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
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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.
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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~
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Jukka is probably the best professor I have ever had at UCLA. His lectures are engaging, he clearly loves teaching, and he provides the most academic assistance I have ever seen from a professor. He holds multiple hours of office hours every week and hosts two review sessions before each exam. He is very adamant on ensuring that all students in the class do well and are actually learning the material as well. If I could take another class with Jukka, even if it's not math, I definitely would. tl;dr: Jukka is the goat
Spring 2024 - Jukka is probably the best professor I have ever had at UCLA. His lectures are engaging, he clearly loves teaching, and he provides the most academic assistance I have ever seen from a professor. He holds multiple hours of office hours every week and hosts two review sessions before each exam. He is very adamant on ensuring that all students in the class do well and are actually learning the material as well. If I could take another class with Jukka, even if it's not math, I definitely would. tl;dr: Jukka is the goat
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Fall 2021 - I have extremely mixed feelings for this class hw 10%; 3 quizzes 10% each, lowest dropped; midterms 20% each; final 30% I would recommend always do the hw, and prepare for the quizzes because that one problem is 10% your grade. The lectures are intense, but as long as you remember all the (tons of) theorems, definitions, lemmas, claims, propositions, and proofs. For midterm, I believe it is supposed to be finished within an hour. However, leave at least 8h to yourself because the midterms are insanely hard. The final, well, he generously offered 48h, but trust me those 10 problems really needs 2 days to finish. Tests are insane and he seems to be enjoying that because lots of students gave him that feedback in the reports, but following exams only became more and more tough.
Fall 2021 - I have extremely mixed feelings for this class hw 10%; 3 quizzes 10% each, lowest dropped; midterms 20% each; final 30% I would recommend always do the hw, and prepare for the quizzes because that one problem is 10% your grade. The lectures are intense, but as long as you remember all the (tons of) theorems, definitions, lemmas, claims, propositions, and proofs. For midterm, I believe it is supposed to be finished within an hour. However, leave at least 8h to yourself because the midterms are insanely hard. The final, well, he generously offered 48h, but trust me those 10 problems really needs 2 days to finish. Tests are insane and he seems to be enjoying that because lots of students gave him that feedback in the reports, but following exams only became more and more tough.
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