EECS 485

485

FA15, Prof. DeOrio, Prof. Jagadish

Some of the content was interesting (i.e. Networking, sessions, security, information retrieval, auction/recommendations). Some of the projects were good too - I think I definitely learned a lot by implementing Python Flask websites with personalized sessions, using MySQL, learning some JavaScript, etc. The exams are brutal and not fair at all in my opinion. The majority of the exams are what seems like "pop trivia" true/false questions with no opportunity to explain any answers that you write, which leaves little room for partial credit. Additionally, for the last project, we had to use Hadoop (which is implemented in Java, which many students did not have any experience with) and we were given significantly less time to do this project because part of the two weeks that we received for this project was over Thanksgiving break when people can't meet with their teammates because people go home (although you wouldn't have this issue if you take the course in Winter Semester). I would not recommend taking this course. There is a lot of overlap with many other courses (EECS 388, 484, 493, just to name a few) and for the topics that did overlap with other courses, from my own experiences and from hearing from other friends, those other courses taught that material better. If you decide that you want to take this course, I highly recommend waiting to take it when Professor Jagadish is teaching again. Make sure to memorize random facts that were mentioned very briefly for the exams because even if you know the material well, not knowing these random facts will result in a low exam score.