MATH 135
Ordinary Differential Equations
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisites: courses 33A, 33B. Selected topics in differential equations. Laplace transforms, existence and uniqueness theorems, Fourier series, separation of variable solutions to partial differential equations, Sturm/Liouville theory, calculus of variations, two-point boundary value problems, Green's functions. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Patrick is a kind and approachable(also sweet and cute!) instructor who brings a lot of enthusiasm to the topics he enjoys, making him engaging and easy to connect with if you want to dive deeper into the subject matter. As a senior, I find his teaching style very appealing, as he explains not just what to learn but also why it matters and how to apply it, whether in mechanical physics or more abstract concepts(for me it's necessary for exploring PDE/ODE in future interest). However, his pacing can sometimes feel inconsistent—occasionally moving too quickly or too slowly and occasionally skipping necessary explanations. The course includes 2 midterms and 1 final exam, and I found his exams to be fair and reasonable, though sometimes tricky. They are based entirely on the material covered in class, so if you thoroughly review the notes and genuinely understand the homework, you should be well-prepared to earn a good grade(not kidding!). Patrick is also very generous with partial credit, which I appreciated. The biggest challenge in the course was that the lecture notes often lagged behind the pace of the class. That said, Patrick provided notes in LaTeX format that were clear and helpful. It’s worth noting that this might have been his first time doing this kind of notes so some growing pains are understandable. I believe he’ll improve in future iterations because of how much he genuinely cares about his students’ learning. He is always willing to answer questions via email or during office hours, and he’s great at explaining concepts and providing thoughtful suggestions. On top of that, Patrick has a good sense of humor and does his best to help students relax during stressful times. The homework typically consists of around 10 problems per assignment, might be time consuming but worth to do.
Fall 2024 - Patrick is a kind and approachable(also sweet and cute!) instructor who brings a lot of enthusiasm to the topics he enjoys, making him engaging and easy to connect with if you want to dive deeper into the subject matter. As a senior, I find his teaching style very appealing, as he explains not just what to learn but also why it matters and how to apply it, whether in mechanical physics or more abstract concepts(for me it's necessary for exploring PDE/ODE in future interest). However, his pacing can sometimes feel inconsistent—occasionally moving too quickly or too slowly and occasionally skipping necessary explanations. The course includes 2 midterms and 1 final exam, and I found his exams to be fair and reasonable, though sometimes tricky. They are based entirely on the material covered in class, so if you thoroughly review the notes and genuinely understand the homework, you should be well-prepared to earn a good grade(not kidding!). Patrick is also very generous with partial credit, which I appreciated. The biggest challenge in the course was that the lecture notes often lagged behind the pace of the class. That said, Patrick provided notes in LaTeX format that were clear and helpful. It’s worth noting that this might have been his first time doing this kind of notes so some growing pains are understandable. I believe he’ll improve in future iterations because of how much he genuinely cares about his students’ learning. He is always willing to answer questions via email or during office hours, and he’s great at explaining concepts and providing thoughtful suggestions. On top of that, Patrick has a good sense of humor and does his best to help students relax during stressful times. The homework typically consists of around 10 problems per assignment, might be time consuming but worth to do.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Welcome to Math 135! You probably are here because you heard that 135 is one of the "easier" math classes. Let me just say, Benjamin was like "hold my beer", because this is actually one of the hardest classes I took. Benjamin is a very clear lecturer. We have a Slack page for our class where we can ask questions, and Professor always goes out of his way to answer every question because he cares about us. He does use slides to lecture, but he doesn't just read from them. There are lots of examples and proofs that he works out with us. The grading scheme is as follows: 29.5% Homework, 0.5% End of the term evaluation, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 30% Final Exam >70% guarantees at least a C-, >80% guarantees at least a B- and so on. The first few weeks of 135 was very straightfoward. All the content up to midterm 1 was simple. But once we started learning about existence and uniqueness, this class felt more like an analysis class than a differential equations class. Half of the class, we were learning proofs and half of the time we were doing computational work. His homework is pretty challenging and long, so be sure to start early. Homework is due every Wednesday. Each assignment is about half proofs and half computations. The proof questions were very difficult and the computational problems were long but mostly straightforward. Some of these computational problems are very lengthy and you may have to use lots of pages to solve them! Only about 30% of the homework was graded for correctness, and the rest is graded for completeness. There were 2 midterms for this class. Midterms 1 and 2 were challenging but still had averages in the mid 80s. However the final exam almost made me cry (average was still somehow a 47/60, how??). To put this into context, if you ever played Pokemon, imagine that Midterm 1 is gym leader Whitney, Midterm 2 is Champion Lance, and the Final Exam is Champion Cynthia from Pokemon Platinum. Because that's how hard they were. To conclude this, Benjamin cares a lot about his students. His Bitmojis make me smile. His lectures are engaging and I would definitely take another class with him again! I highly recommend him if you want to challenge yourself. You will learn a lot from his class! Edit: Forgot to mention that I appreciate him giving us 40 hours for the midterms and for curving my 81.8% to a B.
