Reviews for AMSC460

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Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/28/2023	He uploads lecture notes, making going to lectures completely optional (which is good for people who hate being forced to attend lectures). Furthermore, all his exams were straightforward, with the questions very similar to his uploaded practice exams. The average for each exam when I took the class was around 90 for each exam. Pulling an A for each midterm after only reviewing the content for 2-3 hours is possible. His homework was extremely annoying and tedious. It was all Matlab homework, and since all the calculations were too complicated to be done by hand, it was hard to verify if the solution was what we were supposed to get. Making a mistake early would also cascade and make you lose a lot of points throughout the question/part.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2023	Professor von Petersdorff was a great lecturer and fair grader. This class had 9 MATLAB assignments (35%), 2 midterm exams (35%), and a final exam (30%). Lowest MATLAB assignment was dropped. Before taking this course, you should probably have a decent understanding of MATLAB, as it is required for the assignments and some of the exam questions have you write MATLAB code. Pros: - Excellent lectures. He always includes every detail and never misses anything that you would need for a homework or exam. Always willing to answer questions in class too. - Homework was always interesting and fair. You had to do some written work which prepared us for the exams, as well as some MATLAB work which was just a good takeaway from the class. He included some interesting problems with real life applications which was great. He provided hints for tough assignments on the ELMS page and I never felt that the homework was too hard or easy. - He has some online notes that were extremely helpful. If you missed a lecture, the notes were always published online so you had access to them. Even if you didn't miss lecture, having them as a resource to review was always great. - He was helpful in office hours. He answered my questions quickly and helped me troubleshoot some issues I had with MATLAB. - He had a review session before every exam, and wrote a practice exam with solutions before every exam. They were very representative of the real thing, without being a total knockoff. The grading was also very fair. According to elms, midterm 1, midterm 2, and the final had medians of 90, 91, and 86 respectively. According to the syllabus, a 90 is good enough for an A, 80 for a B, and so on. Cons: - His anxiety has not disappeared. If a lecture seems like it is going to go over time, he sometimes panics. The students in the class try to calm him down by saying that they understand (even if they don't) but I'm not very sure that it's helpful. - He took a really long time to return grades. The graders for the class took a few weeks to grade the MATLAB assignments. The first two midterms also took a while. We only got our second midterm back on the last day of classes before the final. However, he graded the final in a few days. - The MATLAB assignments are very long. This isn't much of a con though, if you start early you should be fine. He occasionally gives extensions if the students ask. Overall, a great professor and course; I learned quite a lot. The cons are not even that big of a deal, I still highly recommend this professor.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/23/2023	The other reviews summarize the pros and cons his teaching very well: the panic attacks are definitely shocking at first, but at the end of the day he's a nice guy with manageable exams and does a great job lecturing in an intuitive and interesting way. He has note sheets which summarize lectures well, and also have example code of what he wants to see in assignments, and also has midterm/exam review sessions were very clear and made the actual tests feel fair. Also, shout out to the assignments he writes, since those don't crunch numbers aimlessly, but instead use what we learn in class for real world processes (e.g modeling heat transfer through a plate with linear systems, or the velocity and positions for 2 planets orbiting with nonlinear diff-eqs), and while they're quite confusing at first, I found them to be very rewarding to complete. The downsides were some unclear parts (claiming he'd drop an assignment and then seemingly forgetting to do that, and some assignments graded oddly harshly), but also that was made up for when he intentionally pushed back other assignment due dates and had a decent curve up in the class (my 90% became an A). Overall, I'd recommend Dr. Petersdorff since he keeps the class manageable in workload and teaches it well.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2023	His lectures can go really in depth but he clearly emphasizes what you need to know for exams. Practice exams are also very similar to the real thing. He's also pretty helpful in office hours. The hardest part of this class is honestly the homeworks, which at times were very tedious and difficult to understand. He also is still prone to panic attacks (see reviews from before) which can sometimes be uneasy to watch.
Ke Chen AMSC460 Anonymous 12/14/2023	Ke is absolutely an exceptional professor. His weekly assignments and exams are consistently fair as the problems closely follows the textbook material. He also goes above and beyond to be accommodating and approachable to his students. His dedication to teaching is evident through his active participation in answering questions on Piazza. I highly recommend taking a course with him!
