MATH401 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Vadim Kaloshin MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/19/2024	Like the other review said, he doesn’t teach applications. The class feels like 240 all over again and the homework is busy work. He doesn’t use the same textbook as Justin so Justin’s notes won’t help you and the final is worth 40% of our grade. Felt like I wasted a semester taking 401 with him
Vadim Kaloshin MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/19/2024	Like the other review said, he doesn’t teach any applications. Lectures are boring and the homework is busy work. He uses a different textbook from Justin so Justin’s notes won’t help you and the final is worth 40% of our grade. Felt like I wasted a semester taking 401 with him.
Vadim Kaloshin MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/14/2024	He is not a bad person but: Don't take 401 with him. He doesn't teach applications of lin alg, but rather a shallow overview of 240/405 and some applications at the end. He mainly reads the textbook and the homework is busy work. Mostly unorganized and will leave immediately after class so no one can ask questions (will not respond to your email either). Rescheduled an exam to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because "if we have the exam the Thursday before, no one will come to the Tuesday class"
Shin Song MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/31/2024	Professor Song has always provided very clear and useful lectures in her section of math401. She doesn't go too fast but also doesn't get bogged down on tangents or details or long proofs. She focuses on making sure students understand the important points and know how to apply whatever method or formula is in question. Her tests are pretty fair, I think with an average above 80, and we are given a packet of practice questions before each exam. We also have one in-class groupwork per week, which I found to be useful since it helped me apply what was went over in lecture, and these are pretty much free points as long as you show up to class. She also seems like a nice and friendly person in general. In conclusion I would highly recommend taking math401 with Song.
Yaxiong Liu MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/02/2024	Pretty easy class, i didn't really attend lecture and just read the justin notes and only went to class on exam day. I'm pretty sure the department is making him teach the class, and he's chill about it. If you really care about linear algebra and theory, I maybe wouldn't take it with him. He was perfect for my choice because I'm just trying to fulfill some stat minor requirements and I don't care too much about knowing lin alg that deeply. Take Wong if you wanna learn a lot.
Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2024	Overall I enjoyed this class. The typical week had a lecture on Tuesday where we would look at some application of linear algebra, derive how we can use linear algebra to solve it, then maybe an example problem. On Thursday we would split into groups and do a matlab worksheet. The next week we would move onto a new, but often related topic. The topics and a lot of the coursework were derived from Justin's 401 notes, found on his website. The applications were generally straightforward enough with some practice and the worksheets were pretty doable. Lectures were pretty clear and thorough, but sometimes we got a little too into the weeds when it came to some of the derivations. Perhaps if you're a math major some of the more proofy derivations would be more interesting to you. The exams could be a bit tricky. Since the only coursework consisted of the matlab worksheets (no homework or anything) it was sometimes a little difficult to know what to practice. He provided some practice problems for each of the two midterms and the final. Typically there was a theoretical practice problem set and an applications practice problem set. Application practice can be supplemented with relevant sections of Justin's notes. Both parts were needed for the exam. Exams were usually mostly applications, with a couple proofs/derivations pulled from the practice worksheet (or fairly similar). These generally weren't long or difficult proofs, but often relied on some trick that you need to know. Applications were fairly straightforward, know how to use the formulas and shortcuts used in class. Especially for the final there are a lot of formulas to remember. There was also typically one theoretical problem or two that went beyond what we learned in class. You kind of had to figure out the answer on the fly. These weren't worth a ton of points, but to do well you needed to figure them out. With a good knowledge of linear algebra and some decent intuition, these were doable but not easy. Exam median scores were 78% and 79% for the midterms, and 75% for the final. The cutoffs were adjusted at the end of the semester. Of course this will vary semester to semester, but the cutoffs for this semester were: A- 89%, B- 76.1%, C- 62.2%.
Yaxiong Liu MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2024	If you're taking MATH401 with Liu, be prepared to learn most of the content on your own. The entire class is structured on Justin's notes (which are online at https://www.math.umd.edu/~immortal/MATH401/), and Liu basically reads the notes word for word and writes them on the whiteboard. No offense to the guy, but he can't understand English very well, so it's difficult to ask questions because he doesn't often understand what you're trying to ask. Because of this, I hardly showed up to class, as for me it was better to just read Justin's notes. That being said, the class is graded very fairly. A 90 is an A, and the grade breakdown is 40% two midterms, 30% final, 30% homework. The homework problems are taken directly from the notes, so they're not bad. The midterms and final are fair, and have the exact same format despite the final having a 2 hour time slot. I would recommend taking Liu if you're comfortable learning material on your own. If not, try someone else.
Yaxiong Liu MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/15/2024	This guy is an elitist asshole that thinks applied math is on par with being a street sweeper and he teaches the class like that he gives 0 fucks just reading justins notes word for word except its worse cause he's completely understandable too. I just stopped going to lecture as trying to pay attention to his made me feel like I was unlearning avoid this guy for math401 at all costs you will left to self teach it all.
Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2024	I'm afraid he's going to get negatively reviewed by others this semester when he taught Math 401 because I feel like I was one of the few who genuinely enjoyed the course and liked his teaching style. I agree that sometimes he tends to choose the most complicated way to explain something or introduce very weird notation that doesn't make sense at first. But like scrambled eggs, it comes together eventually. You just have to be patient and not interrupt the guy like every two seconds. He's very funny during lectures and is extremely patient when answering students' questions. I don't have many things to say but that's because I really enjoyed the course and loved his lectures. I would take him again if he teaches something I haven't taken yet. My advice if you're taking this class with him: be sure to brush up on your linear algebra before the semester starts. It's technically a prerequisite so don't expect him to review anything you already learnt in 461/240. Some things you must know before the first class: what are bases, linear transformations, eigen vectors/values, gaussian elmination, taking inverse of matrices, ...
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/30/2024	Difficult to follow lecture; I would have preferred to read directly from the course notes. We did not finish all of the course's chapters. Finals are in a couple weeks, and I am still waiting on our midterm grade.
Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/04/2024	Studying MATH401 with Professor Rigoberto had its ups and downs. Rigoberto knows his stuff, but explaining it can be tough. His lectures often left me confused, but luckily, I found help in Justin's notes and online videos. One good thing about the class was no regular homework, but the group work sessions felt like busywork. The exams were tricky. They focused a lot on theory and proofs, even though the class is supposed to be about practical applications. Rigoberto did cover some of it in class, but it wasn't enough, and most people got low scores. Overall, MATH401 with Rigoberto was okay. He's smart, but his teaching could be better, and the exams were tough.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/29/2023	Teaches directly from Justin's notes, to the point where going to class was only necessary for the groupworks. Also writing this a week and a half after finals, and I STILL DON'T HAVE THE MIDTERM/FINAL GRADES!
Rodrigo Trevino MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2023	Great class, Dr. Trevino was very fun and the examples made the class fun to be in.
Rodrigo Trevino MATH401 Expecting an A DenialWhammy 12/16/2023	Didn't go to class except for groupworks. From the lectures I did go to, he was relatively clear. You'll find more use just studying from the online textbook, which gives you all the information you need to prepare for exams.
Yanir Rubinstein MATH401 Anonymous 12/14/2023	Homework was fine, albeit a bit too much work at times. Exams were abysmal, as some of the questions were based on theory that the book neither delves into nor expects you to know when learning about the APPLICATIONS of linear algebra
Adam Kanigowski MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2023	This course is not very much work. You have one lecture and one in-class group assignment each week. There are two exams plus the final. I think the grading isn't very transparent in this class. You pretty much have to email the grader or go to office hours to figure out what you got marked down for. There isn't much to use to practice. He follows Justin Wyss-Gallifent & Allan Yashinski's notes exactly. I am not sure that he really adds much beyond the notes. Linear Algebra applications aren't really interesting until you have matrices that are to big to manipulate by hand. As a result, almost all of the text book examples are so complex as to require Matlab, but we don't have any calculators on the exam. While it's nice to not have homework, there really is nothing to practice for the exams. Sometimes we only need a conceptual understanding, and sometimes we need to prove some statements, but it isn't always clear which to go for. Lectures are fun or dull depending on the topic. Overall, there are some fun topics (and some boring ones) but I would say to choose another professor if you have the option. I also had Adam for 405, and I think he is significantly better for that class.
Rodrigo Trevino MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/11/2023	Solid teacher. He does a lot of interaction with his students in this course, even when he is lecturing. He also does a good job at explaining the meanings and derivations behind formulas, which I think is helpful so that you have some context for what you are actually doing and what it means. He does a lot of groupwork assignments, which I liked because it is so rare in college math classes to have the opportunity to work with peers. The exams are inconsistent - the first one was super lengthy and computationally heavy, but the rest have been very fair. He is also using Justin's notes (which are very good) but I'm not sure how well he knows them - when you ask him a question about homework or groupwork it seems like he's reading the question for the first time. He still gives good answers, but it just doesn't seem like this class is a huge priority of his, although I will say he did seem to be putting in more effort towards the end. Overall, very "decent to good" kind of teacher. Not amazing, but you can easily get a solid grade and learn about the material.
Rodrigo Trevino MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2023	Very fun class, the professor kept the activities fun and his teaching style was generally relaxed but still made sure to cover the topics well
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/04/2023	ABSOLUTE GOAT HE'S AMAZING AND I LOVE HIM!!! Literally the best, he's an amazing lecturer and the midterms are take home. We also only have a final project instead of an exam, and he goes over all of the stuff in class. He also lets us out early about 25% of the time, and he's always super cheery and happy. The homework is super fair, and he's just overall amazing 10000/10 highly recommend
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Anonymous 11/23/2023	This guy is the goat. Every midterm is take home, and he goes over the questions with different numbers in class right before releasing the midterm.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Anonymous 11/16/2023	Actually the best professor ever, very engaging lecturer and has take home exams and no final exam. Would 1000% recommend
