Doesn't know how to explain the material well. He is obviously very bothered that no one shows up to the lectures, but it's because it's easier to learn the material ourselves. Also very judgmental and impatient, isn't fit to teach.

Professor Wilson is condescending, Could not care less about student success. The course is poorly run, he hardly knows what's on his own slides and could not care less about how any of his students are fairing in the class. He will never take accountability for his mistakes. Downright rude on some occassions and completely negligent in all others.

Professor Wilson just reads off slides and doesn't know how to explain it half of the times. Was looking forward to this class and its content, but this was a let down. Avoid him if you can.

Demands respect from students while often not affording them any. Refuses to fully admit when he made a mistake. Lambastes students when they ask what he considers "obvious" questions. He accidentally gave his section less time than the other on the first exam, and then downplayed it by saying that the scores between sections were similar. Avoid.

Extremely rude and insulting to students. Attempts to lecture through vigorous hand gestures rather than actually taking the time to effectively explain concepts. On the class forum, gives off a thinly-veiled apathetic attitude with one-word, vague, unhelpful answers. Seems more disinterested in this class than anything else. Avoid at all costs.

This man represents the worst of the CS department. Gave his section 60 min to do the exam rather than giving the previously agreed upon 75 min. When we realized, he had the professor from the other section apologize in his stead. Afterwards, even downplayed the impact of his error. Truly unprofessional and has a terrible personality to boot.

Wow! What to say about Mark Wilson. Nothing good that's for sure. Bad professor who blames it on his students not coming to lecture bc his lectures suck. I'm used to CS professors being sassy in piazza responses, but at least they usually answer the question. He's just plain mean. No way I'm getting better than a C, good chance I'll fail. AVOID

240 is supposed to be an easy class but Mark Wilson is a terrible instructor and does not care about student success and learning. Rude, and learning is impossible because Prof. Wilson wants you to show work in ways that fulfill his own ego, so basically there's no flexibility in how you approach HW problems. Anyone can do a better job teaching.

Rude and disrespectful to our whole in-person class and honestly lazy, undoubtedly one of the most incompetent teachers I have ever had. Constantly picked on students and showed no interest in teaching whatsoever. CS240 is a required core class, but I'd recommend just picking a different teacher for the class if you have a choice.

Boring, passive aggressive, and blatantly insecure about his teaching. I wouldn't even show up if attendance was suddenly graded. Make the mistake of showing up and you'll be questioning your sobriety. 240 with Wilson is a masterclass in dissatisfaction that'll leave you questioning the entire purpose of higher education.

He is very enthusiastic but you would get a good sleep in his class. You won't understand a word he teaches. For weekly quizzes, there were supposed to be 2 attempts, and they couldn't figure out a way to technically do it, hence they just extended the quiz time to 3 hours. Avoid if you can. SI sessions are rather helpful and you would learn more.

Prof Wilson is hands down one of the worst professors. If you take his classes, be ready to fail. Do not expect a fair shake, do not expect to learn, do not expect to be understood, heard, appreciated or respected. The tests (worth 80% ovr) are impossible with suffocating time constraints. His classes are an elaborate torture routine.

Mark Wilson cares very little, if at all, about his job. In a blog post, he writes that his position at UMass Amherst is an "acceptable lower bound," and that he will be applying for tenured positions elsewhere. Wilson has shown immense disrespect toward colleagues and students alike. It is clear that he has a misguided perception of academia.

NEVER take a class with this professor. 240 was explained in the past as the easiest out of the 200's for CS and now it has become absolute torture. I'm considering force-failing the class just to take it again because I'm at a C right now. I'm worried that because he's co-teaching again in spring 2024, the class will be the exact same. AVOID!

I'm not even in Mark Wilson's lecture section, and I'm still feeling the effects of his recent addition to the 240 instruction team. He is clearly the primary reason for the restructuring of the course, and our exams have been terrible. I feel like an experiment on his "bright" new visions for the course. Avoid at all costs.

If it's 240 with him or working in a coal mine, I'd do the latter. I'm genuinely impressed it could be this bad and I wish I was only joking. Prof Wilson has made this semester a harrowing experience. Gotcha questions on exams, apathetic,disinterested, there aren't enough adjectives to describe the way this man treats people and runs his classroom.

