I think they must have changed the numbering scheme since I went there.  It
all depends on who your instructor for the class is, how well he teaches,
and the amount of work he gives you.  I've failed more than one CS class
(typically because I took on too much work), and I've had different teachers
for the same class and it totally depends on the teacher.  

I think it was Algorithms and Data Structures that I took twice.  The first
time, I had a teacher that I couldn't understand (I forget his name, but he
was German and studied at the university of Jerusalem, so he had the worst
accent I've ever heard), and his specialty was applying CS to Mathematics.
Most of the people in the class didn't have their second quarter of Calc yet
and it wasn't listed as a prereq, but those people who didn't failed
miserably, and the other 90% of the class failed also because they couldn't
understand a damn thing the teacher said.  The second time I took it, I
ended up with a teacher that spoke excellent english, and didn't have the
unreal expectation that everyone in the class learn multivariable calc in a
week, and I passed with an A with about 1/3 of the work.

Find out who the teacher is and take a look at message boards.  There are
some professor review sites out there that are quite useful in finding out
what a teacher is like.

Last I heard, that particular professor is now "research only".  Too many
bad reviews from students finally got someone's attention.

Jay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: phil at rephil.org [mailto:phil at rephil.org]
> Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 8:49 PM
> To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> Subject: [TCLUG] Off topic: U of M CSCI question
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I know there's quite a few CS folks at the U in the LUG/reading the
> list.  If I asked a specific question on how difficult (time
> consuming) two classes in the dept. are, would any of you be willing
> to offer your experience?  
> 
> I'm doing Math with specialty in Computer, so I don't know how the
> CSCI dept works too well.  It would suit me in the big picture to have
> a schedule of 20 credits next spring, but I don't want to
> underestimate the demands of the CSCI classes.
> 
> In particular, I want to know about CSCI 2011 (Discrete Structures)
> and SCSI 4041 (Algorithms and Data Structures.)
> 
> I've done MATH 5705 (Enumerative Combinatorics), so don't figure 2011
> to be very hard by comparison.  Is that arrogant?  What are the topics
> you consider hardest in the class?
> 
> Same for 4041 -- how time consuming and what are the hard topics.
> 
> Feel free to email me off list at phil at rephil.org if this seems too
> un-Linux related for the list.
> 
> Thanks!
> _______________________________________________
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>