Reviews of professor Mehrdad Mahdavi

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Dr. Mahdavi is very enthusiastic about machine learning and a fantastic lecturer. Very well organized and amazingly prepared lectures/slides. The exams are challenging and you need to have a good understanding of concepts to do well. If you share the same passion as he does then you will enjoy the course very much.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
He clearly knew what he was talking about, but it was often hard to understand what he was saying at times. Koslicki became our professor midway though and is significantly better. I ended up skipping lectures and just watching recordings/reading the book as it was easier to follow. Homeworks take hours to do but is representative of exam problems.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
He asks you to derive results in top ML conferences in assignments. Those results could take months even for the original authors. You either have to copy from those papers or fail. He does not even know his own papers - probably just puts his name on them with no contribution. He has no intuition and he thinks ML is just a bunch of inequalities.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Fantastic lectures. Amazing, caring and very knowledgeable instructor. Take this course with him, you will learn a lot and will not get bored.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
No textbook but he posts links to readings every week. Class average was really and I'm pretty sure about a quarter of us failed. Pay attention in class, take good notes and go to office hours if you need. Be prepared to teach yourself some python libraries too. Something changed from 2019 to now. Those old reviews are outdated.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
He is good when explaining Machine Learning and assigning homework. As long as you don't procrastinate on the homework and get help when you need it, the homeworks will give you a good grade. He says the exams are easy, but that's a lie. The only reason I passed is because of the homeworks.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
He does not explain things in detail. The course is difficult since it uses cs170 material from berkeley, exam and quiz would have ambiguous question, and even some TAs cannot give your correct explanation for exam and homework. Do not take this course if this is not the requirement for your major.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
If you are serious about learning the foundations of machine learning, and ready to work hard, take this course. He is very smart and his teaching style is very inspirational. Take the course seriously from very very beginning :-)

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Mehrdad is a ML G. The material is challenging, but if you survive the class, you won't be a professional buzzword bingo player: you actually *know* ML. Be prepared to work (and go to his office hours, he is VERY excited to talk about ML.. esp. the homework...) Take this course if: 1) you actually want to learn true ML, and 2) your load is light.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I did ok, but really enjoyed the course and learned a lot. Thank you both professors!