Ke Chen AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2023	Ke did an excellent job teaching AMSC460 this semester. The lectures were generally understandable and everything discussed came up on either homeworks or exams. The homework varied quite a bit in difficulty from week-to-week, but it overall wasn't too bad. The exams were fair as well. If Ke is teaching AMSC460 again, I would recommend him as an instructor.
Todd Rowland AMSC460 Expecting a B Anonymous 08/22/2023	The homeworks are pretty hard and unclear. The exams aren't too hard though. Lectures are boring but he's pretty nice and responds to emails. I would recommend taking this professor if you work for it, but it's not exactly easy. Lect
Todd Rowland AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/19/2023	Grading is 90-100 is an A. Not the freest A, homework are long and challenging. Exams are fair, averages were 82 and he offers extra credit for points back. However, you will have to work work for the A
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/01/2023	For the Fall of 2023: Dr Petersdorff is the best professor I have taken a class with in my 2 years at UMD as a Math/CS major. His lectures, although dense, are easy to follow and you can walk in not knowing anything and will still be able to understand almost everything. The homework were the hard part of this class, but he always gave hints to the HW and HW often directly derived from class material. If you couldn't make it class it is fine because he posts very detailed lecture notes (sometimes even better than lectures) on Canvas. The practice exams were very similar to the practice exams he posted, and often were similar to the easier problems on the homework. He also does a thorough review session for each exam. Overall, if you have the option, I recommend taking this class with Dr. Petersdroff. It requires work, but you will actually learn the material and it isn't too hard.
Kayo Ide AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2023	Her accent and handwriting is something that you will learn to get used to. She has weekly quizzes where she tells you what will be on it, and there were 2 matlab assignments that were pretty easy to do using the textbook. She takes attendance and her lectures were pretty useful. She gives many chances to get bonus points on assignment and the exams were pretty similar to the quizzes. Overall great experience in her class, and I would recommend her to anyone taking this class.
Christopher Moakler AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/11/2023	Based professor. Too bad he is leaving this semester, but if he ever does teach again, you should definitely take him.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Expecting a B- Anonymous 04/23/2023	I have taken upper level class like MATH405, MATH410, STAT410 and did pretty good with them. I've heard that stefan is great and was really looking forward to take AMSC460 with him, but honestly, I am kinda disppointed. I am not sure why this year is really different from previous year (it could due to change of textbook we used in class). First of all, his notes and lectures are kinda unorganized. Sometime I feel he brings some randomly points that are necessary but just don't explain it further, which makes the lectures hard to follow and also makes me feel stressful. Also his use of variable name randomly change and not matching, (sometimes do bring new variable without explaining the constraint on it). Secondly, I personally feel his problems wording for homeworks and exams are somehow confusing and not consistent. The solutions are usually good, but I am struggling to figure out what exactly he is asking. There is usually one or two typo in the homework which making life much harder. Finally, the exam2 we have this year is really different from the previous year. The exam2 for all past semesters have 4-5 questions, but we got 8. Overall, he is a nice guy. He probably did really good for other classes and for past semester, but in my opinion he is somehow unorganized and making things harder this semester. :(
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/16/2023	Great guy very chill but his notes are unorganized and messy. sad. homework and exams are fair but have to work extra hard to understand the material due to the lack of organization. stress.
