Prof. Bennoun is by far the greatest instructor I've ever had in my life. If LS30A is offered with him as the professor, TAKE IT. He is extremely knowledgeable on the LS30 content. His slides are easy to understand and the iClicker questions are really helpful to check for understanding and do practice problems as a class. Lab sections aren't bad, though some of the labs are pretty frustrating (especially as someone who has never done code before). Please take advantage of Prof. Bennoun's office hours; they are so helpful (especially when going over homework questions).

I took this class thinking it would be easy because I took AP Calculus and thought it was manageable. I was also told this class would be an easier version of calculus due to lenient professors and it being geared toward life science students. This turned out to be false. The topics are EXTREMELY abstract and for me, as someone who prefers pure math, it was very difficult to understand. Combined with a total lack of online resources about the topics it was really hard for me to do well on homework and tests. His study guide was significantly easier than the midterm and final so it made it hard to know what to expect. Bennoun is a super nice guy but I despise his class. The coding labs are very difficult if you have never coded before and the homework is not at all similar to lecture topics. Overall, only take this series if you know you will enjoy basically entirely conceptual math (the only math we did was a one day lecture on integrals and even then they were extremely basic and short lived).

Bennoun is a great professor! Don't get me wrong. However, DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE. TAKE ANOTHER MATH COURSE. DON'T DO IT. Personally I have a bone to pick with my NSA for telling me I needed to take this course and this course only, when there were other math courses I could have taken. Just to reiterate, Bennoun is a great professor, but this review is for the course overall (across all professors, since the material is the same regardless of who is teaching it). For context: I'm an MCDB major, and in high school I excelled in math. I got a 4 on AP Calc AB (during COVID, but the second year, when the tests were in person again) and had a AP Calc teacher that was really strict and nationally rated/awarded for teaching. That being said, when I went to college, I expected math that introduced new concepts but wasn't necessarily more difficult....This course made me feel like I was losing brain cells. We hardly do any actual math (which, if you don't like math, then...cool, I guess!), but instead the math is all a bit...theoretical? Like, "what would happen if we changed this variable?" or "why does the human body do this? (????????)" instead of like, "solve this equation" or "derive this solution" or something similar and more straightforward. Admittedly, the class is easy, so if what I said seems good for you, then cool, take the class. However, the worst thing in this class was not the class itself but the labs. I knew the labs involved coding but not to this extent. The first two or three labs were relatively easy even if you weren't paying attention, but then all of a sudden you're running out of time on the labs because you spent 45 minutes trying to figure out why you're getting a syntax error in a code you've typed millions of times before, and then it turns out that you have an extra space somewhere, or a semi-colon instead of a colon, or a myriad of dumb little mistakes. Sometimes labs would take me days to figure out because I would get frustrated, and wouldn't want to go back and finish them. However, I got through the labs! Now I'm in LS 30B, and guess what? I hate it. The labs are exponentially more difficult. The jump from 30A to 30B is less like a jump and more like a 100m sprint. I really, really, really, REALLY wish I had taken another math course, but at this point it's more cost-effective to just finish the class and suffer until March.
Don't take the class if you don't have to. Seriously.

Dr. Bennoun is a stellar professor who not only teaches math well, but also tries to teach it in a way that is engaging and promotes active learning for retention and complete understanding of the material. He uses clicker questions that really helped me with comprehension while he lectured and he had open office hours whether it was him or his TA's at a wide variety of days and times so virtually all of his students could have a time to receive help. There is a coding component to this class that isn't easy but the TA's are helpful and you can walk away learning a really useful skill for the life sciences! So happy I took this class and had the pleasure of having this professor. He is awesome! Take this class!

I loved professor Bennoun!!! He is very clear throughout the lectures as well as being very engaging and fun to listen to. The lectures were very straight forward and participation was measured through iclicker. Bennoun is all about active learning so he gives a lot of practice questions throughout the lectures which is fun because you get to try out the material before having to struggle through it on your own n you get to ask questions if anything is unclear. The labs on the other hand... I hated the labs. The labs solely consisted of coding which is never mentioned in the lectures (like ever). I had no coding experience and so I had to learn python from scratch which was a little tough. The material in the lecture and the coding lab didnt exactly overlap until around week 7. So you are learning two completely different things for a while. The homework is pretty decent. You get one assignment per week plus if you don't finish the coding lab you need to do that before your next lab meeting. The homework assignments were pretty tough so I went to office hours most weeks to get help on a few of the problems. Test wise there are two midterms (one individual, one group) and three finals (one individual, one individual for coding, and one group). The tests certainly aren't easy but they aren't bad if you are prepared (I wasn't haha). Overall this class wasn't that bad. I put in about medium effort so I would definitely try harder if I could go back but it pretty easy to get a good grade in the class.