Allan Yashinski MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/18/2023	Had him for MATH461 and decided to take MATH401 with him as well. The class was a good experience, and Allan was always quick to reply to my countless emails asking for clarification regarding the content. The exams were very fair. The work load isn't light per se, but it helped me understand the content.
Allan Yashinski MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/11/2023	Note: I took this as a summer course. Allan is extremely adept at explaining math concepts beyond theory. He is helpful, understanding, and genuinely wants students to succeed. I found this course to be much easier than 461 because I learn best through real-life examples... and this class is all about real-life examples. We used free online textbooks, but I found that the lectures were enough. We covered a different (yet related) subject every 2 days with group work due at the end of the second lecture. The group work is done during lecture time and is basically a work sheet that you can talk through with a couple other students in a breakout room. Similar to his 461 class, MATLAB was a major part of the homework. I'd highly recommend making a class GroupMe and meeting separately on zoom because some of the homeworks can be long and difficult. Exams were fair; it was open note, open book, and had similar questions to previous exams (he provided previous exam solutions). However, a lot of people felt rushed to finish the exams on time. The average exam score was 79%, with the median being 82%. Pros: - Recorded lectures - Groupwork is probably a completion grade... don't quote me on that - Useful feedback/explanations provided on homework submissions - Open note, open book exams Cons: - Some homework problems take hours to figure out - May not have enough time on exams - Lectures aren't directly engaging or personable, only 1 other person had their camera on
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/27/2023	As others have stated Dr. Rosca is a nice person but is quite bad at teaching. Her lectures were unorganized and were directly copied off of Justin's MATH401 notes. She would often make errors on the board failing to catch them until others pointed it out. And perhaps worst of all, she does not grade exams... as in she doesn't even have a grade in the first or second midterm before we take the final exam. I don't know if/why this is allowed but it means you go into the final exam with 0 idea of how you are doing in the class. Ultimately, I had my final grade entered into Testudo without knowing what I actually ended up scoring on any of the exams (midterms or finals). I am inclined to say she just takes your groupwork/homework scores and uses that to determine your final grade in the class, but this is just a guess. The material covered in class, however is easy and shouldn't be a problem. Justin's notes are thorough and the math is not hard at all. Overall, I would pick a different professor for 401 if possible!
Xiaoqi Huang MATH401 Expecting an A+ Charl1e1029 05/26/2023	Not the most entertaining lecturer and doesn't have the best English, but is a very kind individual who details exactly what is coming up and what is required for the course. Before every quiz and midterm, he sent a reminder of the content that was going to be covered and the date it was to be held. His examinations (although aren't always grammatically correct) are pretty easy and he always gives helpful hints within them to help you out! He follows Justin's notes for this course, and Justin always has the most luxurious math notes, so it is very easy to learn the content from Justin's notes hehe.
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/25/2023	Though she is a bad lecturer, keep in mind that she is fairly new in teaching so she has big room for improvement. She is very nice in person. I agree with what the other reviewers had to say as well. Kind of wished we touched more on applications as the course name is applications of linear algebra, but we've focused on so much of abstract concept it feels like MATH405 instead.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/17/2023	The worst professor I've ever taken at UMD, wish I could give 0 stars. Lectures are very confusing and hard to follow, especially considering you must spend the majority of the time copying sloppily writing down notes from a chalkboard since no lecture materials are given online. Even still concepts given are hard to follow and examples gone over in class are too basic to be useful for homework or exam questions. homework and exam practice are not given answer keys so it's extremely hard to know if you are making mistakes and the professor refused to provide answer keys when requested in class. The professor is also slow to respond to emails and is not great at explanations even during office hours. The professor overall seems like a nice person and was always understanding but it was clear teaching this class was an afterthought compared to whatever research/graduate work she is doing. Avoid this professor.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/16/2023	She seems so nice and open, I can tell she is very knowledgeable on this subject and wants us to succeed. However, she doesn’t have a lot of teaching experience and this unfortunately led to a god-awful experience. All the other reviews are completely true, she teaches the theory and then expects you to understand it enough to figure out word problems with hardly any (if any) examples. While I thought the class was going to be on the Applications of Linear Algebra (like the class name says), she spent the first couple weeks going over everything from linear algebra (461) except making it way more complicated and confusing. I’d know how to do the problems she was going over but then she’d spend twice as long doing it in a super convoluted way and not explaining her process well. So that was a bad sign for when we moved into new topics. She gives absolutely zero resources for students, all lectures are written in chalk on the board so if you miss a lecture or are just sitting in a bad spot of the room where the board is not as visible, you’re screwed. No Canvas uploads, no links to resources, no example problems, not even solutions to homeworks or practice exams. There’s the textbook, but that can be even harder to understand when trying to compare it to the lecture notes. She doesn’t even tell you what will be on the exam, just “you should know everything we’ve covered”. Which, yeah I get that we should know it all, but that’s completely unhelpful when you’re trying to study and don’t even know what types of problems to practice. She expects everyone to be as smart as her (she’s clearly very smart) and be able to apply theoretical understanding to word problems with no prior experience or examples. For the final, after most people bombed the first two exams, she thankfully gave us a practice exam. However, when asked if she would provide answers for the practice exam she said no because she didn’t have enough time to write the solutions. But she expects us to have the time to be able to solve all the problems with no examples or references during finals week when we’re studying for multiple classes already? Frankly this class was ridiculously hard for no reason. She gave the solutions to our midterms (thank god) after we took them, and seeing the solutions you can see the problems aren’t that difficult to solve if you understand what they’re asking. However, when you’ve never seen a problem like it before, you don’t even know where to start. I’ve heard great things about other 401 professors, and I would recommend to anyone considering taking her classes to not, unless you’re super good at linear algebra and theory and understanding textbooks without any examples (there were 2-3 really smart students who did really well and brought up the exam averages, but the rest of us are lost and scared for the final)
Haizhao Yang MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/16/2023	This guy is the absolute goat. He's super chill and lenient with grading and his exams are cake. Homeworks and Matlab projects are very easy but there's one every week which isn't too bad. Lectures are hard to follow because he's more focused on presenting mathematics from a research perspective rather than a teaching perspective, but he doesn't expect us to know and doesn't test the complex material so it's not a big deal. You can just grind the textbook and do practice problems and then you're guaranteed a good grade. He's also very accommodating to students as well in terms of receiving feedback and changing exams so we're more tested on concepts with smaller matrices rather than computations on large matrices Take this guy for any class he teaches. You won't regret it.
Haizhao Yang MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/13/2023	Pros: -Very nice guy. -Gave exam problems similar to homework problems. -Made himself accessible and was always willing to answer questions. -Very thorough during lectures. Cons: -Course is a glorified rehash of MATH240. You won't really learn anything new. Did not feel like an "applications" of linear algebra class at all. The only applications we did were a few short Matlab projects which did not feel useful. -Lectures were confusing sadly due to his accent... he also did a lot of proofs which some might appreciate but I didn't care since this was an applications class. -Made a homework assignment and project due during the middle of spring break. -Second exam was a disaster because he did not work out the problems on his own ahead of time. This led to questions that had immense computational cost and questions that were practically unsolvable. He apologized though and tried to give as much partial credit as possible. This was Dr. Yang's first time teaching this course, so some leniency is certainly in order. By the time the next set of students takes it, it may be a completely different course. I wouldn't particularly recommend taking this class with Dr. Yang the way it's currently structured, but he really is a nice guy who cares about his students.
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/08/2023	Current reviews are accurate, but note she is a really new teacher so she might be better over time. Nice person but not a good lecturer would avoid right now.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/05/2023	She seems like a nice person, but the lectures are very confusing, and the exams are difficult. You will have to spend lots of time on the weekly homework assignments and especially the Matlab projects. Would not recommend taking the class with her if you're taking this class with the mindset that it's the easiest 400 level math class, this is by far the hardest math class I have taken.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/05/2023	I think she's a nice person, but many of her lectures made no sense, and the Matlab projects were ridiculously difficult for no reason. The exams were also hard, and the class average is in the 50-60% range. MATH401 is supposed to be the easiest 400 level math class, but I felt like this class was harder than any other 400 level math class I have taken.
Celine Torres MATH401 Anonymous 05/03/2023	Terribly confusing. Rambles on about theory that is so beyond human comprehension. Awful, awful MATLAB projects that require selling your soul to complete. Homeworks are also pretty bad and as the semester progresses her lecture notes become more and more useless. Nobody knows what is happening at this point and I fear what we will face in the final Exams are terrible and averages were low 50s, which she was not concerned about. Overall a terrible confusing experience that I wish I had avoided. She seems nice, but good lord.
Celine Torres MATH401 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 04/28/2023	trash professor; terrible handwriting (very weird way of writing number 1s), extremely confusing matlab projects with vague wording, hard exams that take too long to finish; horrible at explaining concepts and very few people in the lecture walk out understanding the material; avoid at all costs
Haizhao Yang MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/24/2023	Dr. Yang is an extremely smart and kind professor. However, I find his lectures to be a bit confusing so I prefer to take notes on the textbook, which he directly follows. The homeworks are a few textbook problems each week, and the exams are problems taken directly from the textbook. The first exam was really fair, however the second one was significantly tricker, but he did not intentionally do that and as a result he graded extremely nicely (I was pleasantly surprised with my grade) and even removed one question from the exam that was harder than he initially thought. The matlab projects aren't too difficult either, just changing a few lines of code. Overall, he really wants his students to succeed and doesn't try to make anything unnecessarily tricky
