Reviews of professor Vasant Honavar

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Prof. Honavar's lectures emphasize the why, what, and how of machine learning and not so much implementation in some programming language like Python. He expects you to be able to program, and use the python libraries, etc. which you should be able to if you have taken the prerequisite programming classes. Oh.. brush up on math before you enroll.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Dr. Honavar of the best professors I have ever had. He teaches you the ideas behind the methods, and provides intuition about how they work, and when and when not to use them. Scientific rigor and reproducibility of analyses are front and center in the course. He changed the way I approach data, study design, and research.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Brush up your  multivariable differential calculus, probability, basic linear algebra, and python programming before you take this class. Prof. Honavar will review what you need to know before diving deep into machine learning, but you will do so much better if you are prepared. This was the best class I ever had at Penn State. Really great prof.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Great prof. One of the best, if not the best I have had at Penn State. He teaches you how to come up with machine learning algorithms for different problems from first principles.He really knows machine learning, and really loves to share his knowledge. He explains the main ideas in several ways - mathematical, visual, etc. until you get it.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Great professor. The lecture was full of important stuff. Very experienced. The only issue I found was that he did not explain the reasons for deducting points.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Absolutely amazing course. Well-designed course materials. Great lectures that covered not only technical concepts but also their interdisciplinary roots. I loved working on the course project of my choosing and ended up with a publishable manuscript. Dr. Honavar is extremely unassuming and approachable despite his many accomplishments.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
I loved the class. Prof. Honavar does not take attendance and lectures are not mandatory...but if you skip class or snooze, you lose big time. While readings and slides are posted, the explanations he gives in class really helped me understand the material, especially the math behind machine learning. I learned a lot.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
If you want to really learn machine learning (not just running tools, but core ideas), take this course from Dr. Honavar. I aced an internship interview because I was to explain how  "kernel trick" can be used to "upgrade" any "linear" classifier. I was able to do this because I learned the math behind the kernel trick in this course.