Cho-Jui Hsieh
Department of Computer Science
AD
3.4
Overall Rating
Based on 47 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.1 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.4 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

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GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
22.0%
18.3%
14.7%
11.0%
7.3%
3.7%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

19.3%
16.1%
12.8%
9.6%
6.4%
3.2%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

33.9%
28.2%
22.6%
16.9%
11.3%
5.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (33)

3 of 4
3 of 4
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Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 3, 2022

Watching Hsieh stops talking for a whole minute and reading questions in the chat 20+ times in one lecture is torturing. I'm learning by book because of this and his accent. HWs and exams usually have 4 problems, 3 do-able but 1 hardcore. I found some of the problems on leetcode as hard. Nevertheless, the curve is generous. The class averaged 59 in final and he add 3-5 points to everyone's total grades. I get from B+ to just over A.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 22, 2021

The grading scheme is:
Homework: 50%
Midterm: 50%
Final: 50%
I think that given the online format, professor did a great job of teaching this class. For lecture, he would write his notes on an Ipad as he lecture. His handwritting can be hard to read and the lecture isn't really that engaging but he would take time to answer all questions that was raised. Although I think that he really explained it clear enough conceptually, I would suggest reading the textbook as supplement as it may have some finer points and example that may help you in solving the homework.
For homework, I think it really takes sometime to solve it, for me it took me about 5 - 10 hours in order to come up with a solution, even then, I still sometime miss some cases and get points docked because my proof is either incomplete or I overlooked a possible case.
For exams, we were given 24 hours for midterm and 48 hours for final. In my opinion, the exams were way harder than the homework. I took the entire time working on it and even then I still barely passing that exam.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Aug. 8, 2021

Professor Hsieh did a great job teaching this class in the online format. For lecture, he wrote notes on his iPad with a stylus, and did a good job. He went through topics with thoroughness and clarity, and was more than willing to answer lots of questions.
The format of the class was very straightforward. There were four homework assignments, as well as a 24 hour midterm and 24 hour final. Most homework assignments consisted of four to five algorithms questions, and didn't take too long. The final and midterm were very similar, with varying degrees of difficulty between questions.
Overall, I would definitely recommend taking CS 180 with Hsieh. The workload wasn't too bad and I learned a lot.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
June 22, 2021

Great professor. Not super engaging but explains concepts well enough to understand and use. Tests were time-consuming and hard but it is cs180. Overall, worth taking compared to other professors

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 22, 2021

He's okay. Lectures aren't terrible, but not particularly engaging or interesting. That being said, Professor Hsieh is a pretty kind person, and he is always happy to answer questions. The homeworks definitely take a while, so start early! If possible, try to find a friend to review the homeworks with after you finish; doing this really helped me solidify the concepts. The exams on the other hand... sucked. I know people that spent 14+ hours on the midterm (which had a 24-hour window), and the final took even longer. But all this means that the TAs need to spend more time grading the exams, so the grading ended up being pretty wack, where they'd be super lenient in some places and mark off points for no reason in others. Once testing returns to normal though, I don't foresee this being an issue.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: NR
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
June 21, 2021

Professor is very clear and has this down to a science at this point. The textbook is INSANELY HELPFUL, even more so than lectures IMO.

This class involves some healthy mind-gymnastics to do well in. I ended up spending ~10h just solving each homework, plus an additional 5h writing up my solutions. Needless to say it was a little grindy at times, but this class was really good at getting me to understand the Algs. I wish we spent more time on Dynamic Programming, of which we basically only scratched the surface in this class.

He said we would have 500 homework points, worth 50% of our grade total, but we ended up having 350 points (4 assignments), so they ended up counting for a lot more of our grade. The midterm was fair, but took a looong time to writeup (24h window). The final had a 48h window, and even with all that time I still ended up not fully solving one problem. Pretty hard stuff for sure.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: N/A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 18, 2021

what all the other reviews said - homework takes a long time, but you get faster as you get more used to the patterns you need and become adjusted to the idea of trying many different solutions as opposed to kind of knowing which direction you're supposed to go in right off the bat. It's like a puzzle. Cho is great at explaining, but things can get a little bit muddy at some points - just make sure you ask questions if this is the case, because he is always, ALWAYS kind and willing to answer. Super accommodating, super kind. 100% would take this with him again.