Haizhao Yang MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/21/2023	Please ignore the other guy. Professor Yang is a good guy. He gave out a very fair first exam, which was literally the exact same as our homework problems. The second exam was definitely way harder, but he was literally doing the midterm WITH us (probably because he chose some random homework problems without checking them over and wanted to make sure the problems were okay). When he realized it was too hard, he said "Forget about problem 3. That one's too hard." He seemed very apologetic the next class in which he discussed the exam, asked for and listened to our feedback (a lot complained about having to factorize a cubic and working with a 4x4 matrix), and told us "I'll grade very kindly for this exam" and "I'll only give 2x3 and 3x3 matrices from now on" and "I'll make sure this doesn't happen again for the final exam." The person who gave a 1 star review probably didn't even go to that class because a lot of people skip lecture (and his lectures are admittedly not very helpful). For more information about the class, there's homework every week, and they are just ~10 exercises from the textbook. Each homework took me about 1-1.5 hours. He also gave us a few MATLAB projects throughout the semester where he gave us some code and we basically had to "modify" the code to do what it was supposed to do. Each project took me about 2 hours. I'm docking a star because he gave us homework and a project over spring break and because he really should've checked over the midterm problems before, not while, we took it. TLDR; Easy homework, easy matlab projects, kinda useless lectures, exams are fair. He messed up once, but he's planning on compensating us. He listens to his students' feedback on how unfair an exam is, which is something I think is worthy of praise.
Haizhao Yang MATH401 Expecting a C Anonymous 04/18/2023	Probably the worst professor I've had at UMD. Nice guy but his exams are entirely too long, gives out way too much homework, a lot of lectures are confusing and/or not on what we will be tested on, and he is a harsh grader when it comes to exams. Do not recommend!
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/13/2023	Professor Rowland truly cares about his students. Even if you are completely lost, if you go to office hours you will be able to get through the homework, projects, etc and you will leave with a better understanding of the material. I took MATH401 and 406 with him and I still use what I learned from those classes to this day. His lectures are sometimes unorganized but the assignments he gives you are always fair. Top, top professor
Tamas Darvas MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/04/2023	Tamas is the GOAT! Take him- exams are pretty similar to the homeworks and the final was a combination of the first two exams plus a couple more questions at the end. They weren't too difficult although they were computationally heavy. Homeworks were not that bad and could be done in a couple hours (very Matlab heavy). Pretty much just learn the process for each topic and be able to reproduce it to do well in the class. Also a really fun guy and made me want to come to lecture even though the content he covered in class went over my head most times.
Matthias Wellershoff MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/10/2023	I feel like his lectures were pretty clear and he is very willing to hear out student concerns. Very approachable guy who wants to see you do well. It was his first time teaching in the US, so he wasn't always sure about the pacing of the class and ended up skipping some material towards the end. Class was not too hard even though I'm not great at linear algebra.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/28/2022	Final grades were due days ago and she still has yet to grade our first 4 exams… the whole class went into the final only having homework and geoupwork grades in :(
Shalin Parekh MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2022	I feel like I was retaking linear algebra class in 2/3 first semester. After that, we actually learned some applications of linear algebra which were not much but interesting enough. Homework was long and time-consuming since it's worth 35% of the total grade but it was not hard at all. We had a midterm for 30% and a final exam for 35%, they were exactly similar to his practice problems. Prof. Parekh is not a good lecturer but a great instructor. I remember he was doing rref in class for about 20-25 minutes, which was definitely unnecessary. He literally told us the cutoff for A was 70-80% and passing was 40-50% before the final even though the class average wasn't that low. He graded homework and exams very leniently. So, attend his lectures or at least the review lecture to have a high grade.
Matthias Wellershoff MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/24/2022	Very easy professor. I never showed up to classes but just read his lecture notes the day before the exams and got great scores. Ended up curving the final exam 28 points (so the 57% average is now a 80% average), but this shocks me as the questions were not hard. If you can read the lecture notes and understand theorems / examples you will be fine. Did not learn much, though.
Tamas Darvas MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2022	The course is easy and Prof Darvas explains the material well. I would recommend him.
Matthias Wellershoff MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2022	I had Matthias for the Fall 2022 Semester. He was a nice and well intentioned person. Although this was his first semester teaching at UMD, he really put in the effort to make the course enjoyable. He had prepared excellent class notes for the materials covered in class, which I really appreciate since it helped me learn better. I do, however, wish we could cover more applications of linear algebra instead of focusing too much on the theory. I'd 10/10 recommend him as a professor for MATH401.
Matthias Wellershoff MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2022	solid professor. it was his first time teaching the class and I thought he was pretty good. he has very clear guidelines, gives ample time for homeworks (which aren't too difficult), and the exams are pretty straight forward and predictable. also doesn't require attendance and records all lectures and posts notes
Matthias Wellershoff MATH401 Anonymous 12/20/2022	Super nice guy. He was very open to feedback about lectures and other class matters. He gave a reasonable amount of work and his exams weren’t terribly difficult although the last exam was heavy on theory. He also does his best to make lectures interesting. On a more informal note, his hair is amazing and he says the words “pivot” and “variable” funny since he isn’t American. My only complaint is that I found his lecture style not very effective, but that may just be me.
Tamas Darvas MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/18/2022	Great prof. Exams are just like homework problems, and he has a great personality
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2022	After a few weeks, the entire class went downhill. I went to the lectures, but you do not need to. Very easy class. She started getting lost in lectures while reading from the textbook and sometimes just showed the textbook on the projector and read from it. We were expected to have 200 points of homework, but we were only assigned 2 or 3 in the first month, and then she stopped doing that. 2 exams, with in-person and take-home portions. Group works were fine, just had to go to them, and almost always got full credit. The exams were extremely fair compared to previous exams for the course, but we were always assigned the in-person portion weeks later than expected. The second take-home portion was released late and made due on reading day. The worst part of this class was that no exam grades have been released and I just took the final. Not one. Weird.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/16/2022	Very nice person, kind-hearted, and often has a bit of humor. She clearly understands the material, but it seemed a few weeks in the class started to die down and her reviews started to make sense. Although for MATH401, the class is not particularly difficult (due to easy material and maybe Justin's notes (which the course is run on) being fantastic, so it does not matter the teacher), she made it quite frustrating. We were told to expect some 200 points of homework assigned (one every other week or so), but we were only given 3 assignments and they were all at the start and only on the first few topics. We also were told to have 2 exams with in-person and take-home portions, which we did get, however, the take-home portions were released weeks after she said they would be and the second one was due 4 days before the final. She was extremely lenient with the due dates, but that does not matter as NO EXAM GRADES WERE POSTED for the entire semester. I am not sure if this was her fault or that she did not have enough help, either way extremely aggravating.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 09/18/2022	He's very patient and responsible. :) Sometimes he's funny as well
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A+ wmy78b 08/27/2022	Zhao is new here but he makes the course very clear and easy. HWs are super helpful and do-able. Go to class and practice a little bit, then you can get an A. Take it!!!
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/01/2022	Does a pretty decent job at explaining concepts but can go too fast but he will slow down if you ask. There is no final exam only a final project that I think most of the class got an A on. Homework's only have 2 problems due once a week. Practice problems reflect what will be tested. Overall highly recommend taking him for this class, it was as close to an easy A math class as you can get!
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/18/2022	One of the best professors in UMD.
Allan Yashinski MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/20/2022	This class is one of my favorite math courses I've taken. It takes linear algebra and shows various applications for it. Allan did a great job in lecture explaining the concepts. The homework's were representative of what was discussed in class and Exams represented the homework's. Groupworks were very helpful for practice and helped to clear up and confusion you may have. Overall class wasn't too difficult and if you study for exams you can easily get a B.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2022	Really solid teacher. Homeworks weren't very difficult and neither were the exams. I would recommend taking him.
Wiseley Wong MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2022	The absolute GOAT. Exams are easy because he tells you exactly what to study for and doesn't throw curveballs at you. Lectures are actually interesting and you can tell he has a lot of passion for what he's teaching. Does a review session the class before every exam which helps a lot in preparing for them. Homework isn't super busy, it teaches you the material, and you do some pretty neat stuff in them (for one of them, we did image compression in MATLAB). 10/10 recommend Wiseley for literally any class you can take with him.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Anonymous 05/16/2022	Lutian was a great professor this semester. He followed a good amount of the pre-existing 401 curriculum (with a good chunk of it coming from Justin's notes) but added materials from other textbooks as well (topics such as solving circuits). He is very approachable and responds to emails quickly. The homework was fair and he made it clear what the scope of content was for the exams. The final project in place of an exam was a good idea; I thought it was very fitting for an applications class.
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/11/2022	Dr. Rowland is super friendly and caring. He made an effort to learn every student's name and even studied their ELMs picture to try and remember who people were. I believe over time his organization and content will improve and therefore his overall teaching ability. However, for the time being, those skills were lacking enough that I won't be taking another course taught by him.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/07/2022	He is super nice. Just follow his examples and you can do well. We never have any difficult homework/exam for the whole semester. There is no final exam, only a project.
Lutian Zhao MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/26/2022	Really nice guy who takes the time to answer questions and make sure you understand. Teaching style is like Justin's where he will present you a topic, give you examples and then expects you to be able to replicate it. He makes exams weighted less than most math classes, so if you are a bad exam taker you will love Lutian. He also responds to emails instantly.
