Ngee Low
AD
Based on 3 Users
Professor Low barely teaches, and the material can be somewhat of a struggle, especially if it is your first time seeing the material. However, if you do all of the homework, you have a good chance at getting a decent grade in the class.
This guy is ridiculous. The way he teaches is a nonsense. He just introduces materials that are going to be covered during the quarter in the lecture and nothing else. Students must study by themselves with textbooks that are barely understandable. He actually finished 3 chapters in 2-hour which was like 200 pages of the textbook. That is like 10 pages in 5 minutes and since each page has like 200 words this is like 40 words in a minute which is approximately 2 words in a second. I can barely read two words in a second. His tests are not very hard if you understand all the materials but it is rarely possible to do so unless you are preparing for the FM exam so may study these materials earlier. Basically you have to do all the studying by yourself so I recommend you not to go to the lecture because it is a waste of you precious time. He does some attendance-check for no reason so do not care about it.
I was originally quite nervous when I saw the grade distributions for this class, especially after hearing terrible things about Professor Low. Ok, I admit he isn't all that engaging of a lecturer. I really had to force myself to go to lecture and sometimes the 2 hour classes were quite torturous. But really, you have to go to lecture; only then would you know which pieces of information are important, what you have to know, etc (since honestly, this course packs a LOT of material in 10 weeks.) Also, one good thing about going to lecture is that Prof Low summarizes all the formulas for you and gives them to you upfront (some are not included in the textbook!!). He even stresses which formulas are most important.
One thing I really liked about Prof Low: he gives you all the homework (a lot of problems, mind you, both from the textbook and past SOA exams) at the beginning of the quarter, and he gives you all the answers (different versions of the answers, in fact. I would mostly rely on Kong's solutions, and then use Low's own solutions when Kong's don't make sense. Kong's approach is often more simple, but relies on the calculator more.) Yes, it's a lot of homework, and he doesn't collect them. But doing the homework is absolutely ESSENTIAL to do well in this class. I recommend doing problems more than once. You really can't slack off. All the material is there, you just have to discipline yourself.
His tests are straightforward. If you did all the work like you were supposed to, you would do fine. As he says himself, all of his problems are based on the homework (with different numbers), so it's completely possible to get 100% on his tests. He even had an extra credit problem for both the midterm and the final.
One last thing: the textbook sucks for the first half of the class, so use the Actex manual like Prof Low suggested. It's worth the price. And, often the SOA questions are easier than the textbook questions, so I like starting with those.
Professor Low barely teaches, and the material can be somewhat of a struggle, especially if it is your first time seeing the material. However, if you do all of the homework, you have a good chance at getting a decent grade in the class.
This guy is ridiculous. The way he teaches is a nonsense. He just introduces materials that are going to be covered during the quarter in the lecture and nothing else. Students must study by themselves with textbooks that are barely understandable. He actually finished 3 chapters in 2-hour which was like 200 pages of the textbook. That is like 10 pages in 5 minutes and since each page has like 200 words this is like 40 words in a minute which is approximately 2 words in a second. I can barely read two words in a second. His tests are not very hard if you understand all the materials but it is rarely possible to do so unless you are preparing for the FM exam so may study these materials earlier. Basically you have to do all the studying by yourself so I recommend you not to go to the lecture because it is a waste of you precious time. He does some attendance-check for no reason so do not care about it.
I was originally quite nervous when I saw the grade distributions for this class, especially after hearing terrible things about Professor Low. Ok, I admit he isn't all that engaging of a lecturer. I really had to force myself to go to lecture and sometimes the 2 hour classes were quite torturous. But really, you have to go to lecture; only then would you know which pieces of information are important, what you have to know, etc (since honestly, this course packs a LOT of material in 10 weeks.) Also, one good thing about going to lecture is that Prof Low summarizes all the formulas for you and gives them to you upfront (some are not included in the textbook!!). He even stresses which formulas are most important.
One thing I really liked about Prof Low: he gives you all the homework (a lot of problems, mind you, both from the textbook and past SOA exams) at the beginning of the quarter, and he gives you all the answers (different versions of the answers, in fact. I would mostly rely on Kong's solutions, and then use Low's own solutions when Kong's don't make sense. Kong's approach is often more simple, but relies on the calculator more.) Yes, it's a lot of homework, and he doesn't collect them. But doing the homework is absolutely ESSENTIAL to do well in this class. I recommend doing problems more than once. You really can't slack off. All the material is there, you just have to discipline yourself.
His tests are straightforward. If you did all the work like you were supposed to, you would do fine. As he says himself, all of his problems are based on the homework (with different numbers), so it's completely possible to get 100% on his tests. He even had an extra credit problem for both the midterm and the final.
One last thing: the textbook sucks for the first half of the class, so use the Actex manual like Prof Low suggested. It's worth the price. And, often the SOA questions are easier than the textbook questions, so I like starting with those.