Professor

Laura Cladek

AD
3.1
Overall Ratings
Based on 41 Users
Easiness 3.3 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.3 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 2.5 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (41)

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 10, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

Done during COVID pandemic, over Zoom.

Not a bad professor, but not the best you could find. I personally thought that she lacked the basics of lecturing (such as the speed of the lecture, the format of the notes, her preparedness, etc.) and she often did not directly answer the students' questions. However, she is very friendly and she does seem like a genuine person who always gives her best. Her weekly, conceptual quizzes are decently hard but she curves them, and her midterms(2)/final is straightforward as long as you studied and paid attention throughout the year.

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 23, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

I TOOK THIS CLASS DURING COVID SO THINGS ARE PROBABLY DIFFERENT IN PERSON.

Honestly, she isn't a great lecturer. She doesn't really answer questions if you ask in lecture and kind of repeats the same statements over and over again. Her worked examples helped me a little but generally I didn't learn a lot from lectures. The homework really helped me learn because I would just self teach using the textbook to apply the workings. Cladek also had quizzes every week - she curved each quiz depending on difficulty and the lowest was dropped. Some of the quizzes were straightforward and understanding based while others, I found to be extremely difficult. Her quizzes were very different to the other math class quizzes I'd taken because they are EXTREMELY conceptual, its almost always linked to theorems or proofs rather than applications, which is what I was used to. Finally, he exams were at a fair level of difficulty, they were very similar to practice exams for me with a few trickier questions thrown in to balance it out. Often the exams have proofs which are marked pretty closely.

She is a professor that is accommodating but if you are not very good at self-teaching or prefer listening to lectures to really learn I wouldn't recommend taking her class. However, if you are just looking for an average difficulty class and are decent and self-teaching then she isn't a bad choice.

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 23, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

It is worth noting that if you need a clear, helpful instructor in order to effectively learn, you would be better off taking this course with another professor. I do not doubt that Prof. Cladek understands the material, but her lectures are poorly organized and ultimately difficult to follow given her frequent computational errors, many of which she doesn't catch until hours later and attempts to correct through long, rambling emails. To succeed in this class, I would honestly recommend skipping lecture entirely (you'll just get confused) and reading the textbook sections covered very thoroughly. In terms of graded material, the homework problems are typically pretty straightforward and include proofs that further your understanding of important topics, while the short weekly quizzes tend to be more difficult but are usually curved heavily. Despite her many shortcomings, I would ultimately recommend taking this class with Prof. Cladek because she writes some of the most reasonable midterms and final exams I have seen in college thus far; in fact, some problems taken directly from the practice problems she will give you the week before.

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 24, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

Cladek is not a good lecturer. Her lecture notes and the textbook are very helpful. The midterms and finals are fairly written, similar to the practice tests she gives out.

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 27, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

Cladek could sometimes seems like she didn't know what she was talking about during lecture, but I think overall she was good enough for teaching the material. She was never too great at explaining the concepts behind the math we were doing, but her exams didn't cover concepts anyways. The exams felt very fair and nothing came as surprising especially after going through the practice exams she provided.

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March 14, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A+

Cladek is a good professor. She writes up her lecture notes and examples ahead of time, which makes it easy to prep before class and follow along during lecture. She doesn't come across as the friendliest during class, but she explains the math pretty well with lots of proofs if you are into that. Exams were very fair, often based heavily on homework problems. I found that the class got a lot more challenging conceptually in the last half once we got into eigenvectors.

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Oct. 14, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+

Easily one of the best math professors at UCLA. Some people really didn't like her class but I can't for the life of me understand why. To be clear, I'm not one of those math uber-geniuses that should be in upper-division. I just really liked this course and this professor.
~
I found her lectures to be very clear, concise, and easy to follow. The subject material, mind you, is not easy, but she is very good at explaining complex concepts in an understandable way. Naturally, it may take some time to wrap your head around these concepts, since it is linear algebra, but she does all that a professor can to help you understand. She also takes a lot of time to answer questions in class, so that is definitely really helpful. Also, her lectures were pretty easy to pay attention to/engaging, which is neat.
~
The exams are fair. The homework is fair and mostly helpful, she's also really helpful and approachable in office hours.
~
Professor Cladek is a really, really nice person. She definitely cares a lot about student learning. I would highly recommend taking 33a with her, since I'm not sure if you'll find another equally good 33a professor.
~
Also, one time, she had The Man. The Myth. The Legend. Terrence Tao fill in for her. That was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity for a mere mortal like me. Makes that UCLA tuition almost worth it ;)

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MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 20, 2020
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A

Personally, I felt that 33A (the class itself) was much easier than 32A/B.

I stopped attending Cladek’s Zoom lectures week 3 because she focuses way too much on proofs, and when she does pause for questions, her explanations lack clarity and imo consulting the textbook would be much quicker/helpful.

The homework was fine, some questions were more time-consuming than most. As other people have mentioned, quizzes often covered conceptual ideas but she curved generously.

If you aren’t comfortable teaching yourself the material, I wouldn’t take Cladek, but otherwise she has a nice curve for her class and exams are fair.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
April 8, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A

I felt as if her lectures were waaaay too fast and I came away from them not really understanding the big picture, so when the homework asks you to do something beyond the basics, it gets pretty hard. She had her notes pre-written and during the lectures she would basically just talk through them at a very fast speed. I have a feeling that when she asked if there were any questions and didn't get a response it was because we didn't have enough time to process what was going on to even ask a question, or at least that's how I felt. If her style of teaching is similar in the future, you may find it better to look at the notes beforehand or read through the textbook beforehand too because learning everything from her lectures is really hard. Also, I found YouTube videos on these linear algebra topics to be much more engaging and easier to understand. It really makes you wonder why we're paying all this tuition...

