Data Analytics and Security

I received an A in the course, however it is an extremely badly organized course by the professor and especially the head TA. The course content is also just basic statistics and an intro to Python and R course.

Assignment and project instructions are extremely vague, rubrics that are given are not the standards that the TAs mark with according to both the professor and the TAs.

According to the head TA Emma Kathryn Shumway, she's been working as a TA for this course for 10 semesters. The course still being this badly organized with the exact same problems that other reviews have discussed years ago shows that the problem is with the professor as well as whoever is leading the TAs (probably the head TA). The head TA also deducts marks for things that she said was acceptable on Ed discussion, and when brought up she refuses to adjust marks accordingly.

When asking private questions on Ed discussion about projects and assignments, myself and multiple other people that I've talked to have been ignored.

The professor, Dr. Borowitz seems nice during office hours, but over the semester I sent him 3 emails regarding assignments or projects and he did not respond to a single email.

Overall I have to say this course is the least organized and the most frustrating course I've taken at Georgia Tech.

I achieved a high A in this class.

Pros: Subject matter and quizzes are straightforward and do not take much time. For half of the semester, you can complete your week's work in about 1-2 hours. The course is heavily weighted toward the final project and paper. If you work on that consistently and early, the course is a breeze. If you have no experience in data analytics, its a great foundational course to get your feet wet.

Cons: Some of the TAs' grading does not demonstrate competence. I spent around 80 hours on the final project alone because I wanted to really blow it out of the water. Those 80 hours do not count my teammates' contributions. And we received a B on our final project because the TA "significantly" did not follow the grading rubric. I found that quite frustrating and un-academic. I professional brought it to the TA's and the Professor's attention, and received no response. Many people complained about the TAs grading on the mid-semester project, and I can see why.

Takeaway, I find that this class is overly weighted toward a complex, many-faceted, final project (30 page paper + 20 minute presentation) that is too complex for TAs to grade correctly.

Join this course if you

• want an easy B or C grade
• Light coursework
• Just care about passing, not really understanding anything

Do not join this course if you

• want a satisfying A
• want to actually learn anything about cybersecurity
• Have a low tolerance for bad TAs

Having said that - here's my experience with this course

1. THIS IS NOT A CYBERSECURITY COURSE - This is a 100% STATISTICS course. Barring maybe a throwaway module on security concepts, the entire course is about statistics. Linear models, regression models, clustering etc and then implementing those in R. Final project is also pure statistics, finding some patterns and trends in data - zero cybersecurity. As someone with no interest or background in statistics this course was entirely awful - and I ended up just focusing on whatever needs to be done for grades. I didn't learn anything relevant or useful that could apply to any real world cybersecurity scenario. As a policy s

2. TA's will ruin this course for you - The assignments are vaguely worded, the rubrics are just as vague and the TA's make random judgement calls with no real recourse. Blanket "no regrades" are issued by TAs and the professor is hands-off, blaming students' grades on "low effort" (his words, in an actual Ed post). No reflection whatsoever that an entire class of 100+ students got bad grades and were complaining daily about TA's. Instead he blamed it on low effort. Students lost 5 to 10 points because TAs thought the paper had too many bullet points, or they didn't agree on where periods should be used, or they don't agree with the grammar structure or format of the write-ups etc.

3. Group project is a luck of the draw - you're paired against randoms for the group project. I had an awful experience with one person who literally did nothing (not even one word contributed to the final reports). The other one refused to hear any input and made the "group" project his personal project.

This is my fifth OMSCS course. I chose it as an easy summer class, and it is easy—the curve means almost 90% people gets an A?—but I wouldn’t recommend it. The material is shallow and the coding assignments feel random; I’d rather solve a clear problem than explore without a goal. As others have noted, it’s basically Python/R 101. The grading rubric is vague: I took an unexpectedly low score on the first part of the final assignment, which dropped my grade from 99 to the mid-80s. I eventually earned an A by writing the final paper in a way more academic style—something never made explicit—but the whole thing felt like guesswork compared with my other courses. Even as a light companion to a tougher class, I’d skip it for your sanity.

Finished the course with an A, achieving a 88.81% (A: 86% and above, B: 76% - 85.9%, C: 66% - 75.9%)

Background: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from a university ranked #377 out of 436 National Universities in U.S. News English is my second language (TOEFL score: 95/120) 1 year of experience as a full-stack developer and 6 months of experience in data analytics

Overall: This is the sixth class I’ve taken in the OMSCS program, and honestly, it’s been the most frustrating one so far. The course content is disappointing. I don’t even know how to describe it. I signed up for “Data Analytics & Security” hoping to learn the basics of data analysis, how to make data more secure, and how to write solid analytical reports. None of that was covered in the course. I took the ML course in OMSCS, and this class title should be changed to "Intro to R, Python, and ML algorithms" to avoid misunderstandings about the class content.

The assignment instructions are vague and hard to follow. You have to read them multiple times to figure out what’s being asked. It feels like the focus is more on guessing what the instructors want than actually learning anything meaningful. They try to frame the assignments as “open-ended,” but the grading doesn’t reflect that at all, so you’re left completely unsure of how you’re doing or what you’re supposed to be getting out of it.

The TAs in this class honestly have no idea what they’re doing. They respond very slowly and often can’t answer students’ questions. You’re better off searching Google or Reddit than relying on them. The TA group seriously needs to be replaced. If you're too busy with your personal life, then don't apply for a TA position and use "I'm busy" as an excuse.

Lecture Activities (28.78 / 30%): This assignment combines a quiz and a discussion, but don’t be misled by the title. It should be called "homework." The quiz part is easy, but the discussion can be tricky. Some prompts require you to provide actual examples, even though that’s not clearly stated in the instructions. That’s frustrating. You can see the impact in the score breakdown; discussions with these hidden expectations tend to average 80% or lower, compared to those with clearer requirements.

