Rough class. Too much work especially with the heavy coding HW during finals week

Jane is super sweet and funny. She is the only professor that genuinely made an effort to help students get to know each other during covid that I had. The group project was really fun and interesting. The tests were quite easy if you payed attention to what she said.

EDIT: I had this review in drafts for about a year, and didn't realize that I forgot to post it

Overall, I really enjoyed LS30B with Dr. Shevtsov. Let me preface by saying that I did coding in high school. I enjoyed LS30A and B labs quite a bit, any though admittedly, SageMath is a tad annoying, even if you already know Python. I also still sometimes do single digit addition and subtraction by counting with my fingers, so if I could do well in a math class, I wager anyone could.

Grades were, I think, very fairly calculated. We had pretty low stakes midterms and finals with a final project at the very end. We had the chance to make up 50% of the points we lost in the midterm, and there was a decent amount of extra credit to help pad out any points lost. The final project was also very generously graded (my project was absolutely awful, and our groups still managed to do well).

Exams were 24 hour, short answer exams. While I do believe they were decently challenging (especially the final), the questions still felt fair, they were just more challenging than examples we had in class. I personally didn't do spectacular on either exam, but because neither exam made an overwhelming part of your grade, I still managed to pull away with an A. Labs were challenging, but doable since we had a week to solve all the lab questions (I finished most of my labs during lab section itself). Some labs were definitely more irritating than others, but I never had a lab that I felt was impossible.

I really think Shevtsov was a great lecturer. She really took time to throughly explain the hard to understand concepts of LS30B. Because we were assigned videos before lecture that went over the basics of the concepts we'd go over in lecture, Shevtsov had more time to go over harder to understand elements of the course's mathematical concepts. This may be subjective, but the way she explained concepts just made sense to me, she really allowed me to visualize and understand what certain equations and concepts do, along with what implications they may have on a system. She was very quick responding to emails, she agreed to look over my group's final project before we turned it in (which keep in mind was Friday of Final's Week). She definitely gave us the resources necessary to succeed.

Overall, 8.5/10 class, would take again.

Jane is a good professor however, I think her classes are much better when they are confined to zoom and not in person. I spent the first five weeks online, and the second five in person and it made the world of a difference. I aced the content that was taught online but struggled a lot with the content that was taught in person. The in person lectures can often be incredibly slow, confusing, and chaotic. Jane has a speech impairment which makes it really difficult to understand her in a massive lecture hall. 90% of the time the mic was set too low to understand her regardless. She's also physically unable to write on the whiteboard, so an LA did it. Our LA often wrote wrong things on the board, or would write so incredibly slow that it was hard to focus on taking down notes from him and listen to Jane at the same time. The zoom environment was much less distracting, and her slides were so helpful.

Homework was extremely overbearing and annoying. The textbook didn't provide enough information to help you figure out how to solve it, so I often put down stuff that I made up. It was graded based on completion, so as long as you put in the effort, you should be fine.

Labs were also pretty hard. The first 2 weeks or so is spent on nailing down basic concepts of coding and then it progresses into harder LS 30A related coding. I frankly thought it was ridiculous that they thought a coding language could be taught that fast. Try your best on the labs and try to find a partner to do it with because those are graded on correctness. However, the Lab Practical in Week 10 is extremely easy, and is only tested on coding material up to about week 5. Its an easy 100 and also an easy way to boost your grade.

Her problem solving sessions are AMAZING. I would highly recommend attending them before the midterm and the final as she lays out everything clearly and you often don't have to study those concepts again because it'll become so clear. The midterm was extremely easy for me, but the final was super hard and confusing. Be sure to practice the practice tests that she gives out as the structure remains the same for most tests.

Overall, Jane is not a bad choice but if you can get it with someone better, I would go for them. I'm in a 30B class this quarter with another teacher and its a complete 180 (in a better way). Good luck!

Do not take shevtsov, this class was so hard, the amount of homework was insane. I techinically had to teach myself the topic. Most of the time i couldnt understand what the professor was saying and she never had good slides, everything was so vague

Don't take this class lol. The professor is hard to understand and will jump from concept to concept randomly.

Overall, this class is pretty confusing because the lectures are not really helpful at all. The lectures are so slow that I eventually just stopped going and learned everything on my own using the textbook. The homework problems are often extremely long (one submission was over 20 pages) and include coding too, which is not even tested on the midterms or finals. Another issue is that the answer key for the homework isn't available until days after the homework is submitted, which is really problematic when the questions are difficult. The midterm was easy and I did better than expected on the final, which helped my grade a lot. There is also a capstone project which includes a lot of coding that was extremely time consuming, especially since it was assigned the last 3 weeks of the quarter. Overall, if you are planning on taking this class with shevvy, be prepared :))

Shevtsov is not as bad as people are making her out to be. Her office hours are really good and she spends a significant amount of time answering people's questions, however the other professors are more clear in explanation of material. The capstone is unnecessarily difficult along with the lab portion which should have not been put together. Expect to really lean on TA's Office Hours for support with this class. For exams, the old practice finals are especially helpful

If you took 30A with a good professor, prepare to be disappointed in 30B. Nobody pays attention in class and everyone is always talking over Jane which makes it impossible to hear her. The only time I actually could pay attention and learn was when class was online when she was sick. She would spend 99% of the lecture going through long computations that finally "come together" in the last 2 mins of class when everyone was already packing up and leaving. The concepts in this class are genuinely ridiculous and something I will never be using in the future. The homework was also absurdly long for no reason and they had a 20 page homework assignment due the week of the final. The labs were awful and so much worse than 30A especially if you don't have an LA that is helpful. The capstone project was a joke and they didn't even care when half of our group never did any work and we told our TA about it countless times. This capstone project genuinely kept me up morning and night stressing from weeks 7-10. And each week you would still have labs due along with the group project work. At the end it was literally just a completion grade so don't stress over it as much as I did. I honestly am unsure how I passed this class because even though I did all of the homework and labs well, the midterm and final were very bad. I am not good at math and didn't study at all for the midterm so that was to be expected. I studied so hard for the final and it was so absurdly long and hard for no reason, they are still barely done grading it hours before the final grade deadline. This series is fake math and I am so glad to be done. DO NOT TAKE LS40. Don't let them suck you back into the lifesci fake math hole again, just take stats 13. Stay safe and get out when you can.

Literally get any other professor. love her as a person… but this class was awful. if you haven’t taken calc before you will very likely fail the midterm and final , she gives no intro into calc material even though it is not listed as a prerequisite. people that had calc background did fine , still sucked .