Christopher Moakler AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/10/2023	Great guy. Homework (in matlab) is a bit long but there's not many of them and you usually get 2 weeks to do them. He actively responds to emails and helps whenever we are stuck in either homework or project. Overall one of the chillest classes I've ever taken.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/03/2023	feel like the reviews are too low for this prof. he's a nice guy and solid teacher. you don't really have to go to class since he posts really good notes online. for exams he always holds review sessions the class before that are very helpful and also gives practice exams that are fairly representative of the actual exam. my only issue with him was that the homeworks could get rather tedious, but I guess that is to be expected from a 400 level class. he also provides hints for the hw so nothing is insanely difficult
Christopher Moakler AMSC460 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/30/2022	Moakler is a great Prof. I don't know why there's a review that's mad that the homework were all coding questions (its basically a course in how computers do the math of course there should be coding homework). The course grade is 50% homework, 20% exams (two exams so 10% each), and 30% project. Moakler teaches the course differently and really focuses on the application of the computational methods, so homework will be about writing a method that you've learned in lecture and then testing a few cases and talking about them, he provides a lot of pseudocode and the textbook is very early accessible if you're still lost. Homework will usually take 4-8 hours depending on your familiarity of Matlab and the concepts you're learning, and you get about 2 weeks to do each assignment so I would suggest starting when you get them so you're not stuck coding a whole homework the day it's due. You get two unexcused absences and if you only miss two classes unexcused your lowest homework is dropped. I really like this methodology because if you don't need to go to class you shouldn't need a homework dropped. Lectures are fun and the concepts are explained very well, usually we would spend the first 15 mins of class talking about random stuff, which got the class more active when the real lecture started.Moakler is also pretty lenient about giving an excused absence if you're sick, have an interview, etc for example he extended our homework deadline on voting day and didn't take attendance so that students could vote if needed. He is also super helpful in office hours and if your schedule doesn't fit his OH you can just email him and find a time to go on zoom to get help with code errors or concepts you don't understand. Lastly, the project is something only he does that I think is really great to have on your resume. Instead of a final you basically pick a numerical method you find interesting and do something with it and write a 3-5 page paper about it. You get to learn Latex, which he incorporates in the earlier homework so you're not screwed trying to write a paper in latex the day your project is due, and get to learn in depth about something you think is cool (which shouldn't be too hard because most of the class are seniors anyway). Lastly, try and start your project early because it's much easier to get help on the project before finals start. Overall I would recommend Moakler over any other Prof that teaches this course.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2022	Very fun class. This semester he experimented with a final project rather than a final exam, so the last topic of ODEs was never tested / elaborated. Taught everything else very well.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Expecting an A+ wmy78b 09/02/2022	I took this course in SUMMER and it was async. Professor Doboszczak is good at teaching. His notes and videos are fantastic. Homework are challenging and you need to spend long time on them. The exams were all multiple choice questions and you need to be familiar with all the important things. The total grade was fine and I did good job.
Christopher Moakler AMSC460 Anonymous 08/04/2022	He is a fantastic teacher and really easy to talk to. I am a student who really needs good professors for any class I take. I have no idea how he has such bad reviews. If you put in a little bit of work this class is very manageable and you will do well.
Christopher Moakler AMSC460 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/21/2022	This guy is horrible. There were only 4~5 students in every lecture. All HWs are MATLAB coding questions. He does not know how to teach people. Also, He did not respond email. He is the worst professor I have ever met before
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Expecting an A- Anonymous 08/30/2021	Solid teacher, good lectures. Very responsive to questions via piazza, exams were pretty easy if you did the homework.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Anonymous 08/24/2021	Completely agree with all the other reviews - his lectures are clear, the assignments & exams are fair, the course is well organized, he answers emails/piazza quickly, and the material was interesting.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Anonymous 06/28/2021	Solid lecturer and gives very reasonable exams and assignments.
Vladimir Yushutin AMSC460 Anonymous 05/14/2021	His reviews should definitely be higher. He's really nice and doesn't make AMSC460 harder than it needs to be. He's super open to students asking questions, assigns a manageable amount of homework and his exams are definitely fair. I would take this class with him again.
Kayo Ide AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/13/2021	She has a Japanese accent, and so she may be difficult to understand sometimes, but she is super nice when you ask her to repeat things. She even apologizes about the way in which she pronounces things sometimes. Homework is sparse and light, basically just there to make sure that you can in fact code what you learn in class. She gives weekly quizzes, but she basically tells you on what you will be quizzed in the class before. She gives a lot of chances to earn bonus points, and also if the class does especially poorly on a quiz, she allows people to retake the quiz. She is very understanding about the concerns of her students, and it is clear that her main objective is that students learn. She is a decent lecturer, but the textbook is very good, in case you're not a huge fan of her lectures.