If you're thinking of taking him, don't.

Really bad. Yes, I agree that you can't expect instructors to spoonfeed you but if a professor is lazy and hates his job or his students, they should reevaluate themselves because that attitude pretty much doesn't help anyone -- apparently that applies to Mark Wilson as well. Overall, Wilson's detached attitude made 240 harder than it should be.

Never been the one to spew vitriol against instructors, but if a professor is rude for no reason, setting students up to learn nothing, and invalidating real student concerns, that's not a good sign, and apparently Mark Wilson embodies all 3 of these red flags. And his YouTube videos suck because they provide little coverage of practical examples.

Professor Wilson somehow manages to keep making the course worse. Despite multiple students' grievances, he turns a blind eye to the problems that they bring up. He constantly points faults in their preparations and tells them not to worry since "exam grades can be scaled". However, the scaling is flawed, scaling high scores much more than lows.

Straight outta New Zealand to wreak havoc in umass

Not good. I say this with all honesty, avoid Mark Wilson at all costs for 240. The subject matter is interesting. However, Mark Wilson is rude, boring, uninspiring, and makes the class material unnecessarily dry. He doesn't seem to listen to student concerns, and the learning environment in his 240 class is completely bereft of all flexibility.

DO NOT take 240 with Mark Wilson. He won't admit when he is at fault, and he will gaslight anyone who calls him out for his mistakes. The strong consensus is that Wilson is unorganized and treats students with unwarranted disrespect (shames students in class) and inflexibility (no room for creativity). I wish I could report him to the dean of CICS.

He is not great and this class caused me way more stress than I anticipated going into it. I do want to note that we are not done with this semester yet and I do not know if things will be scaled. Regardless, I find this professor to be very dismissive of students' concerns, which to me is the biggest problem.

Wilson doesn't seem to care or want to teach. As a person who took with him, he is, by FAR, the toughest professor to learn from at UMass. For example, I honestly found Calculus 3 and Physics 2 much easier than this course. Take that into perspective, Calculus 3 and Physics 2...

This review is as honest as I can be. Mark Wilson has made the exams significantly harder than last semester and gaslights us about it, and he is routinely disrespectful and dismissive towards students.

I truly don;t understand this professors motive. You can study as hard as you want, you will not succeed. I'm sorry, but youre grade was pre destined from the beginning. And it will always be low as long as this teacher teaches this class. good luck

Extremely rude and irresponsible. He made the course way harder than in previous semesters and blamed students for low grades without giving any extra practice. His lectures were so boring and he spent half of the class time to complain about low attendance.

The problem with Wilson is that he does everything he can to hinder effective learning. 240 used to be a breeze but Wilson wanted to ruin it this fall by showing no enthusiasm in teaching students. He also wasted time bullying students instead of giving extra practice before the final exam. Overall, taking Wilson 240 made me want to go to therapy.

I felt no amount of prep work regarding review of quizzes, homework, discussion problems, and youtube tutorials prepared me for the questions that were presented on the exams.

If you did well, good for you. Here's the thing: the course was objectively incredibly disorganized. Lack of coordination between professors, a textbook that didn't include three topics, only 1 practice exam for the first 2 exams with questions that were not similar to the real exams, slides focused too much on proofs rather than practice, etc.

Mark Wilson is an absolute curse to the Manning CICS. He didn't listen to students when they were feeling burnt out, and instead of answering genuine questions on Piazza, he did nothing but repeatedly make passive-aggressive comments. The material is super interesting but 240 is not a good class if Wilson runs the curriculum for that class.

Wilson berates students who ask genuine questions. His lectures are dry and not worth going to because no examples were given for concepts like Bayes' theorem, and his handwriting looks like that of a toddler. Practice exam solutions are never released. TA and instructor office hours are terribly run. I learned more from YouTube than his lectures.

Exams are 70% of your grade and some questions are very abstract and honestly don't test your knowledge of the content. Hard to prep for exams given that there is little to no practice material. Overall poorly run course with very small amounts of lecture content being useful.

