Professor

Akram Almohalwas

AD
3.1
Overall Ratings
Based on 155 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.2 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 2.6 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (155)

7 of 10
7 of 10
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STATS 101B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 20, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

*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.

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STATS 101B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Sept. 9, 2020
Quarter: Summer 2020
Grade: A

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.

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STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 17, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A-

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.

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STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 20, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: N/A

Definitely worst of the worst.

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STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 21, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+

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!

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0 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 22, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: B+

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.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 13
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 1, 2022
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B-

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.

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STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 29, 2022
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A+

Almo is quite funny and definitely cares about his students, but any structure in this class is nonexistent. As previous reviews have acknowledged, his "notes" are just random files on Bruinlearn that consist of R outputs with little context. Besides this, though, the class isn't actually too difficult since the class is essentially entirely computational. The homeworks are graded pretty leniently and the midterm and final were both calculating various values associated with regression outputs. Definitely make a formula sheet from his notes--it will be invaluable since you can use it on exams. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this class.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 29, 2022
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: B

This professor very clearly cares about his students. He is super responsive if you email him and always seems willing to help out when you ask him questions inside and outside of the classroom. Homework assignments are pretty reasonable and graded very generously, and most questions on quizzes/assessments are also pretty straightforward; just be sure to keep track of all formulas discussed during class, and you should be fine. The biggest downside to taking this class with this professor is that he is SUPER disorganized. The Bruin Learn site is a jumble of random files, only about half of which are discussed/relevant to whatever is going on in class at any given time. The final project is also a total mess, as he typically assigns groups before people drop the class, so you might end up doing a group project alone (I asked to get reassigned multiple times, and he never got around to doing it). The final project is also due a few days after the final exam/end of the quarter, so you may find yourself working on it during your break.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
June 23, 2018
Quarter: Spring 2018
Grade: A

Not as intense as Christou, but also covers less content though.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 20, 2020

*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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Summer 2020
Grade: A
Sept. 9, 2020

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A-
June 17, 2021

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: N/A
Dec. 20, 2021

Definitely worst of the worst.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+
Dec. 21, 2021

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!

Helpful?

0 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101C
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: B+
Dec. 22, 2021

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 13
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B-
Jan. 1, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: A+
March 29, 2022

Almo is quite funny and definitely cares about his students, but any structure in this class is nonexistent. As previous reviews have acknowledged, his "notes" are just random files on Bruinlearn that consist of R outputs with little context. Besides this, though, the class isn't actually too difficult since the class is essentially entirely computational. The homeworks are graded pretty leniently and the midterm and final were both calculating various values associated with regression outputs. Definitely make a formula sheet from his notes--it will be invaluable since you can use it on exams. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this class.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 101A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2022
Grade: B
March 29, 2022

This professor very clearly cares about his students. He is super responsive if you email him and always seems willing to help out when you ask him questions inside and outside of the classroom. Homework assignments are pretty reasonable and graded very generously, and most questions on quizzes/assessments are also pretty straightforward; just be sure to keep track of all formulas discussed during class, and you should be fine. The biggest downside to taking this class with this professor is that he is SUPER disorganized. The Bruin Learn site is a jumble of random files, only about half of which are discussed/relevant to whatever is going on in class at any given time. The final project is also a total mess, as he typically assigns groups before people drop the class, so you might end up doing a group project alone (I asked to get reassigned multiple times, and he never got around to doing it). The final project is also due a few days after the final exam/end of the quarter, so you may find yourself working on it during your break.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
STATS 100B
Quarter: Spring 2018
Grade: A
June 23, 2018

Not as intense as Christou, but also covers less content though.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
7 of 10
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