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Samuel Ramsey
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Personally I didn't find this class as easy as everyone else says it is. Prof Ramsey is a great professor, but I found a lot of the content to be challenging (especially some exam problems). It's definitely a different way of thinking compared to calculus, and I struggled with it. So don't go into the class expecting it to be an easy A or whatever
When I signed up for Professor Ramsey's class, it was a risk, as he was a new instructor, but I'm so glad I did. Professor Ramsey had little issue in his first quarter at UCLA; he was very clear during lectures, offered great help during office hours, and was very committed to everyone's learning. He enjoyed expanding on topics and his optional lecture on Ramsey Theory was just a representation of his willingness to share his love for math. Professor Ramsey is just a funny person in general, who isn't afraid to laugh about his shortcomings and take student suggestions for names of examples (Shrek!), and I highly suggest taking his class.
Ramsey is not a very clear teacher. He is passionate about math but is not the best at teaching it. He often reads the theorems from the book word for word and uses that as the only explanation for the topic, something which was confusing for myself and many others I talked to. Additionally, he gives one "easy" example and many "hard" examples for a topic, which are not useful in anyway and only confuse you more.
I never thought I would say this but the workload is too light for this class. It is quite confusing and I think in order to understand a topic you need to practice it a lot. Ramsey does not provide a lot of extra practice materials and assigns very little work. Of course, you can do extra problems on your own but it is difficult to gauge which ones will be helpful to do/be on the tests.
With all this in mind, this was Ramsey's first quarter teaching and I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt the whole quarter but he was just not good at teaching the content.
Nick is FUNNY! I would recommend taking he's class just because he's jokes and personality(at least lower divs that you are confident in ). Just a lovely person over all.
He skipped all the numerical methods, and all computations in the exams are short. It's all about learning the concepts. And there wasn't really mind blowing concept happening in this class.
I took CIE Alevel further math in high school, so I know integration tricks, but have almost zero knowledge about sequences and series. However, I felt like I could learn the material through just reading the textbook, so I can't really promise how well he explains the materials during lecture. One problem about his lecture is that he likely did not prepare the computation part of the examples, so it was not unusual that he would mess up on the white boards. I can see how that could be very confusing if you have not fully understand the new theorems used. He was very patient and really tried to help students during office hour, though sometimes he had trouble seeing where the confusion actually comes from.
So if you are okay with understanding ideas then take this class, no trick question or lengthy computation so this would save you a lot of time doing practice problems. However if you are not a math major and does not feel comfortable with calculus stuff, he may not be the best in explaining the mechanism behind a theorem or concept. But that was the first semester of him teaching as the primary instructor so maybe he got better.
Grades in this class are based on midterms, finals, and quizzes taken in discussion. That being said, quizzes and homework are pretty doable and not at all enough preparation for the second midterm and the final, in my experience.
I got a B in this class because I'm not smart, not because the teacher was bad. Professor Ramsey was great! He took his time explaining concepts and spent time reviewing his last lecture in the first ten minutes of class, so you could get a quick refresher. Try to sit near the front of class, as like most math professors he just writes on the board with whiteboard. His handwriting was all right but it's different from a massive powerpoint, of course. He cracked jokes and told funny stories, too, so it wasn't just an hour of straight math either. Do the homework! The weekly quizzes in discussion basically came from the homework.
The cutest man. I got a B because I'm dumb and there was no curve, but I thought Professor Ramsey was a great lecturer. There were quizzes every week in discussion but they were easy as long as you did the practice problems. The tests were a bit difficult but that might just be because I'm stupid. Would definitely take a class with him again!
Professor Ramsey is super nice and sweet. He genuinely cares about making us learn. The workload was alright and the exams were pretty fair. He's very approachable about grade disputes, so don't worry if the TAs grade too harshly. His lectures were somewhat disorganized tho, but that's probably more on COVID than on him.
GOAT professor(and honestly super underrated).
As a teacher, he's great because he makes everything so simple to understand. Even though concepts got progressively more complicated, he made sure to really dumb it down with simplified explanations, good examples, and good non-examples. He's also a fun guy and tries fitting in the occasional anecdote/joke to make the class seem less mundane.
His exams make you think more than have you do lots of weird computation(one reason this may also be so is because this isn't a class on Lin Alg or Calc, mostly just logic).
His workload is super light(1 hour average/week). AND, he's one of the very few math professors who designed their midterms such that it can be taken within an hour.
This class isn't like 33B or other calc classes that get super boring really quickly. Fun problems and fun topics covered. Strongly recommend this prof and this class!
Prof Ramsey is a really cool guy! I would describe him as kind of a funny, awkward guy, but in an endearing way, who cares about his students learning and lectures well. Not sure if it was just burnout on my end, but it seemed like the earlier topics (induction, combinatorics, basic set theory) were better structured and more engaging than the last topic(s) (graph theory). Overall, it's a great class to take as an introduction to discrete math.
