Really great lecturer, very easy to understand. Always let us choose music to play while everyone joined the Zoom call. "I guess I need to listen more to K pop"-steve bennoun, 2021

I really liked this class!!! Prof Bennoun was such a great professor (In my opinion, sometimes better than Jukka)* and he would always play songs recommended by students before class which was always fun. The content of the lectures was very easy to understand with only a few hard topics. We have clicker questions during lecture, weekly homeworks, and weekly quizzes related to lecture content, all very easy to do. For discussion, it’s a weekly coding lab. I had Mahika as my TA and she was actually a senior undergrad, so I was a little worried at first but she was actually really helpful. She would only spend a little bit of time talking during the lab so we would have plenty of time to finish the coding lab during discussion so we wouldn’t have homework outside of lab. I was worried about the coding at first because I had never coded a day in my life before, but they don’t expect you to have any kind of previous coding knowledge and take lots of baby steps in the first few labs. This was a little frustrating for some because it seems the coding labs have nothing to do with the lectures, but once you get to the later labs it all comes together, so be patient. Some people say this class is pointless and has no real use, but to be honest this class has so much real life application as a life science student, especially if you plan to go to med school. This class is 100% the better option over normal calculus, which has literally no use. My only complaint about this class was the structure of the midterm and final, but take this with a grain of salt in future quarters since this is when the class was online. They were 3 parts, with a study guide, individual portion, and collaborative portion. The study guide you would split up between your lab group from discussion. The individual portion is timed but you could use your notes. The collaborative portion was a 24 hour period you could talk to your lab group about. I really just hated this whole set up since instead of just having a one and done final, the final would end up lasted multiple days and eating up so much of your time and energy. And the study guide and collaborative portion is just extremely frustrating if you don’t work well with your group and these parts would actually hurt my grade rather than help. And for the final, on top of these three parts they decided to add a coding part, but it was only worth 5 points out of the 100, so it just seemed like there was no point to it. Overall, I really recommend this class and it’s very easy and manageable if you stay on top of the work and aren’t afraid to ask for help.
*While the LS30A professors all teach the same content and have the same assignments, the teachers have small differences. I have Bennoun and my roommate had Jukka, and I heard from her Jukka would rarely ever finish the entire lecture and assigned them homework over thanksgiving, which Bennoun did not do. However, I know Jukka would record office hours where he went over homework before it was due, and they got an extra attempt on the weekly quizzes, so overall everything probably evens out. Just don’t think that because Jukka isn’t teaching, you’re doomed. Everything is fine lmao.

*took the class online (live)*
Let me lead with I LOVE BENNOUN.
He answers every single question and stays overtime to explain things, and clearly cares about the student understanding his lectures.
He is a pretty good lecturer, and often stops through explaining to motivate us and give us examples of people who did succeed and tell us that they are just like us. He is a very sweet person.
I took Calc AB in high school, and let me tell you, it did not help much in this class.
This math isn't as much math as it is understanding how to model equations. We did some basic differentiation and integration and riemann sums, but that's about it.
The homework assignments are pretty tough imo, but once the term is over if you look back at them, you'll be able to solve them easily.
We had weekly quizzes online which were really easy, you had 2 attempts for those.
As part of this class, we do coding (python). It's really fun, but it's all on the TA and the watching the videos assigned to know how to do it. Sometimes it was really hard (coming from me, who never did any coding before), but most times it made sense (until week 8).
I thought I didn't like the content as I was studying it, but going into the final I felt so prepared and happy with the knowledge I gained-- the stuff really is interesting if you like bio/math.
The professor will provide an online version of the textbook for free, but you need to buy an iclicker subscription (~$16 for 6 months).
I 100% recommend LS30A with Bennoun if you're on the pre-health route. It won't be a super easy class, but it's not crazy hard either. A's can be a little challenging, but there is absolutely no question about passing-- there is no way to fail this class.
This is my only A+ course fall 2021.

Professor Bennoun was incredibly helpful. Although we learned all of the material online, it was well complemented by all of the textbook readings. He was super helpful during office hours and so so kind! He would never get defensive or impatient with our confusion, which is a wonderful feature. Very good professor! Would recommend this class!

This course was fast pace but easy to understand because of how much help the professor offers. The professor is such a nice and genuine person. If you are taking this course, I really recommend you take it with him!

I honestly would recommend everyone to take this class!!!

PROFESSOR BENNOUN IS AN AMAZING TEACHER!!!! He did not have any reviews prior to enrolling in his class so I felt very nervous in taking his class because I thought he was going to be a bad prof. This was COMPLETELY FALSE. He is an amazing, caring, and funny guy. You can tell he really wants his students to succeed because he would push back homework assignments and labs to ensure we had enough time to study for our tests. I would definitely take his class again because he is just an overall amazing and funny professor. Also, attend his social hours, he talks about some pretty interesting stuff that is not math related.

Bennuon is the coolest guy, he's very sweet and you can tell he cares about his students. I was worried about going into the class having taken 0 calculus but it ended up being fine (although it would've helped). Getting an A is very manageable if you put in a bit of work. Lectures were pretty engaging. The coding labs were kind of annoying once they got harder at the end but again, still manageable. Overall it was an interesting class and Bennuon is a great professor.

Do not ever use the Cornell Rate my Professor reviews of Dr.Bennoun. Those reviews make you question if they were even talking about the right professor. He was by far the most helpful professor throughout distance learning and he makes sure his students understand the material and can succeed in the class. He gives a decent amount of homework but nothing ridiculous and he drops some of the lower grades in the class. Bennoun truly was a godsend during this pandemic and I hope more professors can be like him.

This class was very manageable and an easy A (because of the built in extra credit and because the worst HW/labs were dropped). However, I hated the textbook for this class (it didn't explain things in depth/ didn't explain answers to problems). It's also basically impossible to find information about the course content online because it is very niche (you can't just look up a youtube video to help you understand the content like a normal calculus class). The labs were the worst part of this class because I had no background in coding and my TA didn't explain things well (I had to figure out a lot on my own). That being said, a lot of the content was very interesting and applicable to a career in the life sciences. We studied the spread of disease, population dynamics, and much more. Professor Bennoun was a fine lecturer and obviously cares a lot about his students. I wouldn't say he's the best professor ever, but he definitely put a lot of effort into the class. He put people in collaborative lab groups which helped a lot (especially during this virtual quarter). I believe this was his first quarter teaching this class, so I bet his lectures will improve in future quarters. Overall, I enjoyed this class a fair amount and would recommend for anyone studying the life sciences.