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Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Sept. 1, 2020

Professor Hsieh was incoherent and a very poor lecturer. I eventually stopped showing up to class and only read the textbook since I never learned anything from him. He gave decently difficult homework but there weren't usually that many questions. The midterm was not too bad but his final was definitely very tough.

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Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 27, 2020

For the online version:
Lectures were pretty messy since he was constrained to an ipad, he would probably be better in a lecture hall with a lot of whiteboards. I ended up not going to lectures after week 5 because I couldn't follow. So a good part was he gave us 24 hours for the midterm and 72 for the final. The final was hard just because I think the concepts were a lot more difficult to grasp compared to what was on the midterm, but its not like the questions were unreasonably difficult, if that makes sense. I did end up using the entire time to figure out solutions for all the questions though, so that was really stressful three days.
The homework is not crazy hard and collaboration is fine.

Basically I would recommend this class if you are able to learn on your own, since he doesn't try to be unfair and trick you or anything. And if it goes back to in person his lectures would probably be much better than my experience.

Helpful?

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Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
June 25, 2020

Professor Hseih is very nice and accommodating for students (during the COVID-19). He offered 24-hour midterm and 72-hour final. There were total of four homework assignments due which took some time, but most of it was Googleable. He often gave out extensions for the homework deadlines.
The midterm was pretty easy (median of 96~98 I believe) but the final was very tough. It actually took at least two days to complete and the median ended up being around 83. Both exams were open note.
Although Professor Hseih teaches by the book, he does not have a neat handwriting, so it's often pretty difficult to decipher his handwriting. I think he would've taught a lot better if he was in person. For more difficult topics like DP, NP, and DAC, I usually resorted the textbook (which was also kind of confusing) and a lot of YouTube videos.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A
Jan. 3, 2022

Watching Hsieh stops talking for a whole minute and reading questions in the chat 20+ times in one lecture is torturing. I'm learning by book because of this and his accent. HWs and exams usually have 4 problems, 3 do-able but 1 hardcore. I found some of the problems on leetcode as hard. Nevertheless, the curve is generous. The class averaged 59 in final and he add 3-5 points to everyone's total grades. I get from B+ to just over A.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B
Dec. 22, 2021

The grading scheme is:
Homework: 50%
Midterm: 50%
Final: 50%
I think that given the online format, professor did a great job of teaching this class. For lecture, he would write his notes on an Ipad as he lecture. His handwritting can be hard to read and the lecture isn't really that engaging but he would take time to answer all questions that was raised. Although I think that he really explained it clear enough conceptually, I would suggest reading the textbook as supplement as it may have some finer points and example that may help you in solving the homework.
For homework, I think it really takes sometime to solve it, for me it took me about 5 - 10 hours in order to come up with a solution, even then, I still sometime miss some cases and get points docked because my proof is either incomplete or I overlooked a possible case.
For exams, we were given 24 hours for midterm and 48 hours for final. In my opinion, the exams were way harder than the homework. I took the entire time working on it and even then I still barely passing that exam.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
Aug. 8, 2021

Professor Hsieh did a great job teaching this class in the online format. For lecture, he wrote notes on his iPad with a stylus, and did a good job. He went through topics with thoroughness and clarity, and was more than willing to answer lots of questions.
The format of the class was very straightforward. There were four homework assignments, as well as a 24 hour midterm and 24 hour final. Most homework assignments consisted of four to five algorithms questions, and didn't take too long. The final and midterm were very similar, with varying degrees of difficulty between questions.
Overall, I would definitely recommend taking CS 180 with Hsieh. The workload wasn't too bad and I learned a lot.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
June 22, 2021

