Winter 2015

I had mixed feelings to professor Taylor. He clearly did a lot of work and prepared his notes and powerpoints carefully. However, he became nervous and disorganized during lectures. He made many mistakes, that is true.

His midterms were not difficult. Some of the questions were even identical to the book problems or only changed slightly. But this class itself required a lot of calculation. Practices always make you faster and more efficient in solving problems. His final was harder. Those in part b were tricky. But it won’t be a problem if you have followed the material.

My advice is if you don’t really care about going to lectures, he is definitely a good choice. But if you rely your study on effective lecutres, you should compare him with other professors. He might not be the best choice, but definitely doable.

I had Taylor for both 33A and 33B. Overall, I really liked him as a professor and would definitely recommend his class.

Pros:
He's a very enthusiastic teacher who obviously knows his stuff, and he's pretty concerned about students and is genuinely happy if students learn. If it counts for anything, he's always well dressed and definitely has a sense of fashion. His tests are very fair and in that sense predictable. He often posts a review aka "what you need to know for the midterm/final", which contains all the information that will be on the test, and nothing random or unexpected is tested. There will often be a practice test which is very similar to the midterm/final. Most test problems are either on homework level difficulty or slightly harder. Any problems that are slightly harder than homework can all be solved, provided you understand the material and use a bit of cleverness. There are always students who get 100%, or really close. As for his grading policy, he drops one or two homeworks, and drops a midterm if it will boost your final score. Midterms are 5 or 6 questions, with topics well distributed throughout. Be sure to know the important theorems (not the little ones, but the ones a whole section is devoted to) since there will always be a question on that.

Cons:
As you've read, people say he's disorganized. I have to disagree. He has his lecture outlined, but just because he doesn't copy his notes line by line doesn't mean it's bad. I think it's good that the lecture is organic. It's not a big deal. You've probably also read that he makes mistakes in lectures. That is true, but these are all arithmetic errors, not logical or huge faulty errors. Granted you pay attention and follow the lecture, either point it out or write the correct answer in your notes. If you're able to follow his errors, you understand the material well enough anyways. People who say that he just wants people to memorize formulas probably didn't go to lecture or didn't pay attention in lecture.

If you want an A or A-, do your practice problems, go to lecture (or not, I don't think it's necessary though I went to them), go to discussion (TA's are really helpful), and just do a ton of practice problems. You'll do fine in the class, and learn a lot.

Wow, at the beginning of this quarter Professor was rated as 8.3 something...His 33B class was over enrolled twice...