I'd like to start off with something he said on Piazza: "A) Please stop wasting my time with these discussions. I get notifications that distract me from setting the grades. B) As I said, student input will not be a consideration - we are professionals paid to do this job. When you teach, do it your way." Do I really need to say much more?

Totally sucks. Mark Wilson knows his stuff but any genuine question asked in his office hours is met with nothing but passive-aggressive non-answers. Won't let anyone get on his good side so make sure to be the best self-studier ever. If you think you can charm the devil, take a class with Wilson. Otherwise, you're better off avoiding him for 240.

I am very sorry you have to take this class. The entire 240 class is under fire since he came. He says he didn't change the curriculum, but you'll find out very soon that you are going to spend all your time on this class. And for the exams, if you know how to solve all the book questions, blindfolded, id say you'd be lucky to get C-. Enjoy!

I actually did well in this class. My problem is with Wilson as a person. He won't admit when he's wrong, when he objectively is and he is very rude to his students and gets butthurt if he even gets a hint that they might think the way he ran the curriculum for 240 was problematic. Unless you're a sycophant he's really just a literal villain.

This class sucked in the fall of 2023. I'm convinced Mark Wilson ran this class poorly with the ulterior motive to send students to therapy instead of help them learn.

Wilson is straight up evil, rude, and clearly needs to learn to treat colleagues and students with respect. The way he ran 240 this fall was so bad I had to bring this up to the CICS dean. In the end we were encouraged to write bad reviews once a profile opened for Wilson. Even people who are doing well in the class didn't like him.

Wilson did a great job in making a previously easy class harder to do well on. His recorded videos were weak and did not do a good job explaining concepts in detail. The exams were also hard, there was no flexibility in how to show work for the problems, so if your intuition diverged from how he wanted you to show work, you were screwed. Awful.

This class was made unnecessarily hard. The main issue is not that the material was hard - it's the repeated organizational failures on Wilson's part with no willingness to change. Exams were not properly booked, ALL questions were banned during exams, and little to no materials/resources were provided (very few practice tests).

Mark Wilson is known to be a universally hated CICS instructor for a reason: he's highly unorganized, short-tempered, and has unreasonable grading and exam policies. He is also not compassionate and can be very rude. Frankly, I got a way higher grade in Marius 220 and Marius 311 than this class. Take that into perspective: two Marius classes!

Professor Wilson is the most ego-motivated CS instructor I have ever had at UMass. He is passive-aggressive to the entire class for his own entertainment. His unwillingness to provide thorough explanations and share his wealth of knowledge both prove that he hates teaching. Overall, Wilson embodies someone I would never take classes with willingly.

Abysmal pedagogy, prioritizes drama creation over helping students learn. Zero flexibility in how to show work for homeworks and exams. Has his TAs do all his work for him. Refuses to release practice exam solutions. Rude, full of himself, his learning philosophy is basically "his way or the highway." Nothing but bad things to say about him.

Ironically, the only uncertainty I faced in this class was my final grade. Wilson's patronizing attitude, unrewarding lectures, and curveball exams were all certainties.

I actually did well in this class. That being said, DO NOT TAKE 240 with Wilson if you have a choice. He is very rude, he never gives good feedback. His philosophy is basically "his way or the highway". I think he should do better because from what I've heard, Wilson hates his job. Many students would benefit by "not having Wilson as a professor."

You would expect that once you hit rock bottom, there is no way to go down even further, but trust me, Mark Wilson will find a way to make that happen.

Wilson knows the material but doesn't know how to explain it in robustly. No effort is put for students to succeed. Is always passive-aggressive in his responses when you contact him for help. The whole course staff for his 240 section is woefully incompetent. Take another instructor if you can.

Wilson is a prime example of a very unapproachable CS instructor. He is not patient with student questions and seems to blame his students for the low exam averages instead of taking responsibility for his actions.

Wilson 240 is the single worst class I've ever taken. It's unreal how Wilson's right to teach hasn't been revoked yet, given his mismanagement of 240 and general lack of kindness and compassion. And his handwriting is poor. In general, he's not a good person. For the amount of time I grinded for this class, it should be at least 6 credits.