Allan Yashinski MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/10/2022	Class follows a predictable format: a few lectures, groupwork in class, then homework due, and then the cycle repeats. 12 topics and 4 exams that aren't cumulative. so each exam touches on roughly 3 topics. My one gripe is that sometimes the homework problems he writes himself can be a bit nasty to do. Usually they don't take too long, but you have to sit and think about them for a bit. I have learned a lot though!!!
Michael Jakobson MATH401 Anonymous 02/04/2022	The worst professor I've ever had at UMD. You will be undergoing an entirely self-taught class if Jakobson is your professor. I will say that he is polite and always willing to answer questions, but that is if you can even tell what is going on in the class to formulate a question to begin with. He began the class writing on the chalkboard, albeit never turning around to actually talk to the class - just talking at the board about seemingly random topics. As of the second week of class he just shows us grainy pictures of notes (not even a PDF scan!!) on the projector and reads over it. It's seriously hard to learn anything from this prof, as half of the time I'm not even sure what the current topic is (his handwriting is not the best).
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/15/2022	Dr. Rowland is one of the nicest professors I have had; he prioritizes you learning the content and the class emphasizes consistent, project-based work. I felt like whenever I went to class, I went to learn about real-life applications of linear algebra instead of trying to pass a class for credits. With that being said, the only thing keeping him from 5 stars is that he can be disorganized or do incorrect arithmetic at times and that makes some concepts difficult to understand at first.
Justin Wyss-Gallifent MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/22/2021	One of the best if not THE best professor in the entire department. Possibly the entire university. You don't need me to convince you, just look down at the hundreds of reviews that say he is amazing.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/09/2021	Rosca is terrible at lecturing - she just reads from the textbook and whatever extra analysis or computation she provides is pretty unorganized. Thankfully, though, the textbook itself - written by the legendary Justin Wyss-Gallifent - is incredible. It's comprehensive, written well, and very simple to understand. The course content itself is really fun and interesting, and with a better lecturer the class itself would be great. I actually really enjoyed the class, but that was mainly because the content was really interesting and the groupworks/exams were relatively easy. Lectures are skippable if you time them right - there are groupworks assigned during class that are only announced during previous lectures.
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 07/19/2021	great professor
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/13/2021	Excellent. Mostly project based course, which you could receive adequate help on if needed. Projects were programming, and you could complete in Mathematica, MATLAB, or Python. Could tell he genuinely cared about students and lecture. Highly recommend this prof.
Todd Rowland MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/08/2021	A great and caring guy. Had him for Math401 online and he was genuinely caring to all his students. He made sure to have one-on-one meeting with all the students and asked how we were doing in the class and what we wanted to do in the future. The class was mainly projects, mini quizzes, and groupwork. For the quizzes we were given two tries which was very nice since he'll go over the quiz in class after the first try. Very responsive to emails and his office hours are great as he'll help you step by step with the project. He will extend office hour to help us. The projects were also very interesting too. He doesn't do plus minus grades. Definitely recommend and take him if you have the choice.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/27/2021	She just reads off the textbook. What she covers in 3 lectures I usually covered in 30 minutes. Stopped going to the lecture after the first week. The class is easy though, which is nice.
Justin Wyss-Gallifent MATH401 Anonymous 01/12/2021	Amazing!! you could literally not know any linear algebra and get a B or better in this class. He gives you all the information that you need to know. Super nice guy, chill.
Justin Wyss-Gallifent MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/13/2020	Very good lecturer, definitely lives up to his reputation. I don't really need to go into much more, the rest of the 100+ reviews tell the rest of his story. He is one of the best lecturers I've seen at UMD. If you can take a class with him, DO IT!
Justin Wyss-Gallifent MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/19/2020	He is the coolest prof! No exams when classes moving online. And I have to say the project "cryptography" was so much fun to do. Such a surprise when seeing the original image was my id photo. Gotta give him 5 stars!
Stefan Doboszczak MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/08/2020	Stefan is great professor! He is very clear about class expectations, and spends a lot of time working with students to ensure they get class concepts.
Wiseley Wong MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/04/2020	I loved Wiseley. He's very accommodating as a professor (polled us on which of 3 days we'd prefer the first midterm). He's also great at lecturing. Dude comes in with his own bag of multiple colors of chalk so his lecture notes are color coded so students can better follow them. Uses tons of examples during his lectures and when he goes over proofs they are pretty thoroughly written and explained to make sure you understand each step. 401 is a pretty easy class, but I think Wiseley did a pretty good job of keeping it fun and interesting, I genuinely enjoyed what we learned in the class, and can see the usefulness of the applications of linear algebra presented (which given the class is called applications of lin alg I think this is the ultimate goal). Take Wiseley for any class. You won't regret it. Dude is organized, accommodating, and great at explaining and does not bore you to sleep like some others unfortunately.
Javier Morales Delgado MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/15/2020	If you hope to learn something, do not take Javier. However, if you want an A without learning anything, then I highly recommend Javier. He is an absolutely awful lecturer and his notes, assignments and exams are filled with typos. To make up for this, his exams are stupid easy and he offers up to 10% extra credit. He wants everyone to pass and an A is well within reach if you put a little effort into solving the graded practice exam (which is nearly identical to the actual exam.)
Fei Wang MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/21/2019	Very easy course, follows Justin Wyss-Gallifent's textbook, which is outstanding. MATH401, if following Justin's textbook, is a very interesting and easy course. Exams were very straightforward, with averages on both coming in around a 93%. Little workload, other than weekly or biweekly homeworks. Would highly recommend as an upper level elective.
Weikun Wang MATH401 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 12/13/2019	WARNING! Only take this man if you have background knowledge of linear algebra because he doesn’t care about teaching anyone. He’ll tell you stuff straight from the book or notes from other teachers. Also, homeboy messed up grading my final and gave me a lower score than what I actually deserve so for the betterment of you and your gpa take Allan for 401 or any other teacher besides this man.
Raluca Rosca MATH401 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/06/2019	This professor can't teach at all. Every time we are doing a problem from previous midterm/final exam, she always struggled to explain how to do it. I am completely loss during the lecture and review session. Only few students who are above average could follow her.
Weikun Wang MATH401 Anonymous 11/22/2019	If you are thinking about it just don't. Only take him if you really know linear algebra because he does not explain things very good and only has office hours before class. He's nice so that gives him an extra star.
Jan Peszek MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/11/2019	Easiest A in 400 level math. Gives you practice exams that are near identical to the midterms/final. Plus a 15% extra credit assignement.
Dong Dong MATH401 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/04/2019	I learned a lot from Dr. Dong. I suggest that you come to class regularly as reading the text alone is not sufficient to get a good score in his final exam.
Dong Dong MATH401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/16/2019	Great teacher! Very fun guy. Lecture is well-organized. His expectation for students is very clear, as his review is helpful for exams.
Jan Peszek MATH401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 03/03/2019	If you want an A-plus with minimal effort this is the class to take folks! I finished with a 101%, the average was a 95%. I worked maybe two hours a week and the exams matched the practice exams exactly. In case you slept through the exam or missed the entire class, there was also a convenient 20% extra credit assignment.
Samuel Braunfeld MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2018	Had him for 401 in Fall 2018 semester. Although it was his first time teaching at UMD, I'd say he's alright. Just alright, not good or great, but not terrible. Pros: -- Has groupwork assignments every week or two weeks, which are free 10/10's /padding to your grade. -- Homeworks due two classes after a groupwork, and he generally grades them fairly. -- He also posts almost all his notes online (which are well written), so missing class is not too big a deal if you learn well from textbooks and notes. Cons: -- Speaks fast and goes through the material quickly, often backpedaling to correct mistakes on the board. Not really an engaging lecturer. -- Exams had a few minor curveball problems here and there, could have been more fair.
Jeffrey Adams MATH401 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/13/2015	I don't like this professor because he is very unorganized and relaxed. He would change problems sets days after he assigned then. So I would do problems that weren't require. He post videos that you have to look at before lecture too. He always post them the day before or maybe the afternoon before. God forbid you want to get ahead in this class and do you work ahead of time because he either won't post assignments until later or he will change them. He also does problems out of the book then gets to lazy and doesn't finish them. If you can't finish one problem for us in class, how do you expect students to do 20 for their HW. He is pretty chill so he lectures are easy to understand and kind of dumb down for the average joe, but maybe to chill for students that want to get head.
Kasso Okoudjou MATH401 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2012	I don't know why there are any negative reviews for this professor. Okoudjou teaches you the basics and goes through a sufficient amount of examples for you to get what's going on. His exams are beyond simple as they test the easiest aspects of material. Grades consist of 3 midterm exams, a cumulative final, weekly homeworks, and online quizzes. The material covered in the course is easily accessible for anyone with a basic understanding of linear algebra. There are a few obscure concepts here and there, but he never tests you on them. Probably the easiest A I have ever gotten in a 400-level Math course. Highly recommended.
Charles Levermore MATH401 Expecting an A fiddlerkrt 05/24/2010	The class is supposed to be Applications of Linear Algebra, but we haven't learned a single one other than polynomial interpolation for what that is worth. The lectures are useless, the books sucks, and there isn't even a syllabus for the class. It took ten weeks to get the first exam back. The second exam wasn't too difficult but most of the class managed to do poorly since everyone has to learn from the book. The final was pretty easy. Most of the problems came from old tests. The homework for this class is beyond annoying. Although he assigns only 15-16 problems per week, some of these have up to "s" parts, meaning one problem is actually 19 problems. To make matters worse, the matrices increase from size as you go from a to s. Even with a calculator, the homework takes forever. I didn't even bother to do the last problem set since it effectively amounted to 85 problems. I wouldn't advise taking Levermore for this class. He can teach differential equations, but he fails when it comes to teaching Linear Algebra.

