MATH 115A
Linear Algebra
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Requisite: course 33A. Techniques of proof, abstract vector spaces, linear transformations, and matrices; determinants; inner product spaces; eigenvector theory. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
6 of 16
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - I had him for 115A in fall 18 and 170B in winter 19. One warning: he goes VERY fast. He barely gives you enough time to write notes, then expects you to have digested it quickly enough to ask thoughtful questions (which almost no one has). One time he got mad because he said the notes are online and we should be paying more attention in the moment instead of writing. He wants to be engaged but may get lowkey irritated if you ask a dumb question. He definitely has an accent (Belarus) , but after a couple weeks you can get past it and understand him pretty well. His homeworks are usually due on fridays, and the homeworks are generally difficult, so make sure to put some time in. He likes to include bonus extra credit hw problems. The midterms are toughish but not as tough as the weekly lecture and homework (he's a somewhat generous grader actually). Cheat sheet allowed. One thing for sure though, is that i feel like i learn a LOT more in his classes than i do with the other adjunct professors ive had so far. He really makes sure that you understand the subject. And despite his intimidating eastern european energy, he really does want to help you and he is very nice (but blunt) in office hours. For that reason, I would take him again.
Fall 2018 - I had him for 115A in fall 18 and 170B in winter 19. One warning: he goes VERY fast. He barely gives you enough time to write notes, then expects you to have digested it quickly enough to ask thoughtful questions (which almost no one has). One time he got mad because he said the notes are online and we should be paying more attention in the moment instead of writing. He wants to be engaged but may get lowkey irritated if you ask a dumb question. He definitely has an accent (Belarus) , but after a couple weeks you can get past it and understand him pretty well. His homeworks are usually due on fridays, and the homeworks are generally difficult, so make sure to put some time in. He likes to include bonus extra credit hw problems. The midterms are toughish but not as tough as the weekly lecture and homework (he's a somewhat generous grader actually). Cheat sheet allowed. One thing for sure though, is that i feel like i learn a LOT more in his classes than i do with the other adjunct professors ive had so far. He really makes sure that you understand the subject. And despite his intimidating eastern european energy, he really does want to help you and he is very nice (but blunt) in office hours. For that reason, I would take him again.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - DISCLAIMER: I TOOK THIS CLASS DURING THE FIRST FULL-TIME ONLINE QUARTER SO EXPERIENCES MAY VARY. Professor Honda is super approachable and a nice guy. He is always looking for questions and is happy to clarify something if you ask. However, his lectures are a hit or miss. Sometimes, he gives good lectures, but other times, he just reads off his slides. He often says things like "you know, this would be clear if I fully wrote it out" but never actually fully writes things out. He is not intimidating at all or anything like that, but I still didn't find his office hours to be that helpful. He knows his material but just has a hard time explaining at times. Grading: Since this was the COVID quarter, grading was weird. We had 8 weekly quizzes and they summed up 68 percent of your grade. The midterm and the final made up the other 32 percent (16 percent each). The quizzes are often from the homework he doesn't collect. However, he did have a few quiz questions that were too difficult. Otherwise, the quizzes aren't that bad. The midterm was also reasonable, but the final was a bit on the harder side. However, we had 24 hours to do it, so people did well. His curve, even though he said it would be generous, was a bit weird. I think his curve helps those who are doing badly than those who are doing well. His gaps between B+ and A- is too much, but getting an overall way below the median still pretty much gives you a B or B+. I didn't like the curve, but it is what it is. Overall, Honda isn't a bad professor, but there are definitely better. I wouldn't avoid Honda, but if there are better option, please go with those. As for the material of 115A, this is the first class you will probably see proofs, but it is honestly doable if you just stick to the definitions. Read the book and ask your TA all the questions you have. Good luck.
Spring 2020 - DISCLAIMER: I TOOK THIS CLASS DURING THE FIRST FULL-TIME ONLINE QUARTER SO EXPERIENCES MAY VARY. Professor Honda is super approachable and a nice guy. He is always looking for questions and is happy to clarify something if you ask. However, his lectures are a hit or miss. Sometimes, he gives good lectures, but other times, he just reads off his slides. He often says things like "you know, this would be clear if I fully wrote it out" but never actually fully writes things out. He is not intimidating at all or anything like that, but I still didn't find his office hours to be that helpful. He knows his material but just has a hard time explaining at times. Grading: Since this was the COVID quarter, grading was weird. We had 8 weekly quizzes and they summed up 68 percent of your grade. The midterm and the final made up the other 32 percent (16 percent each). The quizzes are often from the homework he doesn't collect. However, he did have a few quiz questions that were too difficult. Otherwise, the quizzes aren't that bad. The midterm was also reasonable, but the final was a bit on the harder side. However, we had 24 hours to do it, so people did well. His curve, even though he said it would be generous, was a bit weird. I think his curve helps those who are doing badly than those who are doing well. His gaps between B+ and A- is too much, but getting an overall way below the median still pretty much gives you a B or B+. I didn't like the curve, but it is what it is. Overall, Honda isn't a bad professor, but there are definitely better. I wouldn't avoid Honda, but if there are better option, please go with those. As for the material of 115A, this is the first class you will probably see proofs, but it is honestly doable if you just stick to the definitions. Read the book and ask your TA all the questions you have. Good luck.