Great professor. Not super engaging but explains concepts well enough to understand and use. Tests were time-consuming and hard but it is cs180. Overall, worth taking compared to other professors

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: A
June 22, 2021

He's okay. Lectures aren't terrible, but not particularly engaging or interesting. That being said, Professor Hsieh is a pretty kind person, and he is always happy to answer questions. The homeworks definitely take a while, so start early! If possible, try to find a friend to review the homeworks with after you finish; doing this really helped me solidify the concepts. The exams on the other hand... sucked. I know people that spent 14+ hours on the midterm (which had a 24-hour window), and the final took even longer. But all this means that the TAs need to spend more time grading the exams, so the grading ended up being pretty wack, where they'd be super lenient in some places and mark off points for no reason in others. Once testing returns to normal though, I don't foresee this being an issue.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: NR
June 21, 2021

Professor is very clear and has this down to a science at this point. The textbook is INSANELY HELPFUL, even more so than lectures IMO.

This class involves some healthy mind-gymnastics to do well in. I ended up spending ~10h just solving each homework, plus an additional 5h writing up my solutions. Needless to say it was a little grindy at times, but this class was really good at getting me to understand the Algs. I wish we spent more time on Dynamic Programming, of which we basically only scratched the surface in this class.

He said we would have 500 homework points, worth 50% of our grade total, but we ended up having 350 points (4 assignments), so they ended up counting for a lot more of our grade. The midterm was fair, but took a looong time to writeup (24h window). The final had a 48h window, and even with all that time I still ended up not fully solving one problem. Pretty hard stuff for sure.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: N/A
June 18, 2021

what all the other reviews said - homework takes a long time, but you get faster as you get more used to the patterns you need and become adjusted to the idea of trying many different solutions as opposed to kind of knowing which direction you're supposed to go in right off the bat. It's like a puzzle. Cho is great at explaining, but things can get a little bit muddy at some points - just make sure you ask questions if this is the case, because he is always, ALWAYS kind and willing to answer. Super accommodating, super kind. 100% would take this with him again.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
Sept. 1, 2020

Professor Hsieh was incoherent and a very poor lecturer. I eventually stopped showing up to class and only read the textbook since I never learned anything from him. He gave decently difficult homework but there weren't usually that many questions. The midterm was not too bad but his final was definitely very tough.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 27, 2020

For the online version:
Lectures were pretty messy since he was constrained to an ipad, he would probably be better in a lecture hall with a lot of whiteboards. I ended up not going to lectures after week 5 because I couldn't follow. So a good part was he gave us 24 hours for the midterm and 72 for the final. The final was hard just because I think the concepts were a lot more difficult to grasp compared to what was on the midterm, but its not like the questions were unreasonably difficult, if that makes sense. I did end up using the entire time to figure out solutions for all the questions though, so that was really stressful three days.
The homework is not crazy hard and collaboration is fine.

Basically I would recommend this class if you are able to learn on your own, since he doesn't try to be unfair and trick you or anything. And if it goes back to in person his lectures would probably be much better than my experience.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
June 25, 2020

Professor Hseih is very nice and accommodating for students (during the COVID-19). He offered 24-hour midterm and 72-hour final. There were total of four homework assignments due which took some time, but most of it was Googleable. He often gave out extensions for the homework deadlines.
The midterm was pretty easy (median of 96~98 I believe) but the final was very tough. It actually took at least two days to complete and the median ended up being around 83. Both exams were open note.
Although Professor Hseih teaches by the book, he does not have a neat handwriting, so it's often pretty difficult to decipher his handwriting. I think he would've taught a lot better if he was in person. For more difficult topics like DP, NP, and DAC, I usually resorted the textbook (which was also kind of confusing) and a lot of YouTube videos.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
3 of 4
3.4
Overall Rating
Based on 47 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.1 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.4 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.

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