Professor
Christina Fragouli
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - Professor Fragouli is certainly one of the best professors I've had. I went from having little interest in this course and simply wanting to complete this requirement to having a genuine passion for it and being excited for 113. Her lectures are clear, with an emphasis on why certain definitions are as they are. She usually goes over a proof first, followed by a few examples. I will say, however, that the homeworks in this course are more difficult than the lecture examples, but that is where I recommend staying active on campuswire and attending office hours regularly. Her exams are roughly equal in difficulty to homework and discussion problems. There will almost always be one or two tricky problems, but they will never be unfair. This is where I recommend that you review your notes (lectures are recorded and uploaded as PDFs) and asking questions whenever you're stuck on something. Thank you to Semira, our TA this quarter, for her exceptional work and dedication to answering questions on campuswire. She was quick to respond and extremely helpful during office hours.
Winter 2024 - Professor Fragouli is certainly one of the best professors I've had. I went from having little interest in this course and simply wanting to complete this requirement to having a genuine passion for it and being excited for 113. Her lectures are clear, with an emphasis on why certain definitions are as they are. She usually goes over a proof first, followed by a few examples. I will say, however, that the homeworks in this course are more difficult than the lecture examples, but that is where I recommend staying active on campuswire and attending office hours regularly. Her exams are roughly equal in difficulty to homework and discussion problems. There will almost always be one or two tricky problems, but they will never be unfair. This is where I recommend that you review your notes (lectures are recorded and uploaded as PDFs) and asking questions whenever you're stuck on something. Thank you to Semira, our TA this quarter, for her exceptional work and dedication to answering questions on campuswire. She was quick to respond and extremely helpful during office hours.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Honestly... she's probably the best you're going to get for 113. Her curve is set so that median is a high B+, pushing to an A-. But the way she runs her classes is problematic. Her examples and lecture notes are too simple, and are designed to teach you definitions and to present formulas to solve questions with (e.g. determining if a system is linear, TI, casual, stable). The homeworks and discussion sections are designed with similar principles, but much harder. Then you realize the goddamn midterms are EVEN HARDER, but on top of that, a large portion will usually involve proving some crazyass property and the questions related to homework and discussions make up maybe only 30% of the exam. And to nobody's surprise, the class got absolutely dumpstered. So on the final, the focus was on stuff similar to homework questions, which is good! But the test is now 36. FUCKING. PAGES. Just endless questions (i.e. endless torture). So that's already bad design. But on top of that, because of her grading scheme, and the fact that the midterm averages were so low and unrelated to the design of her final exam, it made me realize that I totally didn't need to even take any of the midterms. That's not a good outlook on the class, just fyi. Anyway she has an extra credit project. Do it lol.
Winter 2019 - Honestly... she's probably the best you're going to get for 113. Her curve is set so that median is a high B+, pushing to an A-. But the way she runs her classes is problematic. Her examples and lecture notes are too simple, and are designed to teach you definitions and to present formulas to solve questions with (e.g. determining if a system is linear, TI, casual, stable). The homeworks and discussion sections are designed with similar principles, but much harder. Then you realize the goddamn midterms are EVEN HARDER, but on top of that, a large portion will usually involve proving some crazyass property and the questions related to homework and discussions make up maybe only 30% of the exam. And to nobody's surprise, the class got absolutely dumpstered. So on the final, the focus was on stuff similar to homework questions, which is good! But the test is now 36. FUCKING. PAGES. Just endless questions (i.e. endless torture). So that's already bad design. But on top of that, because of her grading scheme, and the fact that the midterm averages were so low and unrelated to the design of her final exam, it made me realize that I totally didn't need to even take any of the midterms. That's not a good outlook on the class, just fyi. Anyway she has an extra credit project. Do it lol.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Chose this class as a last moment elective but that was one of the best decisions I made. The class is meant to teach you concepts which were vaguely discussed in Math 61. Its not a proof based class so you get much more practical understanding rather than only working on math side of things. The class's grading is based on best 2 out of 3 quizzes (40%), 5-6 homework (30%), and final project made in a group of 2 (30%). The final project is the most interesting part of this class as it's based on improving the professor's own published analysis methods and coming up with something better or similar. For our project, we were optimizing medical tests in a population with certain inter community and intra community connections. It was an open-ended project and the final goal was to try improving the professor's method which she had published only a year ago. It was one of the most fun projects I have done at UCLA and was manageable to complete in a week's time. I would highly recommend taking this class both for an easy A as well as learning something cool. Not to mention if you are a CS major, learning about graphs always helps for interviews. There are 3 kinds of extra credit in the class: 1% for course evaluation, 2% for 3 most active students on campuswire, and 5% to the 2 best group projects announced at the end of the class. The quizzes are tough and take some good practice and revision. The classes were recorded, and the slides were well organized, so revision was never a problem.
