I've taken PIC10A, math 170A and am taking math 135 with Dr. Barbaro, and she is my favorite professor at UCLA.

Her exams are often tough and long and require extensive studying, though her homework is usually given in reasonable amounts. She is extremely available to help you understand the problems, and will put problems directly from the homework onto the exams so that some of the proofs/problems look familiar.

I am impressed by the way she often provides alternative ways of understanding concepts, she gives skeletons to all the proofs she does so that it is easy to understand and study them for the exams, and she will give you extra material to help you study.

Best of all though, she is extremely nice and really cares that her students are understanding the material. She never gets upset if she has to repeat things or if students get totally lost.

PIC 10a isn't available in the dropdown box, but this review is for that course.

In regards to the TA comments below, I feel people should be aware that this is the same TA who wrote abusive comments on students' exams, and couldn't be bothered coming into class the three weeks leading up to the exam. He obviously has some sort of personal vendetta against Professor Barbaro, though I can't imagine why.

As for the class its self, I found the lectures interesting, and Professor Barbaro was both helpful and insightful during office hours. She was even willing to schedule additional appointments with me outside of office hours when I needed extra help.

It seemed like the majority of students complaining about the exams were the ones who never bothered coming to class. This is college, you have to put the work in in order to get grades. Those of you making personal attacks may have done better in the class if you'd showed up and paid attention rather than wasting time on Facebook.

My friends and I did well in this class, and definitely recommend this professor.

I was one of those students who had the biggest trouble with probability since the very beginning. I had no idea what was going on or even the thought process behind it. In the beginning Barbaro seemed very nice and somewhat caring, well in comparison to most other negligent teachers, her personality is somewhat a plus. I thought I could get help from her office hours, but I was HORRIBLY MISTAKEN.

At times when I'm trying to ask her what her through process is, she either a) pulls out the book, b)struggles for 5 minute, or c)asks other people in the office hours if they get it, and use them to explain it instead.

She seems to know a lot of stuff, but she is completely horrible at explaining things, she seems to completely rely upon the textbook for her knowledge, and her midterms/finals are absolutely ridiculous.

We have to memorize so many proofs and definition that it made our *1* chapter out of the Math book seem like an entire book in itself.

The only thing that saved me for this class was taking AAP tutoring and having Josh as my Tutor, they were both great at explaining things and I honestly can surmise that they both know more and can explain much better than Barbaro can.

I mean really, she would spend entire lectures deriving an equation which absolutely no one understands unless you've taken higher level math courses previously.

NOTE: DO NOT, take her during spring quarter, because apparently she seems to always bail and go on some trip to some Math conference during the last few weeks. This happened to my friend last spring quarter, and happened to me this spring quarter, and I can only assume this trend will continue. Let me ask you, What is the probability that she'll bail on you next year?

TAKE OBERLIN.

ps: She's nice and all, but her personality does not in any way make up for her ridiculous midterms/finals and her inability to convey concepts properly. I'd take a hardass any day if he/she could teach wonderfully.

DONT TAKE HER
She does not teach what she tests on and he tests are at a much more difficult level than she is able to explain.
And her exams are just ridiculously hard, wait for another professor that will not make this class hell

After coming from Song who barely spoke English, I didn't think it could get any worse... Wrong! Barbaro literally wrote down on the board every word she spoke. This made the class extremely slow and super boring. I always had to bring something else to do. By the end of the course, she had to rush through the more difficult stuff to get everything done. Her first midterm was ridiculously long. Some of the questions came straight from the book, like how many words can you make from the letters from Mississippi... others came from nowhere. She also expected us to memorize flat-out definitions. Before the final she sent an email stating not to spend much time memorizing the definition of the theory. I did anyway and was glad since she asked us to define things like the Central Limit Theorem after telling us it wouldn't be on it.

In terms of grading, don't expect generous partial grading. Regardless, I failed the first midterm, got Cs on the second and final and still ended up with an A-. Also, for some reason my midterm grade didn't get into my.ucla and she made me bring her midterm to her office (this was the week after finals between spring/summer session) Luckily I was still on campus but would have been screwed if I wasn't!

If you have a choice between Oberlin and Barbaro, take Oberlin!! Barbaro is crazy! She teaches straight out of the book, so basically no point in going to class. The examples she gives are EXACTLY from the book so it's super frustrating because you would expect teachers to at least be able to make up their own examples! She makes you memorize about 7 proofs per midterm!!! So ridiculous! And the first 2 pages of her tests are always DEFINITIONS. So besides actually trying to understand how to apply the concepts, you need to memorize exact proofs and exact definitions! On the first midterm we had NO time to finish the entire test. She realized she made it too long and told us that the second midterm would be shorter. But noooo, the second midterm was actually LONGER!! Also, no point emailing her because she NEVER responds!! I've emailed her so many times before! And her final was on the difficult side! Oh and whatever you do, do NOT..let me stress it again..do NOT get Siddharth as your TA. He is BEYOND horrible. If you're stuck with him, go to Josh's discussions! This class has pissed me off way too much!

I had Barbaro for PIC 10B, which was not a selectable option. However, if you are considering taking these rather simple programming classes (PIC 10A, 10B) with Barbaro, don't. Frankly, I don't know if she is that intelligent. Her lectures are extremely unorganized both in structure and in logic. She never understands anyone's questions because she barely understands what's going on. Half the time other kids in class are the ones to answer the questions. There is little point in going to lecture, as she barely covers any material. She goes absurdly slow and makes many mistakes along the way.

I was a TA for Alethea's PIC 10a and agree with the general sentiment expressed in these comments. During this class, which is intended to be a gentle introduction to the basics of programming, she made the following questionable decisions:

--Spent three weeks worth of homework assignments on C++ string member functions. This serves no purpose other than boring students with syntax and takes time away from teaching programming concepts.

--Spent two weeks worth of homework on Horstman's graphics library. This esoteric library isn't even part of the language and should not make up one fifth of the course material in an introductory programming class.

--Was not in attendance for both midterms. If what the previous reviews say about her exams is true then this is horribly irresponsible. While grading/proctoring her midterms there were ambiguous questions and typos that were hard to deal with without her.

--Gave the students assignments she had trouble helping with. For example, when asked "How do we capitalize all the letters in a string?" her answer to the class was "Uh, just look it up on the internet." For me, the TA, this led to headaches in the PIC lab.

--Failed to devote enough time to standard material (ie arrays/vectors/functions) and tried to cram it all into the last part of the class.

Undergrads, please do not take her programming classes. Or, if you have no choice, please do not take her teaching seriously as it is likely a poor representation of the material she claims to be covering.

Grad students, if you end up getting assigned as her TA, be prepared for some of the most ridiculously misunderstood programming you've ever seen. I have TA'ed eleven sections of pic 10 since I've been here and never had students more confused than when I TA'ed for Alethea Barbaro.

Theres two midterms and homework due every week. I think overall I really enjoyed math 3c its a mix of both probabilities and calculus. The thing about unger was that he never really focused on the intense number related problems on his midterms the majority of his test was conceptual so as long as you understand the basic concept behind solving the homework problems you should be okay.