Winter 2021 - Welcome to Math 135! You probably are here because you heard that 135 is one of the "easier" math classes. Let me just say, Benjamin was like "hold my beer", because this is actually one of the hardest classes I took. Benjamin is a very clear lecturer. We have a Slack page for our class where we can ask questions, and Professor always goes out of his way to answer every question because he cares about us. He does use slides to lecture, but he doesn't just read from them. There are lots of examples and proofs that he works out with us. The grading scheme is as follows: 29.5% Homework, 0.5% End of the term evaluation, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 30% Final Exam >70% guarantees at least a C-, >80% guarantees at least a B- and so on. The first few weeks of 135 was very straightfoward. All the content up to midterm 1 was simple. But once we started learning about existence and uniqueness, this class felt more like an analysis class than a differential equations class. Half of the class, we were learning proofs and half of the time we were doing computational work. His homework is pretty challenging and long, so be sure to start early. Homework is due every Wednesday. Each assignment is about half proofs and half computations. The proof questions were very difficult and the computational problems were long but mostly straightforward. Some of these computational problems are very lengthy and you may have to use lots of pages to solve them! Only about 30% of the homework was graded for correctness, and the rest is graded for completeness. There were 2 midterms for this class. Midterms 1 and 2 were challenging but still had averages in the mid 80s. However the final exam almost made me cry (average was still somehow a 47/60, how??). To put this into context, if you ever played Pokemon, imagine that Midterm 1 is gym leader Whitney, Midterm 2 is Champion Lance, and the Final Exam is Champion Cynthia from Pokemon Platinum. Because that's how hard they were. To conclude this, Benjamin cares a lot about his students. His Bitmojis make me smile. His lectures are engaging and I would definitely take another class with him again! I highly recommend him if you want to challenge yourself. You will learn a lot from his class! Edit: Forgot to mention that I appreciate him giving us 40 hours for the midterms and for curving my 81.8% to a B.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - This class was a lot more difficult than I originally anticipated, and I believe that the class felt the same way considering the lower averages for the two midterms. The professor made sure to answer any and all questions, but in doing so he would fail to finish his planned lecture. Towards the end of the quarter, it became almost required to attend the office hours to finish the rest of the lecture. While the homework itself wasn't too long, it didn't give a good idea of how the exams would go. There needed to be more practice questions that followed the same format as the exam. I had to reread a lot of the questions to understand what was being asked of me. Some exam questions were freebies as long as you included the right definitions and theorems on the cheat sheet. That was the main use of the cheat sheet since most of it came down to applying what was covered in lecture and homework assignments.
Fall 2023 - This class was a lot more difficult than I originally anticipated, and I believe that the class felt the same way considering the lower averages for the two midterms. The professor made sure to answer any and all questions, but in doing so he would fail to finish his planned lecture. Towards the end of the quarter, it became almost required to attend the office hours to finish the rest of the lecture. While the homework itself wasn't too long, it didn't give a good idea of how the exams would go. There needed to be more practice questions that followed the same format as the exam. I had to reread a lot of the questions to understand what was being asked of me. Some exam questions were freebies as long as you included the right definitions and theorems on the cheat sheet. That was the main use of the cheat sheet since most of it came down to applying what was covered in lecture and homework assignments.
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