If you want someone to badly read the textbook to you, this is your man. I thought numerical analysis was pretty interesting before I took this class.

It's not that he doesn't care, I think. He is just really bad at communicating information, even though he can speak English just fine. I would describe lecture as awkward and confusing. I tried to make a habit of reading the relevant textbook section before going to class, so that I would actually get something out of going. But then I had some unexpected life circumstances put me behind and I just stopped going to class. You don't really need to when the textbook is just as good, and more clear. He made attempts to clarify by posting slides and reviewing material multiple times, and it helped a little.

Every week, the homework questions were unclear in what exactly they were asking for. So discussion became a lifeline, as well as emailing the TA. And the midterm was even worse. Both sections of the class stared in horror at the test for 50 minutes, trying to just understand the questions. But then the class average turned out to be like an 85?

Honestly everything turned out well, so I can't be mad. Generous grading, reasonable accomodations and emailing. It just felt awful and boring to go through the whole process

I wouldn't say Professor Shay is the best teacher. His lectures are confusing if you didn't read the material in advance, and he skips over many steps along the way in his examples. Thankfully, we had a very good TA, who basically was the one explaining the "why" and the "so what" of the methods we were learning.

The wording of his tests were also very unclear. It was easy, but most of the time was trying to figure out what he was asking.

But actually, the homework was very helpful. It was usually one or two questions that required Matlab, but they helped me understand the material (of course with help from TA). But sadly, he didn't release the answers for the tests or the homework.

I completely failed (only) midterm, but I was able to get a B in the class. Homework is a large part of the grade. Also we had to have take home final. The itself class is easy, and Professor Shay was very gracious with the grades, but boy was it frustrating.

Going from Vese's 151A to Deutsch, I thought things would get harder but I was totally wrong. This was the easiest class I ever took since high school. 50% of your grade is for weekly hws and luckily our TA explained every single question and often solved some of the questions for us. The midterm and final was super easy, similar to hws. If you plan on taking him for 151B just skip the lectures and read the book because it takes less time, you understand more, and you will end up with a better grade at the end.

Okay. I'll speak from personal experience here. This is for 151B by the way. In a nutshell, Deutsch's lectures aren't the best, but the graded classwork and exams are very manageable. Lecture-wise, his handwriting was hard to read, and he would repeat what he writes without giving much context. Thus, it's super hard to digest the information, especially with the very algorithmic and computational nature expected of the material in 151B. However, if you need to take the class, what I advise is to truly take some time to sit through and understand the corresponding sections in the book deeply. His tests do not have unreasonably hard curveball questions, so you should end up thoroughly knowing how to do the easier derivations and how each method works, as well as advantages/disadvantages. I mean, I could tell that he's a nice professor too, as he offered to drop one of our midterms later in the quarter and curved pretty generously at >=85% being at least an A- (probably because the final had a median of 70, but in my opinion, it was pretty fair). All in all, unclear lectures, but manageable work and tests.

This is one of the best professors I've ever taken at UCLA, if not the best. I would strongly recommend taking him for 151B. The workload is very light, and his lecture is veryyyyyy informative and engaging. The midterm is so easy that you don't need to spend much time preparing for it. Take him at any cost!

Amazing professor and very reasonable! Would recommend