MATH416 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Wojciech Czaja MATH416 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2024	Like the 12/02/24 review says, the prof doesn't really give us example problems of the material when we are first introduced to it. He also does sometimes skip steps in his lectures and makes some things sound obvious when they are not. The title of the class "Applied Harmonic Analysis: An Introduction to Signal Processing," can be somewhat misleading. The exams and lectures are mostly theoretical and the homework include some theory and some application (mainly in the form of MATLAB coding). I'll break down each of these 3 components: Lectures: Pretty theoretical especially towards the middle and end. Expect to know linear algebra pretty well (Math240 material, idt Math405/401 is necessary). Czaja is a good lecturer though in that his lectures are very structured and easy to follow. He posts his notes online and his notes are very detailed (almost too detailed, but like one reviewer said, he sometimes writes certain things are "easy to see" when they aren't). You should still go to class though because he does say things in lecture that aren't in the notes Exams: This is what most people have mixed feelings about. Like previous reviewers mention, if you can see the trick/gimmick on each question, the exams are easy, otherwise the exams can be tough. This, on top of the fact that the prof doesn't go over many examples/doesn't make practice exams, means the only "real" way to study for these exams is to try stuff out on your own and study the lecture notes rigorously. While there are some problems in the profs lecture notes that do help, some exam questions will catch you off guard and there's no real way to expect it. Averages on exams are in the 60-70% range. Homeworks: Mostly chill, some are theoretical but not egregious and others are just implementing stuff in MATLAB. Studying the homeworks can sometimes help for the exams too. Pretty sure most of the class did well on the homeworks Additional Info: His grading is so that your lowest 2 homeworks get dropped and lowest midterm (out of 3) gets dropped. For Fall 2024, he again implemented the policy where you can take the grade of all 3 midterms and the first 8 homeworks as your final grade, and not take the final. However, for Fall 2024 our third midterm was NOT take home (and was also the day we came back from Thanksgiving Break). TLDR: If you care about/enjoy the theoretical math that propels signal processing and data representation techniques, this class might be for you. If you don't mind spending time on your own investigating these theoretical aspects, this class is for you. Else, I can understand why some people are frustrated with the way this class is taught and you might be better off taking something less stressful.
Wojciech Czaja MATH416 Anonymous 12/02/2024	I do not understand why Czaja's review score is so high, he's a decent lecturer but he does his best to make the material as obtuse as possible and give as little actual help as he can, all while feeling kinda pompous about it the whole time. He does not do examples, he does not explain the application of the material that you're teaching you, and he does not give you practice problems. I have our third exam tomorrow, and I have gotten no feedback on any of the three homework assignments I have turned in on this material. There is no POSSIBLE way for me to know if I actually understand the material or not. The textbook has typos and is difficult to comprehend, and often skips huge chunks of work saying that it is "easy to see" how something works out, which is simply lazy writing. A few lectures ago he gave the entire class a quadratic system of equations with four variables, one of the few actual example problems he has done this entire semester, and not one person knew how to do it. Rather than actually do his job and teach us, he made fun of us for not knowing something that "a highschooler should know how to do" and then proceeded to just write the answer on the board without showing how he got it. I went to his class notes to see a deeper derivation only to find even in the notes he says "it's easy to see" and then not explain it. I realize that the class material is difficult, but if he actually explained what we were doing instead of just spouting theory at us for 3 hours a week it might be easier to understand. We're nine lectures in to the unit on wavelet transforms and I still could not tell you what they actually do. This class fundamentally fails to teach you signal processing. Sure I know how the transforms are defined, but if you asked me what the use case was for them I would not have the slightest idea where to start.
