Professor
Rafail Ostrovsky
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2018 - I would say CS 180 is definitely one of the most useful and interesting classes I've ever taken at UCLA. HOWEVER, as for the professor himself, I would say he's not helpful at all. I stopped going to lectures after like 2nd or 3rd week bc his lectures suck. And since he strictly followed the textbook I just decided to study the textbook myself instead of wasting time attending lectures(btw the textbook is great as it provides you an overall skeleton of how different algorithmic paradigms work, and gives you abundant examples showing how to apply those different algorithms). The workload is chill. You only have around 5 hw problems every week. However, some of the problems can be really hard, even impossible to do on ur own. But anyways there are solutions available online and it seems that as long as you write something on each problem you'll get 100... The midterm was hard with average around 40%. The final on the other hand was much better(at least compared with the midterm).
Winter 2018 - I would say CS 180 is definitely one of the most useful and interesting classes I've ever taken at UCLA. HOWEVER, as for the professor himself, I would say he's not helpful at all. I stopped going to lectures after like 2nd or 3rd week bc his lectures suck. And since he strictly followed the textbook I just decided to study the textbook myself instead of wasting time attending lectures(btw the textbook is great as it provides you an overall skeleton of how different algorithmic paradigms work, and gives you abundant examples showing how to apply those different algorithms). The workload is chill. You only have around 5 hw problems every week. However, some of the problems can be really hard, even impossible to do on ur own. But anyways there are solutions available online and it seems that as long as you write something on each problem you'll get 100... The midterm was hard with average around 40%. The final on the other hand was much better(at least compared with the midterm).
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - I honestly had a great experience taking this class and really enjoyed prof Ostrovsky. His lectures are not super structured nor taught in a linear fashion but all of his lecture notes are posted and he loves providing extra help when you're confused. The materiel is extremely reasonable and y'all saying he is not a good professor and his class is too hard is honestly just a skill issue
Fall 2025 - I honestly had a great experience taking this class and really enjoyed prof Ostrovsky. His lectures are not super structured nor taught in a linear fashion but all of his lecture notes are posted and he loves providing extra help when you're confused. The materiel is extremely reasonable and y'all saying he is not a good professor and his class is too hard is honestly just a skill issue
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