Most Helpful Review
though he is a good teacher, knows the material very very well, and goes into depth in a lot of abstract concepts, there is one word i can use to describe this course: relentless. his curve is very tough, the midterms require you to understand all aspects of the material covered, and you have to do all sorts of proofs and problems to do well. i, for one, physically and mentally was unable to do the homework by myself as it is pretty difficult. going to office hours with the TA is essential if you want to guarantee passing the midterms and homework. it's a 5 day a week class, so you better make sure you're willing to commit to that topic for a quarter. i wasnt.
though he is a good teacher, knows the material very very well, and goes into depth in a lot of abstract concepts, there is one word i can use to describe this course: relentless. his curve is very tough, the midterms require you to understand all aspects of the material covered, and you have to do all sorts of proofs and problems to do well. i, for one, physically and mentally was unable to do the homework by myself as it is pretty difficult. going to office hours with the TA is essential if you want to guarantee passing the midterms and homework. it's a 5 day a week class, so you better make sure you're willing to commit to that topic for a quarter. i wasnt.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2022 - I wish to write this review in order to help future generation students, either you are math/stats/science majors that require this class as an upper mandatory course or you need to take this class for some reason. Through talking about the big picture about professor Huang, her grading scheme, grading standard, lectures, homework, etc., this review may help you decide whether you should take or continue on this class or not. - About Grading Scheme: 25% Homework + 25% Quizzes + 20% Midterm + 30% Final. OR 25% Homework + 25% Quizzes + 50% Final, Professor will eventually choose the higher one among these two that calculate towards your final grade, which means it is possible to miss the midterm and increase the proportation of weigh of you final. There is also 1% bonus point on your final grade if you do the evaluation at the end of the quarter. For the quiz and homework parts, professor will drop 2 lowest homework scores from the 7 homework scores, and drop 2 lowest quizzes grades from the 7 quiz grades. Initially the A cutoff is 93, but professor Huang said the grades may be curved according to the absolute perfomance of the entire class, so no need to worry about the 93cutoff. - About Midterm: There is only one in-class 50-minute-long midterm that takes up 20% of your final grade. The time of the midterm is quite late in the quarter (roughly week7) and will cover the topics mentioned on the studyguide. Professor Huang always give us a studyguide for exams, including midterm and finals, which are extremely helpful. Make sure that you understand every single question on the studyguide. Midterm is overall fair, consist of 4 , where the difficulty of midterm questions are very similar to the homework questions, relatively easy in general. - About Final: The final is absolutely a disaster, and is the only challenge throughout the entire quarter. Those final exam questions are far harder than the homework sets, and are not similar to the studyguide questions at all. Those unbearbly difficult questions make the average of the final drop to 58.8%, where the midterm average is about 76%. If you do not study very very hard for the final, spend enough time practicing studyguide questions, you might get screwed on the final. I'm a math-major student and still spend 60 hours in the previous week before the final to practice, and I still think the final is VERY DIFFICULT. Both midterm and final questions are not the same questions you did in homework or in discussion, while I heard some other professors use exactly the same hw questions on exams. So if you are not that confident with your performance in this extremely challenging final, try other professors' sessions instead. - About Quizzes: There are in total 7 quizzes throughout the quarter, starting from week 3 to week 10 (midterm week no quiz). The lowest 2 quizzes will be dropped. These weekly quizzes are very easy, which are 10-minutes-long conducted during discussion sessions every Thursday, consist 1 proof questions. All these question come directly from the homeworks, and are exactly the same questions. If you do the homework, then this should be just easy pz for you. - About Homeworks: There are in total 7 homework sets in total. The lowest 2 homework grades will be dropped. Each homework set consist of 2 sections: The first section is the graded question section, this is the one that will be graded, which consist of 3 questions from the text book. The second section is suggested question section (not graded, no need to write down), which is made up of lots of suggested homework questions from the text book assigned by the professor, which are helpful for exams. Doing the suggested part before exams can really help you do better. Overall, the weekly graded section of the homework should take you less than an hour. - About Lectures: All the lectures this quarter are podcasted and posted on Bruinlearn website. Professor Huang also posted notes for every lecture on the website as well, which are very helpful. During the lecture time, all professor did was writing the notes, so it is possible for you not go to the lecture at all (I went to the lecture only once this quarter) by just reading the notes/read textbooks/watch recordings. You can choose from either one of these approaches. Perosnally I think Professor Huang has a very thick accent, so it might be more efficient to read through the textbook and notes by yourself instead of going to the lecture (Textbook is far more comprehensive and self-explanatory). - Overall, the grading scheme is very friendly (easy full mark on HWs and Quizzess) which the proportion of exams are not that high. You wont feel that stressed as workload is evenly distributed throughout the entire quarter. Homeworks and Quizzes are very easy, while Midterm is also very fair and straightfoward. The only challenge is the final, which needs great devotion and time spending on preparing for it. Generally speaking, Huang's Math115A is fair and I would recommend to take hers for future generations~
