MATH274 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Raluca Rosca MATH274 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2025	Giving her a 3 is very generous, considering I have zero grades in the gradebook for this class, and finals are over. As a person, Dr. Rosca is very nice and approachable; however, as a professor, I would advise against her. To start, she lectures with her eyes closed, which is just simply weird. It makes her lectures hard to follow and focus on. She is also pretty bland, and it is very obvious that English is not her first language because her handwriting sucks, and so does her grammar. Now about the class. It is a pretty light load with a homework assignment due once a week and an in-class groupwork, which usually occurs on Fridays. No exams, except for the final. And that's it. Now it's nice and chill, but she wants everything turned in on paper and will not grade anything until grades are due, so you have no clue how you are doing in the class. I think it is fair to assume you will end with an A or even a very high B because it is hard to do badly, considering the content is easy, even if she is hard to follow. Her lectures, though, are pointless to go to, and if the class wasn't so small, I probably would've stopped coming. She gives you two of her old finals to prepare for your exam, and her final was nearly identical, but I couldn't tell you if we ever actually learned the stuff on the exam in class, so take that as you will. History of Mathematics with Dr. Rosca may be your only choice because nobody else teaches the course, but it isn't a death sentence, even if people complain about her. It should be a fairly easy class, but I would only take it if you have to (math education or CS majors), simply because she is boring, and it is frustrating having no grades ever.
Rodrigo Trevino MATH274 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/11/2024	Dr. Rodrigo Trevino is a brilliant mathematician and a dedicated teacher. Obviously history of math is not a rigorous course and I think it's designed for education majors, but it would be a mistake not to enroll a course of his due to ratings from less motivated students who struggle with math in general. He is one of the few professors in the math department at UMD that is genuinely happy to teach fascinating things to students who are eager to learn.
Yanir Rubinstein MATH274 Expecting a C Anonymous 04/13/2022	I would not recommend this prof to anyone. I think he really did want us to understand but he did not know how to lecture effectively and also was not very good about answering questions. He would basically just write out a proof of something he found interesting on the board without explaining much of anything and did not go over the more complicated parts of it. This was a math history class and the exams were true/false for 30 points, each question was 5-10 points and if you got it wrong you lost all those points, and the rest of the exam was usually a proof of something he showed in class that you just had to memorize, but you never knew which of the examples he was going to put on the test and there were about 4 weeks of classes between exams so anything was up for grabs. The final was a 16-page single-space essay with little to no guidance which he graded extremely harshly. The only grades were the 3 exams and the final. It was really hard to get through this class every day but I had to since it was a requirement, if you don't need to take a class with him, don't.

Raluca Rosca
MATH274

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2025

Giving her a 3 is very generous, considering I have zero grades in the gradebook for this class, and finals are over. As a person, Dr. Rosca is very nice and approachable; however, as a professor, I would advise against her. To start, she lectures with her eyes closed, which is just simply weird. It makes her lectures hard to follow and focus on. She is also pretty bland, and it is very obvious that English is not her first language because her handwriting sucks, and so does her grammar. Now about the class. It is a pretty light load with a homework assignment due once a week and an in-class groupwork, which usually occurs on Fridays. No exams, except for the final. And that's it. Now it's nice and chill, but she wants everything turned in on paper and will not grade anything until grades are due, so you have no clue how you are doing in the class. I think it is fair to assume you will end with an A or even a very high B because it is hard to do badly, considering the content is easy, even if she is hard to follow. Her lectures, though, are pointless to go to, and if the class wasn't so small, I probably would've stopped coming. She gives you two of her old finals to prepare for your exam, and her final was nearly identical, but I couldn't tell you if we ever actually learned the stuff on the exam in class, so take that as you will. History of Mathematics with Dr. Rosca may be your only choice because nobody else teaches the course, but it isn't a death sentence, even if people complain about her. It should be a fairly easy class, but I would only take it if you have to (math education or CS majors), simply because she is boring, and it is frustrating having no grades ever.

Rodrigo Trevino
MATH274

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/11/2024

Dr. Rodrigo Trevino is a brilliant mathematician and a dedicated teacher. Obviously history of math is not a rigorous course and I think it's designed for education majors, but it would be a mistake not to enroll a course of his due to ratings from less motivated students who struggle with math in general. He is one of the few professors in the math department at UMD that is genuinely happy to teach fascinating things to students who are eager to learn.

Yanir Rubinstein
MATH274

Expecting a C
Anonymous
04/13/2022

I would not recommend this prof to anyone. I think he really did want us to understand but he did not know how to lecture effectively and also was not very good about answering questions. He would basically just write out a proof of something he found interesting on the board without explaining much of anything and did not go over the more complicated parts of it. This was a math history class and the exams were true/false for 30 points, each question was 5-10 points and if you got it wrong you lost all those points, and the rest of the exam was usually a proof of something he showed in class that you just had to memorize, but you never knew which of the examples he was going to put on the test and there were about 4 weeks of classes between exams so anything was up for grabs. The final was a 16-page single-space essay with little to no guidance which he graded extremely harshly. The only grades were the 3 exams and the final. It was really hard to get through this class every day but I had to since it was a requirement, if you don't need to take a class with him, don't.

Reviews for MATH274