Professor
Noah White
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2017 - I really liked Professor White. I'm terrible at Calculus and despise it as a subject but he made it very bearable. His tests were tough but got easier throughout the quarter. Doing lots of practice problems from the textbook will be extremely helpful for doing decently on the exams. He was funny, engaging, and had an australian accent.
Spring 2017 - I really liked Professor White. I'm terrible at Calculus and despise it as a subject but he made it very bearable. His tests were tough but got easier throughout the quarter. Doing lots of practice problems from the textbook will be extremely helpful for doing decently on the exams. He was funny, engaging, and had an australian accent.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Noah is an absolute god! I was thrilled to take this class after finding out he's also a fellow Aussie! I doubt this review is gonna mean much since he's leaving but a good review is the least he deserves after a fantastic quarter. After hearing from a lot of students that 32B is the hardest of the MATH30 series, I can definitely say Noah and TA Joe Breen made it a lot more manageable and arguably easier. The entire class was online, but Noah focused a lot on intuition and liked to use visual aids to help explain the material. He didn't focus too much on proofs and explained a lot of difficult concepts quite clearly and succinctly. He also did a few examples from time to time. There were 7 quizzes and 4 homeworks. The quizzes varied in difficulty from easy peasy lemon squeezy to difficult difficult lemon difficult (time squeeze). However, the lowest 2 quiz scores are dropped so if you didn't do so well on a couple you're fine. The homeworks were challenging and definitely applied the concepts taught during the lectures at a deeper level. However, Noah and Joe both had plenty of OH to help with the questions. For the exam, we had 24hrs for the first, 48hrs for the second and 72hrs for the final. Given the length of time given, these were all manageable and the questions were an okay difficulty. If he was still staying at UCLA, I'd definitely recommend!
Spring 2020 - Noah is an absolute god! I was thrilled to take this class after finding out he's also a fellow Aussie! I doubt this review is gonna mean much since he's leaving but a good review is the least he deserves after a fantastic quarter. After hearing from a lot of students that 32B is the hardest of the MATH30 series, I can definitely say Noah and TA Joe Breen made it a lot more manageable and arguably easier. The entire class was online, but Noah focused a lot on intuition and liked to use visual aids to help explain the material. He didn't focus too much on proofs and explained a lot of difficult concepts quite clearly and succinctly. He also did a few examples from time to time. There were 7 quizzes and 4 homeworks. The quizzes varied in difficulty from easy peasy lemon squeezy to difficult difficult lemon difficult (time squeeze). However, the lowest 2 quiz scores are dropped so if you didn't do so well on a couple you're fine. The homeworks were challenging and definitely applied the concepts taught during the lectures at a deeper level. However, Noah and Joe both had plenty of OH to help with the questions. For the exam, we had 24hrs for the first, 48hrs for the second and 72hrs for the final. Given the length of time given, these were all manageable and the questions were an okay difficulty. If he was still staying at UCLA, I'd definitely recommend!
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - Before I start writing this review, I have to address the complaints put forward by his 3 series students: You do realize that his grading scheme is literally par for the department, correct? 25% A's and ~65% A's and B's is roughly how most professors spread out the grading. In fact, it's one of the most lenient distributions. His scheme is very lenient as well. Some professors don't even allow you to drop a midterm. White allows you to drop a midterm and two homeworks/quizzes. The "numbers don't lie" except they are comparable to, or better than, most of the professors out there, and just because Greene is an amazing professor does not mean White is a terrible one. White did have actual flaws as a professor when it comes to experience. He did explain concepts well for the most part, but would often get stuck in the middle of a proof or forget a fact under pressure. This made him hard to follow on certain days. For a math class, the homework was not very satisfactory. There were only six homework sets that you even had to consider, because there were only 3 homeworks and 3 quizzes with only a few problems graded on each, and messing up on a few could get you off to a very bad start (10/20 on the first homework personally was scary), even with the ability to drop two of them. That being said, he was still effective at getting the job done, had a good sense of humor, was very helpful on Piazza and outside of class and approachable to anyone who sought him out, and wrote very fair midterms and a fair final where each question had multiple ways in which you could go about solving it. Overall, I would definitely recommend taking 170A with White.
Fall 2017 - Before I start writing this review, I have to address the complaints put forward by his 3 series students: You do realize that his grading scheme is literally par for the department, correct? 25% A's and ~65% A's and B's is roughly how most professors spread out the grading. In fact, it's one of the most lenient distributions. His scheme is very lenient as well. Some professors don't even allow you to drop a midterm. White allows you to drop a midterm and two homeworks/quizzes. The "numbers don't lie" except they are comparable to, or better than, most of the professors out there, and just because Greene is an amazing professor does not mean White is a terrible one. White did have actual flaws as a professor when it comes to experience. He did explain concepts well for the most part, but would often get stuck in the middle of a proof or forget a fact under pressure. This made him hard to follow on certain days. For a math class, the homework was not very satisfactory. There were only six homework sets that you even had to consider, because there were only 3 homeworks and 3 quizzes with only a few problems graded on each, and messing up on a few could get you off to a very bad start (10/20 on the first homework personally was scary), even with the ability to drop two of them. That being said, he was still effective at getting the job done, had a good sense of humor, was very helpful on Piazza and outside of class and approachable to anyone who sought him out, and wrote very fair midterms and a fair final where each question had multiple ways in which you could go about solving it. Overall, I would definitely recommend taking 170A with White.