Spring 2022 - I wish to write this review in order to help future generation students, either you are math/stats/science majors that require this class as an upper mandatory course or you need to take this class for some reason. Through talking about the big picture about professor Huang, her grading scheme, grading standard, lectures, homework, etc., this review may help you decide whether you should take or continue on this class or not. - About Grading Scheme: 25% Homework + 25% Quizzes + 20% Midterm + 30% Final. OR 25% Homework + 25% Quizzes + 50% Final, Professor will eventually choose the higher one among these two that calculate towards your final grade, which means it is possible to miss the midterm and increase the proportation of weigh of you final. There is also 1% bonus point on your final grade if you do the evaluation at the end of the quarter. For the quiz and homework parts, professor will drop 2 lowest homework scores from the 7 homework scores, and drop 2 lowest quizzes grades from the 7 quiz grades. Initially the A cutoff is 93, but professor Huang said the grades may be curved according to the absolute perfomance of the entire class, so no need to worry about the 93cutoff. - About Midterm: There is only one in-class 50-minute-long midterm that takes up 20% of your final grade. The time of the midterm is quite late in the quarter (roughly week7) and will cover the topics mentioned on the studyguide. Professor Huang always give us a studyguide for exams, including midterm and finals, which are extremely helpful. Make sure that you understand every single question on the studyguide. Midterm is overall fair, consist of 4 , where the difficulty of midterm questions are very similar to the homework questions, relatively easy in general. - About Final: The final is absolutely a disaster, and is the only challenge throughout the entire quarter. Those final exam questions are far harder than the homework sets, and are not similar to the studyguide questions at all. Those unbearbly difficult questions make the average of the final drop to 58.8%, where the midterm average is about 76%. If you do not study very very hard for the final, spend enough time practicing studyguide questions, you might get screwed on the final. I'm a math-major student and still spend 60 hours in the previous week before the final to practice, and I still think the final is VERY DIFFICULT. Both midterm and final questions are not the same questions you did in homework or in discussion, while I heard some other professors use exactly the same hw questions on exams. So if you are not that confident with your performance in this extremely challenging final, try other professors' sessions instead. - About Quizzes: There are in total 7 quizzes throughout the quarter, starting from week 3 to week 10 (midterm week no quiz). The lowest 2 quizzes will be dropped. These weekly quizzes are very easy, which are 10-minutes-long conducted during discussion sessions every Thursday, consist 1 proof questions. All these question come directly from the homeworks, and are exactly the same questions. If you do the homework, then this should be just easy pz for you. - About Homeworks: There are in total 7 homework sets in total. The lowest 2 homework grades will be dropped. Each homework set consist of 2 sections: The first section is the graded question section, this is the one that will be graded, which consist of 3 questions from the text book. The second section is suggested question section (not graded, no need to write down), which is made up of lots of suggested homework questions from the text book assigned by the professor, which are helpful for exams. Doing the suggested part before exams can really help you do better. Overall, the weekly graded section of the homework should take you less than an hour. - About Lectures: All the lectures this quarter are podcasted and posted on Bruinlearn website. Professor Huang also posted notes for every lecture on the website as well, which are very helpful. During the lecture time, all professor did was writing the notes, so it is possible for you not go to the lecture at all (I went to the lecture only once this quarter) by just reading the notes/read textbooks/watch recordings. You can choose from either one of these approaches. Perosnally I think Professor Huang has a very thick accent, so it might be more efficient to read through the textbook and notes by yourself instead of going to the lecture (Textbook is far more comprehensive and self-explanatory). - Overall, the grading scheme is very friendly (easy full mark on HWs and Quizzess) which the proportion of exams are not that high. You wont feel that stressed as workload is evenly distributed throughout the entire quarter. Homeworks and Quizzes are very easy, while Midterm is also very fair and straightfoward. The only challenge is the final, which needs great devotion and time spending on preparing for it. Generally speaking, Huang's Math115A is fair and I would recommend to take hers for future generations~
6 of 16
