MATH 33A
Linear Algebra and Applications
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 3B or 31B or 32A with grade of C- or better. Introduction to linear algebra: systems of linear equations, matrix algebra, linear independence, subspaces, bases and dimension, orthogonality, least-squares methods, determinants, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, matrix diagonalization, and symmetric matrices. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
8 of 10
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - I honestly thought this guy sucks. He is extremely mediocore and is not suited to teach introductory courses. Linear Algebra is challenging to a lot of people since it is very different and is the first class where it is better to teach by proof rather than example. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it is a difficult subject, especially at this introductory level. The logic is extremely crisp and I found the material to be extremely simple once you make sense of it, especially in the beginning of the class which is SUPPOSED to get you used to matrix algebra first before you start to do cool stuff with it. However, this guy just seems to not understand the background from where his students are coming from, since it was literally impossible to communicate with him. He tends to speak proofs out to you when you ask him a question rather than write anything down on the board. He doesn't seem to be able to not communicate without using heavy math jargon and his lectures were impossible to follow. He apparently admitted to me that he wants his lectures to make his students very confused until they look through the material and then it becomes clear...like what? Why not just be very explicit and clear in lecture instead so I don't have to waste so much time re-reading the textbook over and over again? Also the fucking textbook. It doesn't help that the textbook is god awful. 33A needs to rely on a new textbook. Otto Bretscher (apparently a hardcore communist, look him up on facebook) decides to make the book as convoluted as the teacher tries to. Introductory linear algebra does not need to be so horribly confusing. I honestly thought the entire class was following him 100% and I was the only one struggling super hard, but then the averages on the 2nd midterm and the final were abysmal, so go figure. He curves, but holy shit his final exam was rough. Only a small fraction of students truly understood the material to be able to survive the tough ass final. They probably had the appropriate study strategies or had exposure to linear algebra before. If you want to do well in 33A make sure to do all the true false questions in the back of each chapter to truly check to see if you know the material. Also 3Blue1Brown saved my fucking ass. Even though I got a B+ I still feel very comfortable with linear algebra and capable of doing it for physics courses.
Fall 2017 - I honestly thought this guy sucks. He is extremely mediocore and is not suited to teach introductory courses. Linear Algebra is challenging to a lot of people since it is very different and is the first class where it is better to teach by proof rather than example. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it is a difficult subject, especially at this introductory level. The logic is extremely crisp and I found the material to be extremely simple once you make sense of it, especially in the beginning of the class which is SUPPOSED to get you used to matrix algebra first before you start to do cool stuff with it. However, this guy just seems to not understand the background from where his students are coming from, since it was literally impossible to communicate with him. He tends to speak proofs out to you when you ask him a question rather than write anything down on the board. He doesn't seem to be able to not communicate without using heavy math jargon and his lectures were impossible to follow. He apparently admitted to me that he wants his lectures to make his students very confused until they look through the material and then it becomes clear...like what? Why not just be very explicit and clear in lecture instead so I don't have to waste so much time re-reading the textbook over and over again? Also the fucking textbook. It doesn't help that the textbook is god awful. 33A needs to rely on a new textbook. Otto Bretscher (apparently a hardcore communist, look him up on facebook) decides to make the book as convoluted as the teacher tries to. Introductory linear algebra does not need to be so horribly confusing. I honestly thought the entire class was following him 100% and I was the only one struggling super hard, but then the averages on the 2nd midterm and the final were abysmal, so go figure. He curves, but holy shit his final exam was rough. Only a small fraction of students truly understood the material to be able to survive the tough ass final. They probably had the appropriate study strategies or had exposure to linear algebra before. If you want to do well in 33A make sure to do all the true false questions in the back of each chapter to truly check to see if you know the material. Also 3Blue1Brown saved my fucking ass. Even though I got a B+ I still feel very comfortable with linear algebra and capable of doing it for physics courses.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - pablo is the goat. although some people may dislike his lectures, i will FOREVER be a pablo defender. he puts in effort to make his lectures clear and he is also unironically funny. not to mention he is the snazziest dresser and always shows up with math-related shirts. his tests are also quite simple.
Fall 2023 - pablo is the goat. although some people may dislike his lectures, i will FOREVER be a pablo defender. he puts in effort to make his lectures clear and he is also unironically funny. not to mention he is the snazziest dresser and always shows up with math-related shirts. his tests are also quite simple.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Professor Suzuki was very caring and one of the few professors who has ever taken mid-quarter feedback into consideration. He added CampusWire halfway through the quarter after people said they wanted something like that, which shows that he's a really helpful and caring professor. That being said, I did not like this class in the slightest. Professor Suzuki was a mediocre lecturer at best. He would rarely ever tie together concepts from different lectures together into one story, which is something I think is crucial for lectures. Instead, it felt like every lecture was disjointed and disorganized. There was a lot of reliance on the textbook to figure out all the content, even though the textbook for the class itself is kind of mediocre too. Workload is pretty light though, and exams weren't too difficult. I almost wished that we had more homework problems (and Professor Suzuki accommodated by giving more practice problems along with the assigned homework problems). Exams were easy but mostly because of the 24 hour exam rule during remote learning, there is a lot of computation to do on them. Quizzes were not that easy and are worth a significant portion of the grade, but I honestly found the stuff on the quiz to be pretty important, even though so many of the conceptual questions on the quizzes we never learned.
Fall 2020 - Professor Suzuki was very caring and one of the few professors who has ever taken mid-quarter feedback into consideration. He added CampusWire halfway through the quarter after people said they wanted something like that, which shows that he's a really helpful and caring professor. That being said, I did not like this class in the slightest. Professor Suzuki was a mediocre lecturer at best. He would rarely ever tie together concepts from different lectures together into one story, which is something I think is crucial for lectures. Instead, it felt like every lecture was disjointed and disorganized. There was a lot of reliance on the textbook to figure out all the content, even though the textbook for the class itself is kind of mediocre too. Workload is pretty light though, and exams weren't too difficult. I almost wished that we had more homework problems (and Professor Suzuki accommodated by giving more practice problems along with the assigned homework problems). Exams were easy but mostly because of the 24 hour exam rule during remote learning, there is a lot of computation to do on them. Quizzes were not that easy and are worth a significant portion of the grade, but I honestly found the stuff on the quiz to be pretty important, even though so many of the conceptual questions on the quizzes we never learned.
8 of 10
