I actually thought he was quite fair as a professor. His lectures followed the book well, he could answer the questions, and if you knew your stuff the exams are not that bad. The first midterm was very easy, the second one was relatively difficult, and the final was in between. I got a 90 on the first midterm, 79 on the second, 83 on the third, and ended up with an A in the class. Just study hard, know the concepts, and you will be fine.

Great Class, very effective and efficient professor. If you are taking this level of Math you should know what your going into. Calculus is a given in this course,esp. differential equations, you need it and you are expected to know it. The midterms aren't bad at all, it is very similar to the sample midterms he gives, average for first midterm was about 70 and 80 for the second, final was tricky but overall do-able. Study the sample tests he gives, and read the book! (the book is awesome, very clear) Also this class is very interesting real world applications. goodluck! Also the homework is free points, he grades by completion not by correctness.

(Not sure why 151B isn't in the dropdown menu, but to be clear -- this review is for MATH 151B)

Short's a pretty average professor. Just glancing at the ratings why I'm writing this, I'm not sure why they're so low. He's probably an above average lecturer. He's reasonably engaging and reasonably clear but by no means outstanding.

The one thing someone taking 151B with him should know, though, is that there are basically two main components of the course. First, you have to implement the algorithms covered in class. This is tested in the homework. You can (and basically should) do all this from the book. Attending class probably doesn't help all that much with the homework.

The other part of the class is understanding how/why the algorithms work and how they're derived. The exams cover this, along with a very small handful of homework problems. Unlike with implementation, his lectures are far more useful for this than the book. As a physicist, he's far more interested in the intuition than the mathematical details, which is basically good enough for this course. The book's explanations are often lacking, and its pseudocode sucks for understanding (even though it works).

This split might cause you to skip lectures, since they don't help with homework, or you might not know how to study. But I would strongly suggest sticking with lectures and practicing derivations before exams.

(And make sure you can do a Taylor expansion!)

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