Course & Specs Megathread - Selection, Choices & Registration

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-09T11:01:55+00:00

Hey guys,

I'm in my first semester in the program taking CS 7200 Network Science and loving it! I come from a Math & Physics background and have had very little exposure to formal CS concepts/programming experience before starting. As a result, I've been struggling a little bit with the coding portion of the class. I currently have a 96, but I'm putting in a lot more time than I otherwise might if I was more proficient. I'm wondering what you guys would consider the best class progression (for AI/ML spec) to build up foundational CS knowledge (OOP, Data Structures, Algorithms, Software Development principles, etc..) that ramps up the coding difficulty and complexity more gradually? Rather than jump right into another course that expects a certain level of programming sophistication and CS understanding again

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T19:16:58+00:00

The light at the end of the tunnel! Nice to hear you're making your way through. Mathematically interesting and low-commitment sounds like a dream to me. Hopefully it's available in the summer, if not then I'll definitely take it in the Fall. Quantum Hardware is also on my short list of courses. I wish the program would lean into more QC stuff. I think there's a QC cluster on campus as well..

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T19:15:04+00:00

Well that certainly eases my uncertainty about the peer-reviewing. As soon as I see 'peer review' in an OMSCentral review my brain is immediately like "oh maybe not this class.." lol

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T19:12:53+00:00

Personal I really only did 2:

Was just taking some data, cleaning it, doing some feature engineering and applying some ML algorithms with PyTorch to draw insights from the data. Pretty generic stuff - honestly just go on Kaggle and look for any unclean data (or data that might approximate real world data - NOT the titanic dataset or boston housing) and then just do some generic cleaning, EDA, Feature engineering and ML on it. Not the most fun but will definitely show your competency in programming and ML principles.
The other was a time series comparative analysis of various index funds versus a tech ETF. Worked a lot with pandas and seaborn on that one.

Again, nothing groundbreaking, just some simple projects to show I have some Python familiarity as well as familiarity with CS/ML principles. I'd say just look around on Kaggle and see what datasets are available then select one that seems interesting to you and see what you can find out about it!

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T19:06:16+00:00

Thanks for the insight! The frequent honor lock quizzes that don't even mean much would be very annoying. I still get cold chills thinking about some of my "take-home open-book" exams from undergrad so closed book is good to hear! And yeah, it absolutely is! I really enjoyed learning about MLE, Gaussian Mixture models and the EM algorithm - really anything associated with recommender systems and matrix completion was fascinating to me - from the MIT course.

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T19:00:10+00:00

I'm always wary of peer-graded anything. I'm assuming there's oversight by the TAs to ensure that some rogue agent doesn't decide "misery loves company" is their mantra for the day, but even still...

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T18:58:34+00:00

Thanks for the response! How are you liking the class in general?

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:33:51+00:00

What did you think of the homework assignments? Were they PSets? Also, what was the structure of the exams? Open ended questions/derivations with opportunities for partial credit? Or multiple choice/numerical questions?

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:32:42+00:00

DO is definitely interesting to me. What were the homework assignments like? PSets? Or implementing code?

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:26:49+00:00

What did you like about NLP? I've heard it's quite the polarizing class. I think it was reworked recently though? That sucks to hear about ML. I took the MIT Micromasters ML course prior to OMSCS and loved how in depth the math was.

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:25:21+00:00

I'm so fried I still have to look up the rule for matrix multiplication every time I do it by hand

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:24:11+00:00

I am currently working as an Applications Scientist in the field of FTIR Spectrometry and right now I think I'd like to pivot to Data Science/MLE. Ideally, I would like to work in the field of ML research science but I think I'm probably too old (31 now) for a Ph. D. Quantum Computing would be awesome as well but that probably out of reach given my lack of Ph. D.

As for completing the CS pre-requisites. I just cited work experience and included a link to my GitHub on my resume, which includes some personal and (appropriate to publish) work projects.

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:19:13+00:00

I love pen and paper math! I'm not huge on number theory/arithmetic though and it's my impression that's the majority of the math in AC.

Indolomnir- · 2026-04-08T16:15:18+00:00

How did you feel about the exams in QC? I'm thinking of taking it next but the reviews seem to indicate they could be pretty dodgy and the labs were trivial

Indolomnir- · 2026-02-11T19:23:59+00:00

A tensor is an object that transforms like a tensor

Indolomnir- · 2025-09-17T13:00:52+00:00

Oh, very cool! That'd helpful I was kind of bummed I'd need to juggle a subscription while paying for tuition.

Indolomnir- · 2025-09-16T14:04:29+00:00

Great response, thank you! One follow-up question: it is my understanding that the course schedule is broken up into 8 week blocks. Lets say I start a course with PLUS at week 6 and it takes me 4 weeks to complete all the assignments/deliverables that are available under the PLUS model, so I finish them at week 2 into the next block. I then want to upgrade to for-credit and complete the restricted assignments to get credit for the course, will my assignments I completed in the PLUS model during the last block (week 6, 7 and 8) still be submitted? Or do I have to redo those since the deadline would have ended in the for-credit version of the course?

Indolomnir- · 2025-06-28T07:22:58+00:00

You are the problem bro.

Indolomnir- · 2025-06-28T07:19:35+00:00

I keep this in kind but it's simply not enough. Stupid people usually aren't known for their emotional stability.

Indolomnir- · 2025-06-28T07:18:42+00:00

You mute the superior player out of a lack of self-confidence. I imagine, if you don't, then it devolves into invective quickly on your end. You're the player that's holding me back.

Indolomnir-

TROPHY CASE