Wojciech Czaja MATH416 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2024	Things to note: 3 midterms one of which is dropped; 10 hws 2 of which are dropped In our class, the third midterm was a take-home free one (basically guaranteed 95+) and so, the best of Midterm 1 and Midterm 2 (which are legit midterms) along w/ M3 are going to make the 2 midterms that count for your grade. He will offer an opportunity to drop the final and take the score of the 3 midterms and the first 8 hws if you want to take that opportunity up. Regarding the homeworks, most of them are pretty chill -- he doesn't really offer help in OH though so you gotta learn through Stack Overflow, GPT, and just trying stuff out. The midterms are challenging asf -- the thing is they aren't really anything like the homeworks and are way more proof-based than what you'd expect given what he describes the midterms as. Only 1 or 2 of the questions are "here, do it" questions, the rest are showing some type of property or proof question which is significantly harder. As others mentioned, if you can notice the gimmick fast enough, it's normally a 2-3 liner. If you can push yourself through, it can take 10-15 minutes sometimes and you can get the answer. But chances are, you might just f*ck it up because there's no really good way to prepare (you just have to remember and notice the right things in the moment). Definitely use the practice problems from his notes though because they are somewhat similar to the actual midterm (the homework problems that he assigns aren't though). Lecture-wise, he's pretty good. Just, it gets a bit tiring after a while especially because a lot of the content is cumulative (especially near the end of the course), so if you forget things from previous lectures, you're kinda F-ed. That being said, the accent isn't really an issue and you get kinda used to the whole structure of the course after a while. All in all, I'd just suggest being TOTALLY aware that you're interested in DSP stuff before taking this course becuase while the material can be extremely interesting and fun to learn, if you're not interested enough for it to motivate getting through the times where you're misunderstanding things or have to read through the notes, you'll ultimately end up hating the course and neglecting it leading to not great outcomes. Overall, pretty good course, but requires more mathematical maturity than just a MATH240+MATH141 prereq (I think he should also add a MATH401 or MATH405 pre-req as well since some of the linalg does get a bit crazy). Make sure to attend lecture and focus/lock-in on the shit so you don't fall behind.
Wojciech Czaja MATH416 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/20/2024	416 content is definitely challenging but Czaja explains it very well. Content is genuinely interesting. He writes exams so that all questions have 2-3 line simple (elegant) answers, especially proofs, but if you don't catch it at the moment exams are hard. Cheat sheet is allowed and he drops one midterm. Getting a good grade in this class isn't hard if you keep up with homework and average 70s on exams. He changed the final to be optional for our class.
Stefan Doboszczak MATH416 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/17/2021	Very generous with grading. Any homework if you emailed him he would give you an extension. Office hour appointments out of scheduled times if you asked, and generous test grading. Very fair teacher for a wicked hard class.
Charles Levermore MATH416 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/29/2020	Levermore is cool - as long as you can endure his snarky attitude. His lecture is fine, but I find the pace a bit slow. That said, this man should be banned from teaching new courses. He couldn't finish writing the homework on time for most of the time of the semester, so we had 5 psets for spring break and 4 psets for final's week. That was just not very reasonable. The exams were take-homes because of the pandemic. While the first exam was long and easy (the format was similar to the hw with the workload doubled), the second one was really tedious (he picked the hardest + longest problem from each hw and compiled them together). That was one of the instances when I look at my solution and wonder how on earth would the instructor have the mental power to read through my solution. He graded things very leniently at the end, I'm not sure if it was because he felt sorry for the way he bombarded us with giant hw packages or he's just lenient. Anyway.. the material is very interesting, I recommend learning some harmonic analysis on your own if you get a chance. The text used was Wickerhauser - alright but not the best for self-study (<- so you can't learn everything by reading the book and not attending lectures).
Wojciech Czaja MATH416 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/10/2019	For this class, he's honestly a really good lecturer. He explains how things came to be and why things matter, which is always a good thing when introducing left field concepts. So I enjoyed his lectures a lot. Overall the class is pretty straightforward in the content, as his lecture notes span maybe 30 or 40 pages for the entire course (of course, they are not fully complete). He also allows for students to make up grades with an extra-credit project worth around 10%, but the project comes with very high standards. The exams are what I call "troll": as a veteran student of mathematics they consist of various little tricks which are decently easy to see if you are decently mathematically mature and which seem intractable if you are not, which is why the exam averages are 60-70%. Overall the course is interesting and I would recommend people take it for an elective or something like that.

