For those signing up for spring quarter classes I wanted to add in a review of my impressions up to week 4 because there aren't many reviews.

He is a funny and nice professor and he yells a lot while lecturing so you won't be bored and it gives the illusion that you won't lose focus and you'll understand things better, but in reality you still somehow end up leaving the classroom wondering what the heck you learned in those 50 minutes. I feel bad saying this because he does seem like a good person but his lecturing is so disorganized. He would benefit from having an agenda of what we should learn by the end of the lecture instead of jumping from webpage to powerpoint slide to blackboard on what seems like a bunch of different tangents.

I'm struggling to do this homework assignment due tomorrow because I have not learned the material necessary to do it.

Best professor ever! Take him!

Very unorganized professor, rude, and not helpful in the least. Lectures are the most directionless I have ever experienced, attendance is mandatory but you're better of reading the book because his lectures are utterly undecipherable. Learned absolutely nothing in this class. Avoid at all costs.

*online version*
Almohalwas is hard to follow at times, and moving online didn't help. While it's clear that he puts a lot of effort into his slides (once pulling an all nighter to make it look nicer), it lacks clear examples and the main substance of the chapter, and he often goes over the slides too quickly (as there are 100+ slides for each 1.25 hrs class). Tests are always fair though, as long as you take decent notes during class and understand formulas of the slides. Grades are broken down by homework, 3 pretty simple quizzes, midterm, final, and the island project.
As for the *dreaded* island project, there wasn't much guidance nor expectations given on how to tackle it, and because he didn't release information on any of the prior steps to the project itself, you only get to hear feedback on your experiment's topic AFTER the presentation is given, which by this is too late to make the significant changes that he expects. I highly recommend doing something wacky (EX how petting an alligator changes one's test scores or something) instead of something that's applicable (EX how music affects focus or mood or grades), and especially avoid alcohol or drug consumption experiments, as they aren't "unique."
Contrary to what I've written above, however, Professor Almohalwas is a great professor to talk to and get to know, and he does genuinely care about his students. He's extremely friendly and great to talk to. Students tend to dislike his classes for the sole reason that it's hard to know what to expect from his tests and homework, as they aren't always clear, but if you've taken his classes before, you should know how he tests.

He is a very nice and kind professor, but he's not particularly good at engaging the students. His hw and exams are not hard, and he is generous with the grade. Would take again, but probably not during a shortened online quarter.

By far the worst professor I've had in my entire life. The biggest concern is that he is very disorganized, so he'll often give out 60-90 page PDFs and expect us to just know all the content there. Quizzes are given out at random times, exams are difficult, and there is a final project that was due a week AFTER finals week. By any means, try to take a different professor to save yourself time and health.

Definitely worst of the worst.

Dr. Almohalwas is the best professor I have had thus far! The class itself is definitely engaging and really useful since you learned so much! (KNN, logistic regression, LDA, QDA, PCA, GAM,...) He is very clear during lectures and very helpful during office hours. I believe the tests are a bit short and difficult, so one needs to attend lectures and be engaged a lot, but it pays off. The group project is really useful and can be considered real-life applications. Overall, Dr. Almo is great and I have never learned so much useful information in a single class!

Almo is a very caring professor, but I have had (way) better lecturers. Material is very similar to Miles' 102B class (basically Intro to ML). I absolutely got destroyed from the all the exams (probably just me, mean and median were B+ and B- for midterm and final), thus ending with a B+ despite performing very well on the Kaggle project. Exams ask a lot about conceptual stuff and has an actual programming question, but it was the conceptual stuff that throws me off since we don't usually get questions on those in our homework and it was relatively hard to find practice questions.

The class overall is not bad (coming from someone who despises stats). I did not put much focus on this class as I should have. The coding for this class is annoying because it does not relate much to the concepts that are being taught. Professor Almohalwas does a good job when teaching the class. I would recommend but make sure you do all your assignments.