Kayo Ide AMSC460 Anonymous 02/04/2021	Japanese accent; doesn't record lectures because "you never know," says we should just take notes yet doesn't really give enough time for notes/quizzes; notes a little all over the place
Vladimir Yushutin AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2020	Very good professor! Some zoom technical difficulties at the start, but his notes are very clear and easy to follow. Fair exams, reasonable amount of homework assigned. Folks say he has a thick accent but I don't find it to be a problem at all
Ruiwen Shu AMSC460 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/20/2020	(Note: I took this class Spring 2020.) For lectures, he writes notes on paper under a document camera, which transferred over well when we switched to online. His notes are good and he explains things very clearly. Some might find his accent hard to understand but I had no issues. Homework and exams are reasonable and straightforward.
Vladimir Yushutin AMSC460 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/24/2020	Dr. Yushutin is very intelligent and knows the material.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Anonymous 12/22/2019	Awesome prof who teaches well and is very organized. Exams are not hard as long as you study like a normal person.
Stefan Doboszczak AMSC460 Anonymous 12/15/2019	In my opinion, Stefan is one of the best math professor's at UMD. His lecture's are clear and easy to follow, and he teaches with a lot of personality, making the lectures more fun to attend. He assigned homework once a week, but was very flexible if we needed an extra day or two to complete it. If you go to class and complete the homework you can do very well in the class. I HIGHLY recommend taking him for any class if you get the chance.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Expecting an A student8458 12/07/2015	There was one day in class where Von Petersdorf ran around in front of the classroom at full speed and repeatedly apologized to the class in a high pitched squeaky voice because he got too nervous to continue teaching. He suffers from some serious anxiety when talking to people and should not really be in front of a classroom. Posts notes online that were actually quite good and reading through these is much more useful than going to lecture. Did not hand back any homeworks or exams at all.
Ramani Duraiswami AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2012	Duraiswami is a VERY friendly person and a great professor (almost an Indian Winnie the Pooh!). Class periods are spent going through powerpoints of the material. He explains the material in a very down-to-earth way so that everyone can understand it easily. Homework tests your ability to apply the concepts in class in MATLAB. All homework is from the book, so if you don't understand either the lecture slides or the book, you can use the other one as a second resource. Homework is not BS-able, and every question is graded. Exams do not have many questions, and thus each question is weighed heavily. The material tested is straight out of the powerpoint slides, so put as much of the slides as you can on your notesheet(s). Grades are as follows: 25% Midterm (use one note sheet), 35% Final Exam (use two note sheets), 40% homework assignments.
Tobias von Petersdorff AMSC460 Anonymous 05/04/2011	Despite the fact that AMSC460 supposed to be an application course, we hardly learned any applications. Lectures were good, but we were barely given any HW assignment (4 assignments were given to us instead of expected 6). Because we did not have any text to rely on; lack of HW assignments was especially hurting. The few homework assignments, that we did get from instructor were very short, and given to us on last minute notices (to be fair, they did contained interesting problems). Pros: 1)Online notes that he did provide to us (which is materials covering first quarter of the course) were very organised and extremely helpful. 2)Lectures in class were also good. 3)He is a fare grader when it comes to checking exams. Cons: 1)Through later part of the course he almost stopped providing updates on his website and virtually gave us no HW so we had to rely only on the notes we made in class to prepare for the second midterm. 2)Exams were not always related to HW 3)He is very sensitive about due dates. 4)He is difficult to talk to when he is tired or stressed out.
Ramani Duraiswami AMSC460 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/13/2010	make sure you know matlab before you take a class with him. his exams are straight out of his notes and not from the book. so make sure you make cheat sheets from his notes. he is a very nice guy and does his best to teach you. he will extend homework due dates as long as you give him a reason a couple of days before it.
Gilbert Stewart AMSC460 Expecting an A allie 06/04/2008	This professor is pretty dull, but he teaches you a lot. You need to be strong in both math and computer science to succeed in this course. He only gave out 3 A's when I took this class, but most other people got a B or a C. I wouldn't recommend him if you can take it with someone else, but as long as you put in some effort and READ HIS AFTERNOTES you should do fine.
Gilbert Stewart AMSC460 Anonymous 02/23/2008	This is the worst professor ever. Glaz or Wolfe is better than him. Under no circumstances should you take his class.