Vadim Kaloshin
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
11/19/2024

Like the other review said, he doesn’t teach applications. The class feels like 240 all over again and the homework is busy work. He doesn’t use the same textbook as Justin so Justin’s notes won’t help you and the final is worth 40% of our grade. Felt like I wasted a semester taking 401 with him

Vadim Kaloshin
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
11/19/2024

Like the other review said, he doesn’t teach any applications. Lectures are boring and the homework is busy work. He uses a different textbook from Justin so Justin’s notes won’t help you and the final is worth 40% of our grade. Felt like I wasted a semester taking 401 with him.

Vadim Kaloshin
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
11/14/2024

He is not a bad person but: Don't take 401 with him. He doesn't teach applications of lin alg, but rather a shallow overview of 240/405 and some applications at the end. He mainly reads the textbook and the homework is busy work. Mostly unorganized and will leave immediately after class so no one can ask questions (will not respond to your email either). Rescheduled an exam to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because "if we have the exam the Thursday before, no one will come to the Tuesday class"

Shin Song
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
10/31/2024

Professor Song has always provided very clear and useful lectures in her section of math401. She doesn't go too fast but also doesn't get bogged down on tangents or details or long proofs. She focuses on making sure students understand the important points and know how to apply whatever method or formula is in question. Her tests are pretty fair, I think with an average above 80, and we are given a packet of practice questions before each exam. We also have one in-class groupwork per week, which I found to be useful since it helped me apply what was went over in lecture, and these are pretty much free points as long as you show up to class. She also seems like a nice and friendly person in general. In conclusion I would highly recommend taking math401 with Song.

Yaxiong Liu
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
10/02/2024

Pretty easy class, i didn't really attend lecture and just read the justin notes and only went to class on exam day. I'm pretty sure the department is making him teach the class, and he's chill about it. If you really care about linear algebra and theory, I maybe wouldn't take it with him. He was perfect for my choice because I'm just trying to fulfill some stat minor requirements and I don't care too much about knowing lin alg that deeply. Take Wong if you wanna learn a lot.

Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/27/2024

Overall I enjoyed this class. The typical week had a lecture on Tuesday where we would look at some application of linear algebra, derive how we can use linear algebra to solve it, then maybe an example problem. On Thursday we would split into groups and do a matlab worksheet. The next week we would move onto a new, but often related topic. The topics and a lot of the coursework were derived from Justin's 401 notes, found on his website. The applications were generally straightforward enough with some practice and the worksheets were pretty doable. Lectures were pretty clear and thorough, but sometimes we got a little too into the weeds when it came to some of the derivations. Perhaps if you're a math major some of the more proofy derivations would be more interesting to you. The exams could be a bit tricky. Since the only coursework consisted of the matlab worksheets (no homework or anything) it was sometimes a little difficult to know what to practice. He provided some practice problems for each of the two midterms and the final. Typically there was a theoretical practice problem set and an applications practice problem set. Application practice can be supplemented with relevant sections of Justin's notes. Both parts were needed for the exam. Exams were usually mostly applications, with a couple proofs/derivations pulled from the practice worksheet (or fairly similar). These generally weren't long or difficult proofs, but often relied on some trick that you need to know. Applications were fairly straightforward, know how to use the formulas and shortcuts used in class. Especially for the final there are a lot of formulas to remember. There was also typically one theoretical problem or two that went beyond what we learned in class. You kind of had to figure out the answer on the fly. These weren't worth a ton of points, but to do well you needed to figure them out. With a good knowledge of linear algebra and some decent intuition, these were doable but not easy. Exam median scores were 78% and 79% for the midterms, and 75% for the final. The cutoffs were adjusted at the end of the semester. Of course this will vary semester to semester, but the cutoffs for this semester were: A- 89%, B- 76.1%, C- 62.2%.

Yaxiong Liu
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2024

If you're taking MATH401 with Liu, be prepared to learn most of the content on your own. The entire class is structured on Justin's notes (which are online at https://www.math.umd.edu/~immortal/MATH401/), and Liu basically reads the notes word for word and writes them on the whiteboard. No offense to the guy, but he can't understand English very well, so it's difficult to ask questions because he doesn't often understand what you're trying to ask. Because of this, I hardly showed up to class, as for me it was better to just read Justin's notes. That being said, the class is graded very fairly. A 90 is an A, and the grade breakdown is 40% two midterms, 30% final, 30% homework. The homework problems are taken directly from the notes, so they're not bad. The midterms and final are fair, and have the exact same format despite the final having a 2 hour time slot. I would recommend taking Liu if you're comfortable learning material on your own. If not, try someone else.

Yaxiong Liu
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/15/2024

This guy is an elitist asshole that thinks applied math is on par with being a street sweeper and he teaches the class like that he gives 0 fucks just reading justins notes word for word except its worse cause he's completely understandable too. I just stopped going to lecture as trying to pay attention to his made me feel like I was unlearning avoid this guy for math401 at all costs you will left to self teach it all.

Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/10/2024

I'm afraid he's going to get negatively reviewed by others this semester when he taught Math 401 because I feel like I was one of the few who genuinely enjoyed the course and liked his teaching style. I agree that sometimes he tends to choose the most complicated way to explain something or introduce very weird notation that doesn't make sense at first. But like scrambled eggs, it comes together eventually. You just have to be patient and not interrupt the guy like every two seconds. He's very funny during lectures and is extremely patient when answering students' questions. I don't have many things to say but that's because I really enjoyed the course and loved his lectures. I would take him again if he teaches something I haven't taken yet. My advice if you're taking this class with him: be sure to brush up on your linear algebra before the semester starts. It's technically a prerequisite so don't expect him to review anything you already learnt in 461/240. Some things you must know before the first class: what are bases, linear transformations, eigen vectors/values, gaussian elmination, taking inverse of matrices, ...

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/30/2024

Difficult to follow lecture; I would have preferred to read directly from the course notes. We did not finish all of the course's chapters. Finals are in a couple weeks, and I am still waiting on our midterm grade.

Jose Rigoberto Enrique Zelada Cifuentes
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/04/2024

Studying MATH401 with Professor Rigoberto had its ups and downs. Rigoberto knows his stuff, but explaining it can be tough. His lectures often left me confused, but luckily, I found help in Justin's notes and online videos. One good thing about the class was no regular homework, but the group work sessions felt like busywork. The exams were tricky. They focused a lot on theory and proofs, even though the class is supposed to be about practical applications. Rigoberto did cover some of it in class, but it wasn't enough, and most people got low scores. Overall, MATH401 with Rigoberto was okay. He's smart, but his teaching could be better, and the exams were tough.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/29/2023

Teaches directly from Justin's notes, to the point where going to class was only necessary for the groupworks. Also writing this a week and a half after finals, and I STILL DON'T HAVE THE MIDTERM/FINAL GRADES!

Rodrigo Trevino
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/19/2023

Great class, Dr. Trevino was very fun and the examples made the class fun to be in.

Rodrigo Trevino
MATH401

Expecting an A
DenialWhammy
12/16/2023

Didn't go to class except for groupworks. From the lectures I did go to, he was relatively clear. You'll find more use just studying from the online textbook, which gives you all the information you need to prepare for exams.

Yanir Rubinstein
MATH401

Anonymous
12/14/2023

Homework was fine, albeit a bit too much work at times. Exams were abysmal, as some of the questions were based on theory that the book neither delves into nor expects you to know when learning about the APPLICATIONS of linear algebra

Adam Kanigowski
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2023

This course is not very much work. You have one lecture and one in-class group assignment each week. There are two exams plus the final. I think the grading isn't very transparent in this class. You pretty much have to email the grader or go to office hours to figure out what you got marked down for. There isn't much to use to practice. He follows Justin Wyss-Gallifent & Allan Yashinski's notes exactly. I am not sure that he really adds much beyond the notes. Linear Algebra applications aren't really interesting until you have matrices that are to big to manipulate by hand. As a result, almost all of the text book examples are so complex as to require Matlab, but we don't have any calculators on the exam. While it's nice to not have homework, there really is nothing to practice for the exams. Sometimes we only need a conceptual understanding, and sometimes we need to prove some statements, but it isn't always clear which to go for. Lectures are fun or dull depending on the topic. Overall, there are some fun topics (and some boring ones) but I would say to choose another professor if you have the option. I also had Adam for 405, and I think he is significantly better for that class.

Rodrigo Trevino
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/11/2023

Solid teacher. He does a lot of interaction with his students in this course, even when he is lecturing. He also does a good job at explaining the meanings and derivations behind formulas, which I think is helpful so that you have some context for what you are actually doing and what it means. He does a lot of groupwork assignments, which I liked because it is so rare in college math classes to have the opportunity to work with peers. The exams are inconsistent - the first one was super lengthy and computationally heavy, but the rest have been very fair. He is also using Justin's notes (which are very good) but I'm not sure how well he knows them - when you ask him a question about homework or groupwork it seems like he's reading the question for the first time. He still gives good answers, but it just doesn't seem like this class is a huge priority of his, although I will say he did seem to be putting in more effort towards the end. Overall, very "decent to good" kind of teacher. Not amazing, but you can easily get a solid grade and learn about the material.

Rodrigo Trevino
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/08/2023

Very fun class, the professor kept the activities fun and his teaching style was generally relaxed but still made sure to cover the topics well

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/04/2023

ABSOLUTE GOAT HE'S AMAZING AND I LOVE HIM!!! Literally the best, he's an amazing lecturer and the midterms are take home. We also only have a final project instead of an exam, and he goes over all of the stuff in class. He also lets us out early about 25% of the time, and he's always super cheery and happy. The homework is super fair, and he's just overall amazing 10000/10 highly recommend

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Anonymous
11/23/2023

This guy is the goat. Every midterm is take home, and he goes over the questions with different numbers in class right before releasing the midterm.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Anonymous
11/16/2023

Actually the best professor ever, very engaging lecturer and has take home exams and no final exam. Would 1000% recommend

Allan Yashinski
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
07/18/2023

Had him for MATH461 and decided to take MATH401 with him as well. The class was a good experience, and Allan was always quick to reply to my countless emails asking for clarification regarding the content. The exams were very fair. The work load isn't light per se, but it helped me understand the content.