I don't know what grudges this guy has against the students he's grading but his nitpicky grading policy for exams and HWs is absolutely absurd.

CS240 with Mark Wilson was the worst memory for me. There was not much to learn. Many students have voiced complaints about his 240 class because he was livid when students asked genuine questions. Discussions and office hours were also poorly run, but he refused to take the class's weaknesses as a reflection on his pedagogy. Very unpleasant class.

You know its bad when people are saying they rather take discrete/proofs rather than 240 with Wilson

You know it's a red flag when a professor hates his job of delivering pedagogically sound lectures. There is a reason everyone hated Wilson 240. He has a pattern of teaching a class and fully revamping the class structure to be 100x as hard, getting butthurt when people complain or express reasonable concerns, and repeating the mistakes anyway.

Unlike what Wilson thinks, not all of his students are lazy. I'm a CS major with all A's in CS but if he doesn't care, then why should we care? He is the most uninspiring lecturer I've ever had and was rude and difficult to approach since he assumed his students are lazy and have poor work ethics, which he uses as an excuse for his weak pedagogy.

Wilson is an elitist snob. He clearly considers "normal" students beneath him and thinks it his mission to "weed them out". And all he really cares about is research. So it's not surprising that he treats students differently as a supervisor. It just makes him even worse of a person, because duplicity is repulsive, and it's clear he hates pedagogy.

Wilson doesn't get it. He doesn't take note of student's strengths and weaknesses, take time to explain concepts, check whether his explanations make sense, or believe in a reasonable workload. And he doesn't seem to care. Conversely, he seems to enjoy not caring about his students. He has no business to teach despite his wealth of knowledge.

If you don't believe Mark Wilson is a lousy lecture, calibrate your opinion again and rewatch his YouTube videos because all of his videos prove that he hates his job and has no idea how to offer his knowledge in a way that seems reasonable. In the physical classroom for 240, he puts his students beneath him and clearly feels superior about it.

Mark Wilson made CS240 completely unbearable. I think we're all mature enough to know that professors can't "spoonfeed" students, but tbh all of his rude replies of Piazza have done more harm than good and proved he doesn't want to offer his wealth of knowledge. Grading policies for homeworks and exams only worked against students. Don't take!

Difficult and excruciating class. Wilson does not have reasonable expectations but rather has a deplorable personality. He expects students to know everything by calling everything easy in lectures and refusing to offer his wealth of knowledge. He also has no regard for student learning or success. The topics sound interesting, but not with Wilson.

Terrible resources for students, refused to release solutions for practice exams because he considers it cheating and saw all his students as lazy. No other resources besides slides are available outside of class. Personally I think his course philosophy is pedagogically unsound, and I only got by using memory for exams which quickly left my head.

Greedy with how he grades his students and won't admit that he is wrong. With how bad many people did on the midterms he turns around and says "the averages were similar to the other section" instead of overhauling the curriculum. Feels like Wilson is on a high horse and is unwilling to answer questions, or if he does he tends to have no patience.

Wow, this guy has no respect towards any CS student. If you have any question regarding your pathway or reasonable concern to voice, don't expect Wilson to help or listen to you. The big red flag about Wilson is he calls everything easy instead of realizing students are learning something new in lectures and refuses to offer his wealth of knowledge

Wilson 240 was an incredibly frustrating memory for me. I only heard horror stories about him going in, and my experience with this class matched all of them. Wilson was clearly lacking in social skills, and he held grudges against students who were genuinely trying to learn something new. Very unprofessional experience in this class. Stay away.

A straight up bully. Wilson never admit he's wrong, resents having students, and thinks he's superior to everyone, including his colleagues. Will not offer his wealth of knowledge but will rather call everything easy and expect students to "know it". He would rather publicly do students dirty than admit that he's wrong. He needs to quit teaching.

Wilson has an extravagant superiority complex that is quite evident in the way he takes pleasure in doing students dirty whenever they had reasonable concerns to voice on Piazza or tried to get in touch with him in office hours. He is definitely the example of the stereotypical CS professor who hates pedagogy and thinks all his students are lazy.