Spring 2024 - Chose this class as a last moment elective but that was one of the best decisions I made. The class is meant to teach you concepts which were vaguely discussed in Math 61. Its not a proof based class so you get much more practical understanding rather than only working on math side of things. The class's grading is based on best 2 out of 3 quizzes (40%), 5-6 homework (30%), and final project made in a group of 2 (30%). The final project is the most interesting part of this class as it's based on improving the professor's own published analysis methods and coming up with something better or similar. For our project, we were optimizing medical tests in a population with certain inter community and intra community connections. It was an open-ended project and the final goal was to try improving the professor's method which she had published only a year ago. It was one of the most fun projects I have done at UCLA and was manageable to complete in a week's time. I would highly recommend taking this class both for an easy A as well as learning something cool. Not to mention if you are a CS major, learning about graphs always helps for interviews. There are 3 kinds of extra credit in the class: 1% for course evaluation, 2% for 3 most active students on campuswire, and 5% to the 2 best group projects announced at the end of the class. The quizzes are tough and take some good practice and revision. The classes were recorded, and the slides were well organized, so revision was never a problem.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - This class, and the prof frankly, were a mess from start to finish. The book that the entire class is based on is from the 70's and is horrible at explaining the concepts taught in class, and the professor does the same along with it. Expectations for the class are extremely vague, with lessons barely correlating with any of the exams or homework. Additionally, there are two group projects that you are required to work on, and the first project was horribly explained and it took over a week to get clarification answers, with the project taking an excessive amount of man-hours with no clarity on how grading worked. Finally, as stated earlier, the homework and exams had almost nothing to do with what was taught in class, often asking very obscure questions that would often take much longer to decipher than to answer. Summary: The book, lectures, assignments, and the class as a whole are extremely unorganized and I would recommend avoiding this class unless you have a good understanding of graph theroy previously
Fall 2021 - This class, and the prof frankly, were a mess from start to finish. The book that the entire class is based on is from the 70's and is horrible at explaining the concepts taught in class, and the professor does the same along with it. Expectations for the class are extremely vague, with lessons barely correlating with any of the exams or homework. Additionally, there are two group projects that you are required to work on, and the first project was horribly explained and it took over a week to get clarification answers, with the project taking an excessive amount of man-hours with no clarity on how grading worked. Finally, as stated earlier, the homework and exams had almost nothing to do with what was taught in class, often asking very obscure questions that would often take much longer to decipher than to answer. Summary: The book, lectures, assignments, and the class as a whole are extremely unorganized and I would recommend avoiding this class unless you have a good understanding of graph theroy previously
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - I enrolled in this class as a CS undergrad. This class is hard, but very manageable; Fragouli does a great job at breaking down the subject and the course notes are very comprehensive. You do not need to be very good at linear algebra to succeed in this class (Math 33A is probably enough). You should be comfortable representing systems of equations as matrices and taking transposes of block matrices. Although nothing fancy is required in terms of linear algebra, this class is still math-heavy and mostly theoretical. The homework can get difficult, but prepares you well for exams. If you invest enough time, you will do well. The TAs and discussion sections are also very helpful. There was a group project this quarter (up to 4 people) about applying linear programming to machine learning; you will have to write code and do a report. The latter half of the class has an algorithmic focus, especially when it comes to Max Flow and its many variants. CS 180 will help, but not by much.
Fall 2023 - I enrolled in this class as a CS undergrad. This class is hard, but very manageable; Fragouli does a great job at breaking down the subject and the course notes are very comprehensive. You do not need to be very good at linear algebra to succeed in this class (Math 33A is probably enough). You should be comfortable representing systems of equations as matrices and taking transposes of block matrices. Although nothing fancy is required in terms of linear algebra, this class is still math-heavy and mostly theoretical. The homework can get difficult, but prepares you well for exams. If you invest enough time, you will do well. The TAs and discussion sections are also very helpful. There was a group project this quarter (up to 4 people) about applying linear programming to machine learning; you will have to write code and do a report. The latter half of the class has an algorithmic focus, especially when it comes to Max Flow and its many variants. CS 180 will help, but not by much.
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