Allan Yashinski
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
07/11/2023

**Note: I took this as a summer course.** Allan is extremely adept at explaining math concepts beyond theory. He is helpful, understanding, and genuinely wants students to succeed. I found this course to be much easier than 461 because I learn best through real-life examples... and this class is all about real-life examples. We used free online textbooks, but I found that the lectures were enough. We covered a different (yet related) subject every 2 days with group work due at the end of the second lecture. The group work is done during lecture time and is basically a work sheet that you can talk through with a couple other students in a breakout room. Similar to his 461 class, MATLAB was a major part of the homework. I'd highly recommend making a class GroupMe and meeting separately on zoom because some of the homeworks can be long and difficult. Exams were fair; it was open note, open book, and had similar questions to previous exams (he provided previous exam solutions). However, a lot of people felt rushed to finish the exams on time. The average exam score was 79%, with the median being 82%. Pros: - Recorded lectures - Groupwork is probably a completion grade... don't quote me on that - Useful feedback/explanations provided on homework submissions - Open note, open book exams Cons: - Some homework problems take hours to figure out - May not have enough time on exams - Lectures aren't directly engaging or personable, only 1 other person had their camera on

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/27/2023

As others have stated Dr. Rosca is a nice person but is quite bad at teaching. Her lectures were unorganized and were directly copied off of Justin's MATH401 notes. She would often make errors on the board failing to catch them until others pointed it out. And perhaps worst of all, she does not grade exams... as in she doesn't even have a grade in the first or second midterm before we take the final exam. I don't know if/why this is allowed but it means you go into the final exam with 0 idea of how you are doing in the class. Ultimately, I had my final grade entered into Testudo without knowing what I actually ended up scoring on any of the exams (midterms or finals). I am inclined to say she just takes your groupwork/homework scores and uses that to determine your final grade in the class, but this is just a guess. The material covered in class, however is easy and shouldn't be a problem. Justin's notes are thorough and the math is not hard at all. Overall, I would pick a different professor for 401 if possible!

Xiaoqi Huang
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Charl1e1029
05/26/2023

Not the most entertaining lecturer and doesn't have the best English, but is a very kind individual who details exactly what is coming up and what is required for the course. Before every quiz and midterm, he sent a reminder of the content that was going to be covered and the date it was to be held. His examinations (although aren't always grammatically correct) are pretty easy and he always gives helpful hints within them to help you out! He follows Justin's notes for this course, and Justin always has the most luxurious math notes, so it is very easy to learn the content from Justin's notes hehe.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/25/2023

Though she is a bad lecturer, keep in mind that she is fairly new in teaching so she has big room for improvement. She is very nice in person. I agree with what the other reviewers had to say as well. Kind of wished we touched more on applications as the course name is applications of linear algebra, but we've focused on so much of abstract concept it feels like MATH405 instead.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/17/2023

The worst professor I've ever taken at UMD, wish I could give 0 stars. Lectures are very confusing and hard to follow, especially considering you must spend the majority of the time copying sloppily writing down notes from a chalkboard since no lecture materials are given online. Even still concepts given are hard to follow and examples gone over in class are too basic to be useful for homework or exam questions. homework and exam practice are not given answer keys so it's extremely hard to know if you are making mistakes and the professor refused to provide answer keys when requested in class. The professor is also slow to respond to emails and is not great at explanations even during office hours. The professor overall seems like a nice person and was always understanding but it was clear teaching this class was an afterthought compared to whatever research/graduate work she is doing. Avoid this professor.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
05/16/2023

She seems so nice and open, I can tell she is very knowledgeable on this subject and wants us to succeed. However, she doesn’t have a lot of teaching experience and this unfortunately led to a god-awful experience. All the other reviews are completely true, she teaches the theory and then expects you to understand it enough to figure out word problems with hardly any (if any) examples. While I thought the class was going to be on the Applications of Linear Algebra (like the class name says), she spent the first couple weeks going over everything from linear algebra (461) except making it way more complicated and confusing. I’d know how to do the problems she was going over but then she’d spend twice as long doing it in a super convoluted way and not explaining her process well. So that was a bad sign for when we moved into new topics. She gives absolutely zero resources for students, all lectures are written in chalk on the board so if you miss a lecture or are just sitting in a bad spot of the room where the board is not as visible, you’re screwed. No Canvas uploads, no links to resources, no example problems, not even solutions to homeworks or practice exams. There’s the textbook, but that can be even harder to understand when trying to compare it to the lecture notes. She doesn’t even tell you what will be on the exam, just “you should know everything we’ve covered”. Which, yeah I get that we should know it all, but that’s completely unhelpful when you’re trying to study and don’t even know what types of problems to practice. She expects everyone to be as smart as her (she’s clearly very smart) and be able to apply theoretical understanding to word problems with no prior experience or examples. For the final, after most people bombed the first two exams, she thankfully gave us a practice exam. However, when asked if she would provide answers for the practice exam she said no because she didn’t have enough time to write the solutions. But she expects us to have the time to be able to solve all the problems with no examples or references during finals week when we’re studying for multiple classes already? Frankly this class was ridiculously hard for no reason. She gave the solutions to our midterms (thank god) after we took them, and seeing the solutions you can see the problems aren’t that difficult to solve if you understand what they’re asking. However, when you’ve never seen a problem like it before, you don’t even know where to start. I’ve heard great things about other 401 professors, and I would recommend to anyone considering taking her classes to not, unless you’re super good at linear algebra and theory and understanding textbooks without any examples (there were 2-3 really smart students who did really well and brought up the exam averages, but the rest of us are lost and scared for the final)

Haizhao Yang
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/16/2023

This guy is the absolute goat. He's super chill and lenient with grading and his exams are cake. Homeworks and Matlab projects are very easy but there's one every week which isn't too bad. Lectures are hard to follow because he's more focused on presenting mathematics from a research perspective rather than a teaching perspective, but he doesn't expect us to know and doesn't test the complex material so it's not a big deal. You can just grind the textbook and do practice problems and then you're guaranteed a good grade. He's also very accommodating to students as well in terms of receiving feedback and changing exams so we're more tested on concepts with smaller matrices rather than computations on large matrices Take this guy for any class he teaches. You won't regret it.

Haizhao Yang
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/13/2023

Pros: -Very nice guy. -Gave exam problems similar to homework problems. -Made himself accessible and was always willing to answer questions. -Very thorough during lectures. Cons: -Course is a glorified rehash of MATH240. You won't really learn anything new. Did not feel like an "applications" of linear algebra class at all. The only applications we did were a few short Matlab projects which did not feel useful. -Lectures were confusing sadly due to his accent... he also did a lot of proofs which some might appreciate but I didn't care since this was an applications class. -Made a homework assignment and project due during the middle of spring break. -Second exam was a disaster because he did not work out the problems on his own ahead of time. This led to questions that had immense computational cost and questions that were practically unsolvable. He apologized though and tried to give as much partial credit as possible. This was Dr. Yang's first time teaching this course, so some leniency is certainly in order. By the time the next set of students takes it, it may be a completely different course. I wouldn't particularly recommend taking this class with Dr. Yang the way it's currently structured, but he really is a nice guy who cares about his students.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/08/2023

Current reviews are accurate, but note she is a really new teacher so she might be better over time. Nice person but not a good lecturer would avoid right now.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/05/2023

She seems like a nice person, but the lectures are very confusing, and the exams are difficult. You will have to spend lots of time on the weekly homework assignments and especially the Matlab projects. Would not recommend taking the class with her if you're taking this class with the mindset that it's the easiest 400 level math class, this is by far the hardest math class I have taken.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/05/2023

I think she's a nice person, but many of her lectures made no sense, and the Matlab projects were ridiculously difficult for no reason. The exams were also hard, and the class average is in the 50-60% range. MATH401 is supposed to be the easiest 400 level math class, but I felt like this class was harder than any other 400 level math class I have taken.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Anonymous
05/03/2023

Terribly confusing. Rambles on about theory that is so beyond human comprehension. Awful, awful MATLAB projects that require selling your soul to complete. Homeworks are also pretty bad and as the semester progresses her lecture notes become more and more useless. Nobody knows what is happening at this point and I fear what we will face in the final Exams are terrible and averages were low 50s, which she was not concerned about. Overall a terrible confusing experience that I wish I had avoided. She seems nice, but good lord.