I really do not like review bombing professors, but I had to do this for Mark Wilson because the strong consensus is that Wilson is the embodiment of a brash and rude CICS instructor who cares more about stomping on malnourished students than putting in thorough effort to help students learn the subject matter. He's tough, and not in a good way.

Wilson is a patronizing individual who always seemed bitter when students didn't immediately understand the topic he was teaching for the day. Workload was not feasible at all as HWs for his section took 20 hrs/wk. There's hardly any partial credit on the exams, and he won't help if you approach him, no matter how much effort you put into the HWs.

Do not this course with Mark Wilson. He is almost entirely incapable of receiving any form of feedback for his questions, gaslights students on his discussion posts, zooms through the material without really explaining or teaching any of it (and doesn't answer questions well if it all), and is overall just generally incapable and as a professor.

Ignore the 5-star review; it clearly came from Mark Wilson himself. I've had some professors that sucked in some way before, but Wilson is the only one I'd give the middle finger to. Rude, terrible at crafting feasible exams, refuses to listen to reasonable concerns from students, and hates teaching. I would be cheering loudly if he gets laid off.

Mark Wilson is, without doubt, among THE least deserving person to ever get hired by CICS in years. He was disrespectful and sour to students who genuinely wanted to learn the subject matter, and it's clear he hated teaching. No wonder he was forced to step down from teaching CS240 in the Fall of 2024 and was therefore replaced by Andrew Lan.

I've seriously never seen someone with a bigger superiority complex than Mark Wilson. No surprise his blatant narcissism resulted in him being the most reviled male computer science instructor on the planet. Tim Richards is a fantastic stand up guy. Down to earth, humble, kind, charismatic, telegenic. All attributes Wilson sadly does not possess.

Such a disappointment that Mark Wilson got hired by CICS. He doesn't seem like a very nice person and just has no charisma whatsoever. My only consolation is him being forced to step down from teaching 240 in the fall of 2024 after getting lots of reasonable vitriol from students due to his unwillingness to listen to genuine student concerns.

Schadenfreude and Karma had a baby, and their son Mark Wilson got all grown up and hired by CICS. He clearly didn't care about student success and learning, and the word choice in his blog profile was a clear attempt to prove he hates teaching. NOBODY uses the phrase "acceptable lower bound" in their profile, except for a tool like Wilson.

Well, well, well...it would appear Mark Wilson's rude and disrespectful behavior towards colleagues and students alike only led karma to get back at him by forcing him to step down from teaching CS240 in the fall of 2024. I'd love to see Tim Richards get promoted to Professor and hopefully for Wilson to get permanently blacklisted from his job.

hes ok

Mark Wilson being forced to step down from teaching CS240 in the fall of 2024 was a top schadenfreude moment for me because the ugly reality is that Wilson is a horrible person who should've gotten his teaching rights revoked sooner rather than later due to his serious anger issues, lack of enthusiasm, and the subpar word choice in his online blog.

Wilson struggles to acknowledge student concerns and actively takes pride in embarrassing students who ask for help. It is honestly unacceptable how a rude professor with too many grudges like him is repeating mistakes of replying to genuine questions with "stop wasting my time" to hamper learning. Truly a villain, both as a professor and a person.

Watching Wilson getting multiple instances of reasonable vitriol from students during his first semester teaching 240 and getting demoted from Senior Lecturer to Part-Time Senior Lecturer was a major schadenfreude moment for everyone who took 240 with him because the complaints against him prove that his ego is larger than his wealth of knowledge.

he's the type of guy who hands out pretzels to trick-or-treaters

Mark Wilson is the least suited to teach person I have ever met. I dealt with a family emergency this semester and instead of showing a modicum of understanding, Prof. Wilson berated me on Piazza and refused any leniency until I spoke with the dean. I wish I learned something about stats from this class, but unfortunately Wilson hates to help.

Often encourage students to speak, quote, "wrong answer is okay" and when a student answers wrong. Proceeds to belittle them and say how wrong they were. Also, threaten students to not express their concern by belittling even more on the piazza and in class if they express concern for anything grade-related things.