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
July 10, 2020

Done during COVID pandemic, over Zoom.

Not a bad professor, but not the best you could find. I personally thought that she lacked the basics of lecturing (such as the speed of the lecture, the format of the notes, her preparedness, etc.) and she often did not directly answer the students' questions. However, she is very friendly and she does seem like a genuine person who always gives her best. Her weekly, conceptual quizzes are decently hard but she curves them, and her midterms(2)/final is straightforward as long as you studied and paid attention throughout the year.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 23, 2020

I TOOK THIS CLASS DURING COVID SO THINGS ARE PROBABLY DIFFERENT IN PERSON.

Honestly, she isn't a great lecturer. She doesn't really answer questions if you ask in lecture and kind of repeats the same statements over and over again. Her worked examples helped me a little but generally I didn't learn a lot from lectures. The homework really helped me learn because I would just self teach using the textbook to apply the workings. Cladek also had quizzes every week - she curved each quiz depending on difficulty and the lowest was dropped. Some of the quizzes were straightforward and understanding based while others, I found to be extremely difficult. Her quizzes were very different to the other math class quizzes I'd taken because they are EXTREMELY conceptual, its almost always linked to theorems or proofs rather than applications, which is what I was used to. Finally, he exams were at a fair level of difficulty, they were very similar to practice exams for me with a few trickier questions thrown in to balance it out. Often the exams have proofs which are marked pretty closely.

She is a professor that is accommodating but if you are not very good at self-teaching or prefer listening to lectures to really learn I wouldn't recommend taking her class. However, if you are just looking for an average difficulty class and are decent and self-teaching then she isn't a bad choice.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 23, 2020

It is worth noting that if you need a clear, helpful instructor in order to effectively learn, you would be better off taking this course with another professor. I do not doubt that Prof. Cladek understands the material, but her lectures are poorly organized and ultimately difficult to follow given her frequent computational errors, many of which she doesn't catch until hours later and attempts to correct through long, rambling emails. To succeed in this class, I would honestly recommend skipping lecture entirely (you'll just get confused) and reading the textbook sections covered very thoroughly. In terms of graded material, the homework problems are typically pretty straightforward and include proofs that further your understanding of important topics, while the short weekly quizzes tend to be more difficult but are usually curved heavily. Despite her many shortcomings, I would ultimately recommend taking this class with Prof. Cladek because she writes some of the most reasonable midterms and final exams I have seen in college thus far; in fact, some problems taken directly from the practice problems she will give you the week before.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 24, 2020

Cladek is not a good lecturer. Her lecture notes and the textbook are very helpful. The midterms and finals are fairly written, similar to the practice tests she gives out.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
June 27, 2020

Cladek could sometimes seems like she didn't know what she was talking about during lecture, but I think overall she was good enough for teaching the material. She was never too great at explaining the concepts behind the math we were doing, but her exams didn't cover concepts anyways. The exams felt very fair and nothing came as surprising especially after going through the practice exams she provided.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
Quarter: Winter 2020
Grade: A+
March 14, 2021

Cladek is a good professor. She writes up her lecture notes and examples ahead of time, which makes it easy to prep before class and follow along during lecture. She doesn't come across as the friendliest during class, but she explains the math pretty well with lots of proofs if you are into that. Exams were very fair, often based heavily on homework problems. I found that the class got a lot more challenging conceptually in the last half once we got into eigenvectors.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A+
Oct. 14, 2020

Easily one of the best math professors at UCLA. Some people really didn't like her class but I can't for the life of me understand why. To be clear, I'm not one of those math uber-geniuses that should be in upper-division. I just really liked this course and this professor.
~
I found her lectures to be very clear, concise, and easy to follow. The subject material, mind you, is not easy, but she is very good at explaining complex concepts in an understandable way. Naturally, it may take some time to wrap your head around these concepts, since it is linear algebra, but she does all that a professor can to help you understand. She also takes a lot of time to answer questions in class, so that is definitely really helpful. Also, her lectures were pretty easy to pay attention to/engaging, which is neat.
~
The exams are fair. The homework is fair and mostly helpful, she's also really helpful and approachable in office hours.
~
Professor Cladek is a really, really nice person. She definitely cares a lot about student learning. I would highly recommend taking 33a with her, since I'm not sure if you'll find another equally good 33a professor.
~
Also, one time, she had The Man. The Myth. The Legend. Terrence Tao fill in for her. That was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity for a mere mortal like me. Makes that UCLA tuition almost worth it ;)

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2020
Grade: A
Dec. 20, 2020

Personally, I felt that 33A (the class itself) was much easier than 32A/B.

I stopped attending Cladek’s Zoom lectures week 3 because she focuses way too much on proofs, and when she does pause for questions, her explanations lack clarity and imo consulting the textbook would be much quicker/helpful.

The homework was fine, some questions were more time-consuming than most. As other people have mentioned, quizzes often covered conceptual ideas but she curved generously.

If you aren’t comfortable teaching yourself the material, I wouldn’t take Cladek, but otherwise she has a nice curve for her class and exams are fair.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 33A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
April 8, 2021

I felt as if her lectures were waaaay too fast and I came away from them not really understanding the big picture, so when the homework asks you to do something beyond the basics, it gets pretty hard. She had her notes pre-written and during the lectures she would basically just talk through them at a very fast speed. I have a feeling that when she asked if there were any questions and didn't get a response it was because we didn't have enough time to process what was going on to even ask a question, or at least that's how I felt. If her style of teaching is similar in the future, you may find it better to look at the notes beforehand or read through the textbook beforehand too because learning everything from her lectures is really hard. Also, I found YouTube videos on these linear algebra topics to be much more engaging and easier to understand. It really makes you wonder why we're paying all this tuition...

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
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