Overall one of my favorite professors. He doesn't use slides or record lectures, so if you want to do well, show up to lecture and take notes. But he explains everything very well and simplifies it. Like another review said, I also found it very helpful when he would design a controller from scratch to reinforce the material we had learned in the past couple of weeks. This class is mostly about designing controllers, and there is a somewhat straightforward process of trial and error, and tests you need to run to get it working. The midterm was fair, but harder than the final to be honest. They were both graded extremely leniently, and lots of partial credit. The project was the one downside to this class. The class is about linear systems, but your controller has to work for a non-linear system (a process he explains in ~week 4 and never visits again), but the project is assigned in week 7 or 8. I feel as though the project could have been assigned a bit earlier (around week 6) after going over the Root Locus lectures, since after that, you basically know everything to start the project. The project took an extremely long time to do, but it was also graded leniently. Homework was straight out of the textbook and he answers very similar problems to the homework every week during recorded Zoom office hours. Overall a great professor with a good sense of humor and very interesting class

I was already into the material before, and this class furthered my interests. He's a very sharp man and an excellent lecturer, so I would highly suggest attending lecture. The nature of the class is that it's easy to get lost in the details of a design technique, but he does this thing about twice a quarter where he takes a step back and just designs an entire controller for a system from scratch during lecture, which ties everything together and let's you see the big picture.

Homeworks: very reasonable, basically copies of the discussion problems which he solves over zoom.
Exams: Ran out of time on midterm, still did okay. Final was easier, finished with time left and no curveballs.
Curve: Pre-curved class where an 81 is an A-.

The project takes an enormous amount of time, took me then entire week and a half before finals week of working on it every day. Was going over ideas basically daily with others in the class, and definitely needed to discuss it with others. Start this project literally the day it is assigned, and keep your Simulink implementation very neat and organized or else you'll be very confused towards the end. Also, he will have a lecture around week 4 that explains the method you need to use for the project, but you will never touch that method (linearization of nonlinear systems) until the project is assigned. Make sure you take solid notes during that lecture (this is what saved me). In the end my buddy and I got it all working, and looking back it was a super fun project which taught me a lot of stuff that I'm using now for more controls projects.

Strengths: lectures were very clear and engaging, felt comfortable asking questions. I like the lectures which Tabuada ties our knowledge into real world modeling/application.

Weakness: project. The project requirements are vague and needs to be clarified. Further requirements such as forbidding us from using derivative/PID blocks need to be communicated in writing, in email and/or BruinLearn announcement (I found out about this through other students, which shows poor communication on the instructors part). More instructor support would have greatly helped the project, but there were no discussion sections nor even TA office hours (partly due to strike, which I wouldn't hold against the TA, but ECE department in general needs to give students more TA support!).

FUCK TABUADA
He writes teeny tiny and speaks super softly so it's impossible to understand what's going on in lecture. You have to read the textbook.
His project is unnecessary and annoyingly long and hard. This is a class on linear controls but your controller had to work for a nonlinear system. Also the spec is super unclear and he and the TA kept on making up new constrains for our project up until the due date. I think I had to redo that shit like 5 times.
His midterm questions made no sense.
His final questions made no sense.
His grading scheme is unforgiving.
He doesn't accept homework that is 1 femtosecond late and is incredibly heartless with his late work policy.
All in all, fuck Tabuada.

I guess I learned my intellectual limits when I dropped week 10.

Would've needed 1-2 more math or controls classes to be prepared for this class.

This class is very theoretical, and a lot of the time will feel like a math class with limited application to electrical engineering. I personally found the material to be pretty dry, but the concepts thankfully weren't too convoluted. A big portion of the class is just about roots and stability of systems.

Tabuada isn't the best lecturer in the sense that he speaks incredibly softly and his handwriting is difficult to read, but he will take a lot of time going over examples. He explains concepts fairly clearly, and is helpful when answering questions. There was one lecture where he just spent the entire 2 hours going over multiple examples to demonstrate a new topic.

The homework is straight from the textbook, and while there aren't many problems assigned, they can take a while. I found that the homework problems sometimes would seem a little unrelated to the lecture, and there was sometimes a lot of confusion about how to do certain problems. The TAs will go over similar questions during discussion, but won't explicitly help out with the homework question itself.

The class has a midterm, final, project, and weekly homework. The project was designing a control system with Simulink. The spec is INCREDIBLY unclear, and due to the timing of the project being due close to finals week, it was very stressful trying to get it done. It's very likely that the first few times reading the spec, you will have no idea what to do for it. He makes class into office hours the last few lectures, so make sure to ask questions about the project. I found the project to be frustrating and needlessly time intensive.

The midterm and final were only a few questions each, with many parts per question. I found the midterm to be much easier than the final. Both were pretty reasonable, and understanding the homework, as well as doing some extra practice, would well prepare you for them.

Overall, I'd recommend taking this class if you aren't sure what you want with your core courses. It isn't unreasonably difficult, and Tabuada has a very generous grading scheme (with no downcurve). However, I have yet to meet a single person who actually enjoyed the class material, though its more due to the dry nature of controls than Tabuada himself.

Professor Tabuada is a really nice guy and is good at explaining the difficult control system topics. He doesn't have the best handwriting but he is always receptive to writing neater. He also doesn't talk very loud, and doesn't use a mic, so it's best if you sit up front to hear and see what's on the board. He is always open to questions and clarifications. He does a lot of examples in class and is good at explaining the concepts. The homeworks are from the textbooks. The midterm was a bit of a time crunch, but the final was reasonable. Definitely do the practice midterm and final that he releases. The project for this class is reasonable, but the spec is unclear, so you'll have to ask a lot of questions and definitely start early. Control systems in general are tough concepts, but this class is definitely interesting. The class also will have a nice curve.

His lectures are great and very straight forward. He writes very clearly on the board. I think a lot of students found his tests a bit challenging though.

141 sounded interesting to me, but I realized that I didn't really like this class much. A lot of the stuff is very similar to 102. He was a good lecturer, and he actually assigns book problems (something I'm not used to anymore). That can either help you or screw you over. For me, it was a little bit of the latter. The MATLAB project we had to do at the end kinda sucked, especially since it had no relevance to material on the final. I heard Balakrishnan (sp?) teaches this class too, and I'm sure you've heard the infamous stories of him. Take this class with Tabuada if you need it.

Professor Tabuada is a very nice professor, but his voice is way too soft to be heard in the back of the classroom. In addition, his handwriting is pretty sloppy for us students to read at times (e.g. he writes his 1's like 2's and his x's like n's). He still delivers the material in an effective manner, but sometimes, he just glosses over points that turn out to be very important later on in the course.

One weird thing about him is that on exams, he doesn't let his TAs help him answer any questions because if a student has a question about the exam, he wants to make sure that the question is answered the way he wants it to be answered. The exams themselves is about half straightforward and half curveballs, but they're not too bad overall.

Also, it's important to realize that Tabuada does NOT curve, so knowing the averages and standard deviations on exams doesn't really give you an indicator of what your final grade will be.