Computing Activities (18.2 / 20%): This coding assignment is worse than anything I did in high school AP Computer Science. It asks students to “explore” and modify code without clear direction or explanation of what’s expected. Many of us ended up confused, and when our exploration didn’t match the TAs’ expectations, we lost points. It’s hard to believe this is a master level class. If the assignment is open-ended, grading should be based on what students submit, not on a hidden rubric. This is also the first time I have submitted a coding assignment as a PDF since high school. Back then, we even submitted .cpp files when GitHub wasn’t popular yet, so this feels very ridiculous. You also have to make sure the margins of the PDF layout fit properly on the page, including the parts from the original layout provided by the TA. If not, they will deduct points for that too.

Project Activities (41.83 / 50%): This section is the worst part of the course, and it counts for up to 50% of the grade. They expect you to write an analysis report, but the course content doesn’t teach you how to do that at all. Fortunately, I had a great teammate who explained what makes a good analysis report and what doesn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had any idea what I was doing wrong. If your group isn’t clear on the expectations, this part can be extremely frustrating.

If you want to take this class, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do you mind getting a B?
2. Do you mind not learning anything useful?
3. Would TA going on a power trip drive you crazy?

I took over 15 courses in OMS program. This is the worst course I have ever taken. The material is outdated and is totally useless for data analytics or security. It's a shame that this is a graduate level course. I can most likely teach my 8 years old to get a B in this course.

Adding insult to injury is TA has to randomly taking off points and not follow Rubric on grading. It's almost seem like they are worried about too many people getting A.

They need to CURVE for all these ridiculously simple assignments. So go figure.

The course allows ChatGPT, so this is how you can spend less than 1 hour to take care of everything

All the discussion? Everyone is just posting random ChatGPT nonsense, so just do the same. All the Python , R Assignments? Totally useless with vague expectations. It's like your first assignment you would expect after you learn Hello World in python 101. But the fun part is TA's grading. They wouldn't tell you what they expect, and they don't follow Rubric anyway. So just dump it in R-Studio, export, and ask Chatgpt to expand your code. All the Quiz? It's open book, ChatGPT can solve 99%, or if you feel like too easy, just search in the provided transcript. The material is useless, so don't waste your time Final Project? Good luck getting a team that would work in the last month. Grading is a total joke, highly depending on the TA. I ended up just doing almost everything and put everyone equally contributed as a I need an A.

Did I get an A? Yes, but I felt this class was more challenging than ML, AI and other difficult classes that I spent 30+ hours/week. My struggle is by the design, this course doesn't evaluate your knowledge. You need luck to get an A.

Seriously, stay away from this course. As someone who has a very busy life, I was excited to take this class alongside another class to hopefully not have a terrible workload and enjoy my life a bit.

The good news is that the effort for the beginning portion of the class was relatively light. The bad news is that the paper and presentation portion of the class is NOT light and requires quite a bit of effort.

That in itself wouldn't be an issue, but the inconsistencies in grading is what's going to kill you. One T.A. in the ed discussion will say one thing, and your final grade will legitimately say a different thing contradicting it all.

Like others in the course, I received a very low grade for my initial proposal and legitimately received like 5 or 6 comments, with half of them accusing me of using AI. After clarifying I did not use AI (plus if I did... I probably wouldn't have gotten such a low grade), the grader mentioned that this wasn't the reason I received a low grade. So... why did they comment that at all (and consist of half my comments)?

That is just a taste of what you'll get at this class. Everything else is super easy, and if you get lucky and get a great group, you might be able to coast through, but this class requires so much luck on a merciful grader that it's just not worth it.

Shockingly horribly organized. Module 9 is the same time as module 3? They also make announcements to do work and mention projects that we have no access to until weeks after the announcement, obviously causing confusion and stress among students. They tell you to access things that are not accessible, and if you tell them they're not accessible they give sass about "being imprecise exactly as to what we mean", as if they are not the ones organizing the canvas courses and availability dates? They seem to make things as annoying as possible on purpose.

That said, the course material is interesting and easy. It's a good intro to the concepts, and presented well. The actual professor seems like a cool and smart guy, and I like his videos quite a bit. Giving this course a 2/5 as in asynchronous online classes, the organization of a course is EVERYTHING and in today's day and age, there's no excuse for not fixing clear organizational issues immediately. Thanks!

You have about two weeks per section. There are lectures with slideshows included. You can have the slidehow open while answering the quiz questions, which are answered directly in the slides. There are several required discussion posts. Apparently some people used AI to write them, which is ludicrous. Just answer the questions and you'll be basically fine. There is some Python and R. You choose whether you want to write the programs from scratch or start with the program pre-written. You get the same number of points either way so unless you just want to do work, the pre-written code is the way to go.

A weird thing, module 9 is due the same week as module 3. Watch that schedule!

The big bad thing here is the paper. You are meant to do the first paper individually then pick a team for the second paper, both on the same subject - Enron or SecureNow. As with every other group project anywhere, your team makes all the difference. Because of the weight of the paper on your final grade, you definitely want to get yor team together early. I got mine during the first week of class so we were miles ahead. It still took us until a few weeks before the due date to buckle everything up.

The TAs seemed wildly disparate in their scoring. Some of my more detailed discussion answers we scored lower than my mailed-in ones. Unfortunately, we seemed to get harsher TAs on our papers so the 3 point curve the professor gave ended up being handy. Which is wild for the quality of work our group had.

I highly recommend pairing this with another course so you keep busy for the semester.