Dr. Bennoun is one of the most kind professors I have ever had. I came into this class with absolutely no confidence whatsoever-- I hate math, coding, and everything in between, and I believed I would barely scrape by in passing this class. Although math has always been confusing for me, the way in which Dr. Bennoun broke down concepts was extremely illuminating. He slowly went through the material to thoroughly explain each piece, and he was always receptive to questions.
I believed I would hate this class, and while there certainly were times during which I wanted to slam my head against the wall, I knew my confusion would not last long, as we were provided with a plethora of resources to consult. Normally I do not like textbooks, as they're often abstract and loosely related to material covered in lectures, but this textbook followed lecture material and homework very closely. I used the textbook almost every day to help me understand homework and to clarify any lasting questions I had regarding lecture material. Videos by the professor who wrote the textbook working through example problems were provided alongside the textbook, and these were very crucial to my understanding of material-- it helped immensely to watch someone walk through problems. Lecture slides provided by Dr. Bennoun were also clear and highlighted the most important topics covered, and I often found myself referring back to them when studying. Dr. Bennoun also posted recorded lectures, which was useful when I needed further clarification on a concept.
All in all, this class can seem daunting to a person who, like me, is terrified of math, but we are provided with so many resources that it is almost impossible not to pass if you try hard enough.

Everything good thing I have read about Professor Bennoun is true. He is an amazing teacher and I really enjoyed his class.

All of Bennoun's lectures are pretty straightforward, although sometimes he might be a bit unclear in answering students' questions or in explaining the concepts. He also did a good job in keeping the class moving forward despite the numerous questions popping up in the chat (since I took this online). Also, if you are taking this online, if clicker questions are split between two answers, he puts you in a breakout room with your assigned group (which is also the group you work with in discussions) and expects you to talk to them (which can get awkward). He might call on your group in lecture... so watch out.

The tests are a bit tricky since they were way more conceptual than I expected. Doing the old exams he posts on Canvas and the exercises at the bottom of each homework assignment will prepare you the most for the midterm and the final. You get 2-3 hours to do 5-10 free response questions, but don't be fooled, it might take you the entire time. Also, for grading, the lowest quiz, lab, homework, and 3 clicker questions are all dropped! However, the homework is realllly tediously graded, so be sure to double check your work before submitting. It's super easy to lose points in the homework, and there's no answer key available online ://

Finally, the coding labs aren't that bad, especially if you are in a group or have friends that can help guide you to all the right answers. The first half of the labs covered basic coding, while the last half of the labs were complicated. However, it seems that the TAs were a bit lenient on the grading of the labs (and each lab is out of 8 anyways), so don't stress too much about whether your code is 100% correct.

Really great lecturer, very easy to understand. Always let us choose music to play while everyone joined the Zoom call. "I guess I need to listen more to K pop"-steve bennoun, 2021

I really liked this class!!! Prof Bennoun was such a great professor (In my opinion, sometimes better than Jukka)* and he would always play songs recommended by students before class which was always fun. The content of the lectures was very easy to understand with only a few hard topics. We have clicker questions during lecture, weekly homeworks, and weekly quizzes related to lecture content, all very easy to do. For discussion, it’s a weekly coding lab. I had Mahika as my TA and she was actually a senior undergrad, so I was a little worried at first but she was actually really helpful. She would only spend a little bit of time talking during the lab so we would have plenty of time to finish the coding lab during discussion so we wouldn’t have homework outside of lab. I was worried about the coding at first because I had never coded a day in my life before, but they don’t expect you to have any kind of previous coding knowledge and take lots of baby steps in the first few labs. This was a little frustrating for some because it seems the coding labs have nothing to do with the lectures, but once you get to the later labs it all comes together, so be patient. Some people say this class is pointless and has no real use, but to be honest this class has so much real life application as a life science student, especially if you plan to go to med school. This class is 100% the better option over normal calculus, which has literally no use. My only complaint about this class was the structure of the midterm and final, but take this with a grain of salt in future quarters since this is when the class was online. They were 3 parts, with a study guide, individual portion, and collaborative portion. The study guide you would split up between your lab group from discussion. The individual portion is timed but you could use your notes. The collaborative portion was a 24 hour period you could talk to your lab group about. I really just hated this whole set up since instead of just having a one and done final, the final would end up lasted multiple days and eating up so much of your time and energy. And the study guide and collaborative portion is just extremely frustrating if you don’t work well with your group and these parts would actually hurt my grade rather than help. And for the final, on top of these three parts they decided to add a coding part, but it was only worth 5 points out of the 100, so it just seemed like there was no point to it. Overall, I really recommend this class and it’s very easy and manageable if you stay on top of the work and aren’t afraid to ask for help.
*While the LS30A professors all teach the same content and have the same assignments, the teachers have small differences. I have Bennoun and my roommate had Jukka, and I heard from her Jukka would rarely ever finish the entire lecture and assigned them homework over thanksgiving, which Bennoun did not do. However, I know Jukka would record office hours where he went over homework before it was due, and they got an extra attempt on the weekly quizzes, so overall everything probably evens out. Just don’t think that because Jukka isn’t teaching, you’re doomed. Everything is fine lmao.