machine learning. The lectures are amazing. The labs really help with the practical aspects. Dr. Honavar clearly loves teaching this course. It is the best course I have taken in the Data Science program at Penn State.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I have never had to study so hard  in my entire time at Penn State. But then I interviewed for a data scientist position at a top company. I had to derive a gradient based update rule, explain how to cope with unbalanced data etc.. I aced the interview. I got the job. I have Dr. Honavar to thank for everything I knew about machine learning.