Celine Torres
MATH401

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
04/28/2023

trash professor; terrible handwriting (very weird way of writing number 1s), extremely confusing matlab projects with vague wording, hard exams that take too long to finish; horrible at explaining concepts and very few people in the lecture walk out understanding the material; avoid at all costs

Haizhao Yang
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/24/2023

Dr. Yang is an extremely smart and kind professor. However, I find his lectures to be a bit confusing so I prefer to take notes on the textbook, which he directly follows. The homeworks are a few textbook problems each week, and the exams are problems taken directly from the textbook. The first exam was really fair, however the second one was significantly tricker, but he did not intentionally do that and as a result he graded extremely nicely (I was pleasantly surprised with my grade) and even removed one question from the exam that was harder than he initially thought. The matlab projects aren't too difficult either, just changing a few lines of code. Overall, he really wants his students to succeed and doesn't try to make anything unnecessarily tricky

Haizhao Yang
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/21/2023

Please ignore the other guy. Professor Yang is a good guy. He gave out a very fair first exam, which was literally the exact same as our homework problems. The second exam was definitely way harder, but he was literally doing the midterm WITH us (probably because he chose some random homework problems without checking them over and wanted to make sure the problems were okay). When he realized it was too hard, he said "Forget about problem 3. That one's too hard." He seemed very apologetic the next class in which he discussed the exam, asked for and listened to our feedback (a lot complained about having to factorize a cubic and working with a 4x4 matrix), and told us "I'll grade very kindly for this exam" and "I'll only give 2x3 and 3x3 matrices from now on" and "I'll make sure this doesn't happen again for the final exam." The person who gave a 1 star review probably didn't even go to that class because a lot of people skip lecture (and his lectures are admittedly not very helpful). For more information about the class, there's homework every week, and they are just ~10 exercises from the textbook. Each homework took me about 1-1.5 hours. He also gave us a few MATLAB projects throughout the semester where he gave us some code and we basically had to "modify" the code to do what it was supposed to do. Each project took me about 2 hours. I'm docking a star because he gave us homework and a project over spring break and because he really should've checked over the midterm problems before, not while, we took it. TLDR; Easy homework, easy matlab projects, kinda useless lectures, exams are fair. He messed up once, but he's planning on compensating us. He listens to his students' feedback on how unfair an exam is, which is something I think is worthy of praise.

Haizhao Yang
MATH401

Expecting a C
Anonymous
04/18/2023

Probably the worst professor I've had at UMD. Nice guy but his exams are entirely too long, gives out way too much homework, a lot of lectures are confusing and/or not on what we will be tested on, and he is a harsh grader when it comes to exams. Do not recommend!

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/13/2023

Professor Rowland truly cares about his students. Even if you are completely lost, if you go to office hours you will be able to get through the homework, projects, etc and you will leave with a better understanding of the material. I took MATH401 and 406 with him and I still use what I learned from those classes to this day. His lectures are sometimes unorganized but the assignments he gives you are always fair. Top, top professor

Tamas Darvas
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
04/04/2023

Tamas is the GOAT! Take him- exams are pretty similar to the homeworks and the final was a combination of the first two exams plus a couple more questions at the end. They weren't too difficult although they were computationally heavy. Homeworks were not that bad and could be done in a couple hours (very Matlab heavy). Pretty much just learn the process for each topic and be able to reproduce it to do well in the class. Also a really fun guy and made me want to come to lecture even though the content he covered in class went over my head most times.

Matthias Wellershoff
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/10/2023

I feel like his lectures were pretty clear and he is very willing to hear out student concerns. Very approachable guy who wants to see you do well. It was his first time teaching in the US, so he wasn't always sure about the pacing of the class and ended up skipping some material towards the end. Class was not too hard even though I'm not great at linear algebra.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/28/2022

Final grades were due days ago and she still has yet to grade our first 4 exams… the whole class went into the final only having homework and geoupwork grades in :(

Shalin Parekh
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/24/2022

I feel like I was retaking linear algebra class in 2/3 first semester. After that, we actually learned some applications of linear algebra which were not much but interesting enough. Homework was long and time-consuming since it's worth 35% of the total grade but it was not hard at all. We had a midterm for 30% and a final exam for 35%, they were exactly similar to his practice problems. Prof. Parekh is not a good lecturer but a great instructor. I remember he was doing rref in class for about 20-25 minutes, which was definitely unnecessary. He literally told us the cutoff for A was 70-80% and passing was 40-50% before the final even though the class average wasn't that low. He graded homework and exams very leniently. So, attend his lectures or at least the review lecture to have a high grade.

Matthias Wellershoff
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/24/2022

Very easy professor. I never showed up to classes but just read his lecture notes the day before the exams and got great scores. Ended up curving the final exam 28 points (so the 57% average is now a 80% average), but this shocks me as the questions were not hard. If you can read the lecture notes and understand theorems / examples you will be fine. Did not learn much, though.

Tamas Darvas
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/23/2022

The course is easy and Prof Darvas explains the material well. I would recommend him.

Matthias Wellershoff
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/22/2022

I had Matthias for the Fall 2022 Semester. He was a nice and well intentioned person. Although this was his first semester teaching at UMD, he really put in the effort to make the course enjoyable. He had prepared excellent class notes for the materials covered in class, which I really appreciate since it helped me learn better. I do, however, wish we could cover more applications of linear algebra instead of focusing too much on the theory. I'd 10/10 recommend him as a professor for MATH401.

Matthias Wellershoff
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2022

solid professor. it was his first time teaching the class and I thought he was pretty good. he has very clear guidelines, gives ample time for homeworks (which aren't too difficult), and the exams are pretty straight forward and predictable. also doesn't require attendance and records all lectures and posts notes

Matthias Wellershoff
MATH401

Anonymous
12/20/2022

Super nice guy. He was very open to feedback about lectures and other class matters. He gave a reasonable amount of work and his exams weren’t terribly difficult although the last exam was heavy on theory. He also does his best to make lectures interesting. On a more informal note, his hair is amazing and he says the words “pivot” and “variable” funny since he isn’t American. My only complaint is that I found his lecture style not very effective, but that may just be me.

Tamas Darvas
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/18/2022

Great prof. Exams are just like homework problems, and he has a great personality

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2022

After a few weeks, the entire class went downhill. I went to the lectures, but you do not need to. Very easy class. She started getting lost in lectures while reading from the textbook and sometimes just showed the textbook on the projector and read from it. We were expected to have 200 points of homework, but we were only assigned 2 or 3 in the first month, and then she stopped doing that. 2 exams, with in-person and take-home portions. Group works were fine, just had to go to them, and almost always got full credit. The exams were extremely fair compared to previous exams for the course, but we were always assigned the in-person portion weeks later than expected. The second take-home portion was released late and made due on reading day. The worst part of this class was that no exam grades have been released and I just took the final. Not one. Weird.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/16/2022

Very nice person, kind-hearted, and often has a bit of humor. She clearly understands the material, but it seemed a few weeks in the class started to die down and her reviews started to make sense. Although for MATH401, the class is not particularly difficult (due to easy material and maybe Justin's notes (which the course is run on) being fantastic, so it does not matter the teacher), she made it quite frustrating. We were told to expect some 200 points of homework assigned (one every other week or so), but we were only given 3 assignments and they were all at the start and only on the first few topics. We also were told to have 2 exams with in-person and take-home portions, which we did get, however, the take-home portions were released weeks after she said they would be and the second one was due 4 days before the final. She was extremely lenient with the due dates, but that does not matter as NO EXAM GRADES WERE POSTED for the entire semester. I am not sure if this was her fault or that she did not have enough help, either way extremely aggravating.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
09/18/2022

He's very patient and responsible. :) Sometimes he's funny as well

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A+
wmy78b
08/27/2022

Zhao is new here but he makes the course very clear and easy. HWs are super helpful and do-able. Go to class and practice a little bit, then you can get an A. Take it!!!

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/01/2022

Does a pretty decent job at explaining concepts but can go too fast but he will slow down if you ask. There is no final exam only a final project that I think most of the class got an A on. Homework's only have 2 problems due once a week. Practice problems reflect what will be tested. Overall highly recommend taking him for this class, it was as close to an easy A math class as you can get!

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/18/2022

One of the best professors in UMD.

Allan Yashinski
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/20/2022

This class is one of my favorite math courses I've taken. It takes linear algebra and shows various applications for it. Allan did a great job in lecture explaining the concepts. The homework's were representative of what was discussed in class and Exams represented the homework's. Groupworks were very helpful for practice and helped to clear up and confusion you may have. Overall class wasn't too difficult and if you study for exams you can easily get a B.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/20/2022

Really solid teacher. Homeworks weren't very difficult and neither were the exams. I would recommend taking him.

Wiseley Wong
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/18/2022

The absolute GOAT. Exams are easy because he tells you exactly what to study for and doesn't throw curveballs at you. Lectures are actually interesting and you can tell he has a lot of passion for what he's teaching. Does a review session the class before every exam which helps a lot in preparing for them. Homework isn't super busy, it teaches you the material, and you do some pretty neat stuff in them (for one of them, we did image compression in MATLAB). 10/10 recommend Wiseley for literally any class you can take with him.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Anonymous
05/16/2022

Lutian was a great professor this semester. He followed a good amount of the pre-existing 401 curriculum (with a good chunk of it coming from Justin's notes) but added materials from other textbooks as well (topics such as solving circuits). He is very approachable and responds to emails quickly. The homework was fair and he made it clear what the scope of content was for the exams. The final project in place of an exam was a good idea; I thought it was very fitting for an applications class.

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/11/2022

Dr. Rowland is super friendly and caring. He made an effort to learn every student's name and even studied their ELMs picture to try and remember who people were. I believe over time his organization and content will improve and therefore his overall teaching ability. However, for the time being, those skills were lacking enough that I won't be taking another course taught by him.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/07/2022

He is super nice. Just follow his examples and you can do well. We never have any difficult homework/exam for the whole semester. There is no final exam, only a project.

Lutian Zhao
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/26/2022

Really nice guy who takes the time to answer questions and make sure you understand. Teaching style is like Justin's where he will present you a topic, give you examples and then expects you to be able to replicate it. He makes exams weighted less than most math classes, so if you are a bad exam taker you will love Lutian. He also responds to emails instantly.

Allan Yashinski
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
04/10/2022

Class follows a predictable format: a few lectures, groupwork in class, then homework due, and then the cycle repeats. 12 topics and 4 exams that aren't cumulative. so each exam touches on roughly 3 topics. My one gripe is that sometimes the homework problems he writes himself can be a bit nasty to do. Usually they don't take too long, but you have to sit and think about them for a bit. I have learned a lot though!!!