Personally I didn't find this class as easy as everyone else says it is. Prof Ramsey is a great professor, but I found a lot of the content to be challenging (especially some exam problems). It's definitely a different way of thinking compared to calculus, and I struggled with it. So don't go into the class expecting it to be an easy A or whatever
When I signed up for Professor Ramsey's class, it was a risk, as he was a new instructor, but I'm so glad I did. Professor Ramsey had little issue in his first quarter at UCLA; he was very clear during lectures, offered great help during office hours, and was very committed to everyone's learning. He enjoyed expanding on topics and his optional lecture on Ramsey Theory was just a representation of his willingness to share his love for math. Professor Ramsey is just a funny person in general, who isn't afraid to laugh about his shortcomings and take student suggestions for names of examples (Shrek!), and I highly suggest taking his class.
Ramsey is not a very clear teacher. He is passionate about math but is not the best at teaching it. He often reads the theorems from the book word for word and uses that as the only explanation for the topic, something which was confusing for myself and many others I talked to. Additionally, he gives one "easy" example and many "hard" examples for a topic, which are not useful in anyway and only confuse you more.
I never thought I would say this but the workload is too light for this class. It is quite confusing and I think in order to understand a topic you need to practice it a lot. Ramsey does not provide a lot of extra practice materials and assigns very little work. Of course, you can do extra problems on your own but it is difficult to gauge which ones will be helpful to do/be on the tests.
With all this in mind, this was Ramsey's first quarter teaching and I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt the whole quarter but he was just not good at teaching the content.
Nick is FUNNY! I would recommend taking he's class just because he's jokes and personality(at least lower divs that you are confident in ). Just a lovely person over all.
He skipped all the numerical methods, and all computations in the exams are short. It's all about learning the concepts. And there wasn't really mind blowing concept happening in this class.
I took CIE Alevel further math in high school, so I know integration tricks, but have almost zero knowledge about sequences and series. However, I felt like I could learn the material through just reading the textbook, so I can't really promise how well he explains the materials during lecture. One problem about his lecture is that he likely did not prepare the computation part of the examples, so it was not unusual that he would mess up on the white boards. I can see how that could be very confusing if you have not fully understand the new theorems used. He was very patient and really tried to help students during office hour, though sometimes he had trouble seeing where the confusion actually comes from.
So if you are okay with understanding ideas then take this class, no trick question or lengthy computation so this would save you a lot of time doing practice problems. However if you are not a math major and does not feel comfortable with calculus stuff, he may not be the best in explaining the mechanism behind a theorem or concept. But that was the first semester of him teaching as the primary instructor so maybe he got better.
Grades in this class are based on midterms, finals, and quizzes taken in discussion. That being said, quizzes and homework are pretty doable and not at all enough preparation for the second midterm and the final, in my experience.
I got a B in this class because I'm not smart, not because the teacher was bad. Professor Ramsey was great! He took his time explaining concepts and spent time reviewing his last lecture in the first ten minutes of class, so you could get a quick refresher. Try to sit near the front of class, as like most math professors he just writes on the board with whiteboard. His handwriting was all right but it's different from a massive powerpoint, of course. He cracked jokes and told funny stories, too, so it wasn't just an hour of straight math either. Do the homework! The weekly quizzes in discussion basically came from the homework.
The cutest man. I got a B because I'm dumb and there was no curve, but I thought Professor Ramsey was a great lecturer. There were quizzes every week in discussion but they were easy as long as you did the practice problems. The tests were a bit difficult but that might just be because I'm stupid. Would definitely take a class with him again!
Professor Ramsey is super nice and sweet. He genuinely cares about making us learn. The workload was alright and the exams were pretty fair. He's very approachable about grade disputes, so don't worry if the TAs grade too harshly. His lectures were somewhat disorganized tho, but that's probably more on COVID than on him.
GOAT professor(and honestly super underrated).
As a teacher, he's great because he makes everything so simple to understand. Even though concepts got progressively more complicated, he made sure to really dumb it down with simplified explanations, good examples, and good non-examples. He's also a fun guy and tries fitting in the occasional anecdote/joke to make the class seem less mundane.
His exams make you think more than have you do lots of weird computation(one reason this may also be so is because this isn't a class on Lin Alg or Calc, mostly just logic).
His workload is super light(1 hour average/week). AND, he's one of the very few math professors who designed their midterms such that it can be taken within an hour.
This class isn't like 33B or other calc classes that get super boring really quickly. Fun problems and fun topics covered. Strongly recommend this prof and this class!
Prof Ramsey is a really cool guy! I would describe him as kind of a funny, awkward guy, but in an endearing way, who cares about his students learning and lectures well. Not sure if it was just burnout on my end, but it seemed like the earlier topics (induction, combinatorics, basic set theory) were better structured and more engaging than the last topic(s) (graph theory). Overall, it's a great class to take as an introduction to discrete math.