CS182 & Closing Thoughts
Final results came through, dropping it here for future reference:
Final Letter Grade - B (80.69/100)
Final - 73/100 -> 25.55/35
Midterm - 81.5/108 -> 26.41/35
Exam Total - 51.96/70
Quiz Total - 9.58/10
HW Total - 19.14/20
Closing thoughts:
CS182 is in my opinion a perfectly middle-of-the-pack class. There will be difficulty spikes for every person based on topic, curves and grades are handed pretty generously.
The core parts I struggled are complexity and some earlier sections that are pretty cut out and dry, but if you pour in a little more time, it is very conquer-able at its difficulty. I had to balance MA351, CS240 and two other decently challenging electives this semester and didn’t give in a lot of weight to CS182, reflected in my homework and quizzes which I really should’ve gotten full on.
I did know beforehand from some other classes and high school knowledge of some topics, such as probability and number theory, so I didn’t commit too deep into the class, thinking that I can probably get away with a B just from the topics I’m good at, and exactly did do so. (I do have to study and know all of the topics of course, I was just more familiar in some)
If you want to get an A, I wouldn’t bet on it being too hard but you must pour time into it. I didn’t get to go to any PSOs because of my screwed class schedules (all of them except 182 has basically required attendance), and generally be there for lectures.
A lot of people, myself included, skip lectures. I remember vividly that there wasn’t even a third of the people in the WALC lecture room after Topic 7. If you are not comfortable with understanding a topic, please do the obvious thing and listen up. I did have Sellke as my lecturer, and I really don’t want to talk shit, but in the kindest way, she doesn’t really make a lot of sense in speech, and will trail off to a seemingly random set of words mid-sentence. For future classes, if attendance is not required and you have time, I implore you to just go to the other section.