How in the world did we spent half a semester learning topics and going over them for the final just for 80% of the topics to not be on the exam

Worst experience I ever had. He clearly did not want students to be successful. He seems to enjoy making things extra difficult and confusing. He's very condescending. Class is test heavy, but he doesn't believe in practice exams, so you do not get those to study. Expect to go to tutoring for homework, and the tutor not be able to do the problems.

Such a disappointment to see Mark Wilson get hired by CICS. He doesn't seem like a nice person and just has no charisma whatsoever. I consider myself a student who's willing to go the extra mile but if Wilson is going to silence student concerns and and refuse to give enough review material for a test-heavy class like CS240, it looks ugly on him.

just a miserable guy. useless classes, his lectures were basically just him saying "this should be obvious" to material that's clearly new to some students. rude to classmates on piazza & he intentionally makes work harder than it needs to be so he's not 'spoonfeeding' students. if you ask a question you'll get a condescending answer

At the start of the semester he talks about how participation is 10% of the grade and achieving the 10% isn't that challenging: just visit the discussion hours, post/answer some questions of piazza and do some class questions. However at the end of the semester you end up with half the grade. EXAMS ARE HARD. LECTURES ARE DISORGANIZED.

Wilson is an absolute villain of a professor, the most unhelpful CS teacher we were unlucky to have. His poor attitude towards teaching was prevalent from the beginning, and it's clear his main goal was for us to learn nothing by giving condescending answers to students who put thorough effort. Overall, not someone we'd take classes with again.

If you're lucky enough to avoid Wilson for CS240, do it! Rude, disrespectful to honest student concerns, refuses to offer intuition behind hard topics, learning philosophy is against practice exams. We were encouraged to write scathing reviews for his RMP profile to rip him apart because Wilson is a sadist whose goal is to send students to therapy.

I came into Wilson 240 with an open mind, but I clearly understand why Wilson has the low ratings he has. He rushes through lectures, his exams are trying to mentally break you, his homework policy sucks, and he is condescending and hostile to students who ask questions. This is a professor who truly doesn't care about student learning.

His lectures are basically him saying "This should be obvious" while teaching students concepts instead of carefully taking time to offer thorough explanations. HWs are long. Exams are unreasonable to the point where you can't finish on time. Wilson is an obstructionist person. If you succeeded at CS240, it will be despite him, not because of him.

Exceedingly harsh grader with unclear expectations. Makes it impossible to do well in this class. I've always gotten great scores on homeworks in every other class but struggled to get an A on any homework in this class. Really frustrating when your GPA is important to work at NVIDIA, MathWorks, or other top companies. Overall not a fun experience.

It cost me my sleep plus all my sacrifices to the devil just to score above a 70 on the first midterm. 240 with Wilson shaved a decade off my already short life. I wish I was joking. The CS department should've done a background check for Wilson because it's obvious his whole background is dirty as a result of delighting in viciousness and cruelty.

Wilson doesn't just teach CS240; he orchestrates a symphony of suffering. Each homework assignment is a torturous opus, and exams are the grand finale where your sanity takes center stage. Enroll if you enjoy being academically maimed.

if your idea of a fun class involves existential dread and perpetual frustration, then wilson's class is the perfect fit for you!

Most unpleasant guy I have ever had the misfortune to meet. Lectures were always unrewarding and made no sense. 240 isn't supposed to be hard but Wilson will find a way to make that happen, and it will just be a frustrating experience. He really doesn't want students to do well, and extra help is nowhere. If you have the option to avoid him do it!

Wilson has an unwarranted superiority complex that is quite proven in the way he takes pleasure in not caring about student success, learning, or mental health; his attitude is most definitely akin to that of the stereotypical IT body shop manager who doesn't believe in a healthy work-life balance but rather delights in condescending behavior.

If you really want to learn something, don't take 240 or ANY class with Wilson.

If you're lucky enough to avoid 240 or any class with Wilson, please do! He's straight up immature and won't admit when he's wrong. Marius makes classes like 220 enjoyably hard and good learning experiences. Wilson, on the other hand, will make 240 artificially hard and it will just be a frustrating experience with unrewarding, "robotic" lectures.

