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- Samuel Nick Ramsey
- MATH 31B
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Based on 8 Users
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This review is for Math 31A that he taught in the fall quarter 2021-2022.
I am genuinely surprised to see so many positive reviews for this professor because experience was extremely unpleasant. I did not take AP calculus course during high school which probably affected my performance as well, however, overall he is not good at explaining or answering students'. The workload is very light which under prepares you for the unexpectedly difficult midterms and the final. Some students in the class have taken calculus before or taking this class as an easy A, so if you are a student like me whose first calculus course ever is Professor Ramsey's Math 31A, the curve will most likely not help you. I got a B which is not a horrible grade, but that is solely from the easy homeworks assigned weekly (worst 2 grades dropped and only 5 questions per week). I advise you to take a different professor if you are not familiar with calculus coming in.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
This review is for Math 31A that he taught in the fall quarter 2021-2022.
I am genuinely surprised to see so many positive reviews for this professor because experience was extremely unpleasant. I did not take AP calculus course during high school which probably affected my performance as well, however, overall he is not good at explaining or answering students'. The workload is very light which under prepares you for the unexpectedly difficult midterms and the final. Some students in the class have taken calculus before or taking this class as an easy A, so if you are a student like me whose first calculus course ever is Professor Ramsey's Math 31A, the curve will most likely not help you. I got a B which is not a horrible grade, but that is solely from the easy homeworks assigned weekly (worst 2 grades dropped and only 5 questions per week). I advise you to take a different professor if you are not familiar with calculus coming in.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Based on 8 Users
TOP TAGS
- Tolerates Tardiness (8)
- Often Funny (7)
- Tough Tests (6)
- Snazzy Dresser (6)
- Needs Textbook (5)
- Useful Textbooks (5)