He's not the most exciting lecturer. The homework assignments build off of what he lectures about. They aren't too difficult and it's kind of cool to see how you can apply what he's teaching to some real stuff.

I bought the course reader, which I think was a great investment since the tests are open-note. The exams were manageable. You should be able to figure out most of the problems with the help of the course reader and some additional thought.

Homework is completed in Matlab (or Python, if you choose). It was nice to see how powerful Matlab can be in terms of ease and speed of data processing (never used it before).

He offered the option to take the final exam or complete a final project as an alternative. I did the final exam, but if you knew you did terribly on the exam, you could fall back on the project. It's always nice to have the safety net.

Overall, he's a nice professor that cares both about the grades and learning of his students. He's not the most exciting person, but you'll learn some cool stuff without having to put too much effort into the class.

I have no idea why Parker receives such high recognition here. His lectures are boring and unclear. Homework has little to do with lectures, and exams have nothing to do with homework.

Went to the first two days of lecture, the midterm, and the final (a few discussions, but the TA was useless as all he did was read off homework instructions or notes available on courseweb). Nothing to do with the professor: mostly had morning classes and this was my only late afternoon class.

Did all 4 homeworks with just the coursereader, which take about a day or 2 at most to do all of them.

The tests (quiz, midterm, and final) were all open notes, with most of the relevant knowledge either being in the coursereader or knowing offhand the results in MATLAB (which you should know or can at least guess from doing the homework and good intuition). Added together, I scored about the average with less than a day's worth of studying for each.

There is a final project alternative to the final exam, which can even save you from failing the class if you happen to do extremely poorly (it happens).

Ended up with an A- with barely any effort in the class. The professor is very nice, but I never went to lecture so I can't comment on his teaching style. Definitely one of the easiest CS classes I've taken.

I took cs 170a with Parker last quarter and he was truly a nice guy. Postponed the hw due dates when we had conflicts and seemed genuinely concerned with our learning of the material.

He was not that great of a lecturer and I don't think anyone really understood the material that deeply. However, he grade EXTREMELY generously. I honestly had no idea what was going on in the quarter and just bs-ed my way through and ended up with a B+.

I would recommend Parker for an easy class

This class has a lot to do with math (as suggested by the title), especially matrices and linear algebra, and there are some references to statistics. Tests do not test your ability to code or program, but mostly only your understanding of the material, which consists of mathematical concepts and applications. There is 1 quiz that accounts for something like 5% of your grade in the very beginning of the quarter based on linear algebra and some basic MATLAB. The rest of your grade depends on the homework (there are 5 assignments in total), 1 midterm, and 1 final (or you can choose to do a final project, one that you design/decide on). He gives practice exams for every test and the TA Elaine Wah goes over them (she is a fantastic TA by the way). His actual tests are somewhat similar to the practice exams, but the material in general is rather abstract and hard to grasp and not well-taught. I feel like most of the class only had a vague understanding of the material, although the average on his tests were always high (around 80) because he had practice exams and the tests are open note. Homeworks, based entirely on MATLAB, are not very time-consuming, especially in comparison to other CS classes, and while they are not extremely difficult, I did find myself stuck on a few parts of every single homework assignment. Fortunately, grading is very generous. I did not feel like I did my homeworks entirely correctly, but got A's on them, and I only got around the mean for every test, but ended with a B+ in the class. Overall, the material is hard to fully understand, but he's a very nice professor, the class doesn't require too much effort, the grading is very generous, and the TA was extremely helpful.