Brags about how many students fail his exams. Inflexible regarding personal issues and won't listen if you have interviews to attend. Refuses to give intuition or practical examples so if you're not strong in stats you'll struggle. The only good part is that Spring 2025 is going to be Wilson's last semester teaching at UMass.

Mark Wilson's problem is that he doesn't explain the most basic steps and assumptions, and often skips straight to harder material which can lead to confusion. He would often try to prove something without preparation, state something was obvious, then fail to complete it. Everyone failed the midterm and he blamed it on us.

If you can avoid him, please do. As said before, he is extremely condescending and lacking in patience when answering questions. He will call a new examinable concept simple or powerful or both, then not explain it. He will be unable to finish examples he's supposed to be teaching the class. Exams are nothing like the lectures or coursework.

Didn't offer a make-up exam for the midterm, which made the final exam 50% of my grade. The final exam was extremely hard, he didn't offer any regrade requests for the final, and closed the Piazza almost immediately after the final so we couldn't dispute anything. Allowing him to teach a CS course again was a huge mistake for the CS department.

Professor, if you see this, I hope you'll consider adjusting ur teaching approach. The pace of lectures is too fast, and many of us struggle to keep up. We would benefit from a slower, more thorough explanation of problems rather than ending class 30 minutes early. We don't respond to ur questions not because we aren't engaged, but bc we're lost.

Professor Wilson is probably the worst professor I have ever had in my college experience. I studied and went to review sessions, and still had no clue what to do on the midterm. The content was not similar to the material given to review and he was very misleading about what to expect. However, this is his last semester teaching at the school.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. An absolute embarrassment to academia and UMass. Doesn't permit regrade requests, take pride in how hard his class is, but not in a smart way. He has contrived grading and makes this artificially hard not actually content based hard. If you are reading this it's not too late: drop his class.

Just finished final, the questions in the final are really different from those final exams he provided. I really regret taking 240 this semester, should take it next semester.

Mark is an intelligent person who understands the material well, but is also one of the most pretentious people I have had the displeasure of meeting. He is dismissive and unhelpful and lectures are skimmed through at best. Given his blog posts and general attitude he seems to not care about the university or his students in any meaningful way.

The exams are overly complicated: the final exam is worth 40% depleting your grade with its great lack of relatability to the core material. You're punished for failing challenging problems in 2 hrs. Lectures were also lacking in care and focus. This managed to wither my exiting interest in the topics of probability and statistics. What a shame.

Mark Wilson simply hates teaching. 240 should be reasonably challenging, but he will make it artificially hard with contrived grading, a frustrating homework policy, dry lectures, and unfair exams. This guy clearly loves power trips more than helping students learn and succeed. His departure from UMass was honestly a victory for the Manning CICS.

This guy seems full of himself. Thoroughly look at his old blogs and his derogatory comment about his lecturing role here, and you'll find proof he hates his job. He misread his own syllabus and gave my class section 60 mins for an exam while the other section got 75 mins, basically said how 15 mins less wasn't a big deal when students complained.

Wilson couldn't care less about student learning. 240 should be fair, but he makes it artificially hard with disorganization, arrogance, and unrewarding lectures. He loves power trips, can't admit mistakes, stressed me out so much I had to use Minoxidil, and I'd gladly grill him with difficult behavioral questions if he ever interviewed for FAANG.

Genuine rigor replaced by artificial difficulty. Very poor clarity, punitive homework policies, misaligned exams, and a condescending attitude combined with no healthy learning curve all make CS575 under Mark Wilson one of the most critically panned courses in the CS department.

His exams test his ego more than your knowledge. Material is not explained well, but you're still expected to solve extremely complicated problems on timed exams. Wilson refuses to accept feedback or change anything about his teaching, making it the same nightmare every semester. This guy has no business running an important core CS class!

CS575 with Mark Wilson was designed to trick students rather than test their knowledge. Wilson seems to pride himself on making things harder than they need to be. The homework is tedious and the exams are full of curveballs. This is not a reasonable challenge for anyone interested in theoretical CS, rather it's frustrating in a pointless way.