Michael Jakobson
MATH401

Anonymous
02/04/2022

The worst professor I've ever had at UMD. You will be undergoing an entirely self-taught class if Jakobson is your professor. I will say that he is polite and always willing to answer questions, but that is if you can even tell what is going on in the class to formulate a question to begin with. He began the class writing on the chalkboard, albeit never turning around to actually talk to the class - just talking at the board about seemingly random topics. As of the second week of class he just shows us grainy pictures of notes (not even a PDF scan!!) on the projector and reads over it. It's seriously hard to learn anything from this prof, as half of the time I'm not even sure what the current topic is (his handwriting is not the best).

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
01/15/2022

Dr. Rowland is one of the nicest professors I have had; he prioritizes you learning the content and the class emphasizes consistent, project-based work. I felt like whenever I went to class, I went to learn about real-life applications of linear algebra instead of trying to pass a class for credits. With that being said, the only thing keeping him from 5 stars is that he can be disorganized or do incorrect arithmetic at times and that makes some concepts difficult to understand at first.

Justin Wyss-Gallifent
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/22/2021

One of the best if not THE best professor in the entire department. Possibly the entire university. You don't need me to convince you, just look down at the hundreds of reviews that say he is amazing.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/09/2021

Rosca is terrible at lecturing - she just reads from the textbook and whatever extra analysis or computation she provides is pretty unorganized. Thankfully, though, the textbook itself - written by the legendary Justin Wyss-Gallifent - is incredible. It's comprehensive, written well, and very simple to understand. The course content itself is really fun and interesting, and with a better lecturer the class itself would be great. I actually really enjoyed the class, but that was mainly because the content was really interesting and the groupworks/exams were relatively easy. Lectures are skippable if you time them right - there are groupworks assigned during class that are only announced during previous lectures.

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
07/19/2021

great professor

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
07/13/2021

Excellent. Mostly project based course, which you could receive adequate help on if needed. Projects were programming, and you could complete in Mathematica, MATLAB, or Python. Could tell he genuinely cared about students and lecture. Highly recommend this prof.

Todd Rowland
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
07/08/2021

A great and caring guy. Had him for Math401 online and he was genuinely caring to all his students. He made sure to have one-on-one meeting with all the students and asked how we were doing in the class and what we wanted to do in the future. The class was mainly projects, mini quizzes, and groupwork. For the quizzes we were given two tries which was very nice since he'll go over the quiz in class after the first try. Very responsive to emails and his office hours are great as he'll help you step by step with the project. He will extend office hour to help us. The projects were also very interesting too. He doesn't do plus minus grades. Definitely recommend and take him if you have the choice.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/27/2021

She just reads off the textbook. What she covers in 3 lectures I usually covered in 30 minutes. Stopped going to the lecture after the first week. The class is easy though, which is nice.

Justin Wyss-Gallifent
MATH401

Anonymous
01/12/2021

Amazing!! you could literally not know any linear algebra and get a B or better in this class. He gives you all the information that you need to know. Super nice guy, chill.

Justin Wyss-Gallifent
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/13/2020

Very good lecturer, definitely lives up to his reputation. I don't really need to go into much more, the rest of the 100+ reviews tell the rest of his story. He is one of the best lecturers I've seen at UMD. If you can take a class with him, DO IT!

Justin Wyss-Gallifent
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/19/2020

He is the coolest prof! No exams when classes moving online. And I have to say the project "cryptography" was so much fun to do. Such a surprise when seeing the original image was my id photo. Gotta give him 5 stars!

Stefan Doboszczak
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/08/2020

Stefan is great professor! He is very clear about class expectations, and spends a lot of time working with students to ensure they get class concepts.

Wiseley Wong
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/04/2020

I loved Wiseley. He's very accommodating as a professor (polled us on which of 3 days we'd prefer the first midterm). He's also great at lecturing. Dude comes in with his own bag of multiple colors of chalk so his lecture notes are color coded so students can better follow them. Uses tons of examples during his lectures and when he goes over proofs they are pretty thoroughly written and explained to make sure you understand each step. 401 is a pretty easy class, but I think Wiseley did a pretty good job of keeping it fun and interesting, I genuinely enjoyed what we learned in the class, and can see the usefulness of the applications of linear algebra presented (which given the class is called applications of lin alg I think this is the ultimate goal). Take Wiseley for any class. You won't regret it. Dude is organized, accommodating, and great at explaining and does not bore you to sleep like some others unfortunately.

Javier Morales Delgado
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/15/2020

If you hope to learn something, do not take Javier. However, if you want an A without learning anything, then I highly recommend Javier. He is an absolutely awful lecturer and his notes, assignments and exams are filled with typos. To make up for this, his exams are stupid easy and he offers up to 10% extra credit. He wants everyone to pass and an A is well within reach if you put a little effort into solving the graded practice exam (which is nearly identical to the actual exam.)

Fei Wang
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/21/2019

Very easy course, follows Justin Wyss-Gallifent's textbook, which is outstanding. MATH401, if following Justin's textbook, is a very interesting and easy course. Exams were very straightforward, with averages on both coming in around a 93%. Little workload, other than weekly or biweekly homeworks. Would highly recommend as an upper level elective.

Weikun Wang
MATH401

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
12/13/2019

WARNING! Only take this man if you have background knowledge of linear algebra because he doesn’t care about teaching anyone. He’ll tell you stuff straight from the book or notes from other teachers. Also, homeboy messed up grading my final and gave me a lower score than what I actually deserve so for the betterment of you and your gpa take Allan for 401 or any other teacher besides this man.

Raluca Rosca
MATH401

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/06/2019

This professor can't teach at all. Every time we are doing a problem from previous midterm/final exam, she always struggled to explain how to do it. I am completely loss during the lecture and review session. Only few students who are above average could follow her.

Weikun Wang
MATH401

Anonymous
11/22/2019

If you are thinking about it just don't. Only take him if you really know linear algebra because he does not explain things very good and only has office hours before class. He's nice so that gives him an extra star.

Jan Peszek
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
06/11/2019

Easiest A in 400 level math. Gives you practice exams that are near identical to the midterms/final. Plus a 15% extra credit assignement.

Dong Dong
MATH401

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
06/04/2019

I learned a lot from Dr. Dong. I suggest that you come to class regularly as reading the text alone is not sufficient to get a good score in his final exam.

Dong Dong
MATH401

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/16/2019

Great teacher! Very fun guy. Lecture is well-organized. His expectation for students is very clear, as his review is helpful for exams.

Jan Peszek
MATH401

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
03/03/2019

If you want an A-plus with minimal effort this is the class to take folks! I finished with a 101%, the average was a 95%. I worked maybe two hours a week and the exams matched the practice exams exactly. In case you slept through the exam or missed the entire class, there was also a convenient 20% extra credit assignment.

Samuel Braunfeld
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2018

Had him for 401 in Fall 2018 semester. Although it was his first time teaching at UMD, I'd say he's alright. Just alright, not good or great, but not terrible. Pros: -- Has groupwork assignments every week or two weeks, which are free 10/10's /padding to your grade. -- Homeworks due two classes after a groupwork, and he generally grades them fairly. -- He also posts almost all his notes online (which are well written), so missing class is not too big a deal if you learn well from textbooks and notes. Cons: -- Speaks fast and goes through the material quickly, often backpedaling to correct mistakes on the board. Not really an engaging lecturer. -- Exams had a few minor curveball problems here and there, could have been more fair.

Jeffrey Adams
MATH401

Expecting a B
Anonymous
04/13/2015

I don't like this professor because he is very unorganized and relaxed. He would change problems sets days after he assigned then. So I would do problems that weren't require. He post videos that you have to look at before lecture too. He always post them the day before or maybe the afternoon before. God forbid you want to get ahead in this class and do you work ahead of time because he either won't post assignments until later or he will change them. He also does problems out of the book then gets to lazy and doesn't finish them. If you can't finish one problem for us in class, how do you expect students to do 20 for their HW. He is pretty chill so he lectures are easy to understand and kind of dumb down for the average joe, but maybe to chill for students that want to get head.

Kasso Okoudjou
MATH401

Expecting an A
Anonymous
09/23/2012

I don't know why there are any negative reviews for this professor. Okoudjou teaches you the basics and goes through a sufficient amount of examples for you to get what's going on. His exams are beyond simple as they test the easiest aspects of material. Grades consist of 3 midterm exams, a cumulative final, weekly homeworks, and online quizzes. The material covered in the course is easily accessible for anyone with a basic understanding of linear algebra. There are a few obscure concepts here and there, but he never tests you on them. Probably the easiest A I have ever gotten in a 400-level Math course. Highly recommended.

Charles Levermore
MATH401

Expecting an A
fiddlerkrt
05/24/2010

The class is supposed to be Applications of Linear Algebra, but we haven't learned a single one other than polynomial interpolation for what that is worth. The lectures are useless, the books sucks, and there isn't even a syllabus for the class. It took ten weeks to get the first exam back. The second exam wasn't too difficult but most of the class managed to do poorly since everyone has to learn from the book. The final was pretty easy. Most of the problems came from old tests. The homework for this class is beyond annoying. Although he assigns only 15-16 problems per week, some of these have up to "s" parts, meaning one problem is actually 19 problems. To make matters worse, the matrices increase from size as you go from a to s. Even with a calculator, the homework takes forever. I didn't even bother to do the last problem set since it effectively amounted to 85 problems. I wouldn't advise taking Levermore for this class. He can teach differential equations, but he fails when it comes to teaching Linear Algebra.

Reviews for MATH401