Mark Wilson brags about how many people fail his exams and thinks it makes him a good professor. Refuses to listen to feedback, refuses to give practice material, and refuses to make reasonable adjustments when half the class bombs exams. Teaching should not be a power trip, but that's unfortunately how Wilson runs his classes.

Honest review for CS575 with Mark Wilson: Wilson's lecturing is only sometimes okay, but I won't lie: he lacks the empathy most professors have and comes across as self-centered. Every time best teaching practices are discussed in 298A, I think of Wilson clearly doing the opposite. Many small things add up to an artificially frustrating class.

CS240 under Wilson is deceptively difficult. The material itself isn't inherently hard, but he artificially inflates the challenge through confusing lectures, unrealistic expectations, and draconian exams. Even the more proactive and diligent students find the class unnecessarily frustrating and unrewarding, learning nothing as a result.

I'll take Marius 220 over Wilson 240 anytime. Marius 220 offers well-structured, genuinely challenging content that encourages learning. Wilson 240 on the other hand manufactures ego-driven difficulty with zero pedagogical value, leaving students frustrated. You'll get far more from Marius in both skill and learning than Wilson.

CS240 with Wilson is exhausting for all the wrong reasons: artificially tough homework and exams, disorganized lectures, and zero flexibility and learning curves for the subject matter. On the other hand Marius 220 is challenging but structured; you leave smarter, not just worn out.

Wilson 240 drains motivation and makes even simple topics stressful. Marius 220 challenges and engages students, making learning rewarding. If you want skill-building instead of frustration, Marius is the obvious choice.

CS575 with Wilson is a masterclass in how not to teach. Lectures occasionally make sense, but his ego and lack of empathy dominate. Every 298A session on best practices is a reminder that Wilson does the exact opposite. Learning happens despite him, not because of him.

Marius teaches with enthusiasm and care; Wilson seems to treat UMass as a “lower bound” opportunity (per his own words). His attitude signals little concern for pedagogy, student engagement, or success, turning classes into unnecessarily frustrating experiences.

Even if you get an A, Mark Wilson's tyranny is obviously going to make you want to drop the course. Every homework has hidden curveballs and exams are timed torture. Yona the SI should've taught this class because he's the only reason people passed in the Fall of 2023.

I don't have an issue with hard classes and I believe there's nothing wrong with a hard class. But if students are discouraged from visiting office hours out of fear of an unhelpful or condescending response or impatience from the professor, that's where the real failure is. And this honestly sums up Mark Wilson's attitude towards helping students.

Artificial difficulty is his brand, not a genuine challenge. Miss a quiz because you enrolled late? Too bad. Need a regrade? Will ban them. The content itself isn't the problem, it's how he weaponizes his horrible classroom policy to prevent learning. He doesn't teach, he gatekeeps. There's a reason Wilson has a bottom-of-the-barrel RMP rating.

Every time someone asked a reasonable question, Wilson dismissed it with ‘this should be obvious' or was condescending. Instead of clarity, he thrives on confusion. He calls it avoiding spoonfeeding, but in reality he's avoiding his job of teaching - big difference here! No empathy, no flexibility, no growth, just manufactured learning barriers.

This isn't difficulty due to rigor, it's difficulty due to ego. Mark Wilson blatantly structures his courses so students fail, then brags about low averages as if that proves anything. A real teacher challenges you to grow; Wilson sets traps and laughs when you fail. By the end I didn't feel smarter, rather exhausted and demotivated.

Mark Wilson confuses difficulty with education. He builds walls instead of bridges: arbitrary grading rules, no regrades, pointless trick problems. He hides behind ‘I don't spoonfeed' but what he really means is ‘I don't teach or give clarity no matter how much effort my students put in.' The result isn't rigor, it's misery and learning nothing.

Mark Wilson is the Ben Shapiro of academia because epistemic arrogance is his teaching style. Not only is his philosophy "My authority doesn't care about your learning.", but he also uses "logic" to justify artificial difficulty and dismiss all confusion as student failure. Creates a hostile, demeaning environment designed to prove superiority.