Wojciech Czaja
MATH416

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/06/2024

Like the 12/02/24 review says, the prof doesn't really give us example problems of the material when we are first introduced to it. He also does sometimes skip steps in his lectures and makes some things sound obvious when they are not. The title of the class "Applied Harmonic Analysis: An Introduction to Signal Processing," can be somewhat misleading. The exams and lectures are mostly theoretical and the homework include some theory and some application (mainly in the form of MATLAB coding). I'll break down each of these 3 components: Lectures: Pretty theoretical especially towards the middle and end. Expect to know linear algebra pretty well (Math240 material, idt Math405/401 is necessary). Czaja is a good lecturer though in that his lectures are very structured and easy to follow. He posts his notes online and his notes are very detailed (almost too detailed, but like one reviewer said, he sometimes writes certain things are "easy to see" when they aren't). You should still go to class though because he does say things in lecture that aren't in the notes Exams: This is what most people have mixed feelings about. Like previous reviewers mention, if you can see the trick/gimmick on each question, the exams are easy, otherwise the exams can be tough. This, on top of the fact that the prof doesn't go over many examples/doesn't make practice exams, means the only "real" way to study for these exams is to try stuff out on your own and study the lecture notes rigorously. While there are some problems in the profs lecture notes that do help, some exam questions will catch you off guard and there's no real way to expect it. Averages on exams are in the 60-70% range. Homeworks: Mostly chill, some are theoretical but not egregious and others are just implementing stuff in MATLAB. Studying the homeworks can sometimes help for the exams too. Pretty sure most of the class did well on the homeworks Additional Info: His grading is so that your lowest 2 homeworks get dropped and lowest midterm (out of 3) gets dropped. For Fall 2024, he again implemented the policy where you can take the grade of all 3 midterms and the first 8 homeworks as your final grade, and not take the final. However, for Fall 2024 our third midterm was NOT take home (and was also the day we came back from Thanksgiving Break). TLDR: If you care about/enjoy the theoretical math that propels signal processing and data representation techniques, this class might be for you. If you don't mind spending time on your own investigating these theoretical aspects, this class is for you. Else, I can understand why some people are frustrated with the way this class is taught and you might be better off taking something less stressful.

Wojciech Czaja
MATH416

Anonymous
12/02/2024

I do not understand why Czaja's review score is so high, he's a decent lecturer but he does his best to make the material as obtuse as possible and give as little actual help as he can, all while feeling kinda pompous about it the whole time. He does not do examples, he does not explain the application of the material that you're teaching you, and he does not give you practice problems. I have our third exam tomorrow, and I have gotten no feedback on any of the three homework assignments I have turned in on this material. There is no POSSIBLE way for me to know if I actually understand the material or not. The textbook has typos and is difficult to comprehend, and often skips huge chunks of work saying that it is "easy to see" how something works out, which is simply lazy writing. A few lectures ago he gave the entire class a quadratic system of equations with four variables, one of the few actual example problems he has done this entire semester, and not one person knew how to do it. Rather than actually do his job and teach us, he made fun of us for not knowing something that "a highschooler should know how to do" and then proceeded to just write the answer on the board without showing how he got it. I went to his class notes to see a deeper derivation only to find even in the notes he says "it's easy to see" and then not explain it. I realize that the class material is difficult, but if he actually explained what we were doing instead of just spouting theory at us for 3 hours a week it might be easier to understand. We're nine lectures in to the unit on wavelet transforms and I still could not tell you what they actually do. This class fundamentally fails to teach you signal processing. Sure I know how the transforms are defined, but if you asked me what the use case was for them I would not have the slightest idea where to start.

Wojciech Czaja
MATH416

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/08/2024

Things to note: 3 midterms one of which is dropped; 10 hws 2 of which are dropped In our class, the third midterm was a take-home free one (basically guaranteed 95+) and so, the best of Midterm 1 and Midterm 2 (which are legit midterms) along w/ M3 are going to make the 2 midterms that count for your grade. He will offer an opportunity to drop the final and take the score of the 3 midterms and the first 8 hws if you want to take that opportunity up. Regarding the homeworks, most of them are pretty chill -- he doesn't really offer help in OH though so you gotta learn through Stack Overflow, GPT, and just trying stuff out. The midterms are challenging asf -- the thing is they aren't really anything like the homeworks and are way more proof-based than what you'd expect given what he describes the midterms as. Only 1 or 2 of the questions are "here, do it" questions, the rest are showing some type of property or proof question which is significantly harder. As others mentioned, if you can notice the gimmick fast enough, it's normally a 2-3 liner. If you can push yourself through, it can take 10-15 minutes sometimes and you can get the answer. But chances are, you might just f*ck it up because there's no really good way to prepare (you just have to remember and notice the right things in the moment). Definitely use the practice problems from his notes though because they are somewhat similar to the actual midterm (the homework problems that he assigns aren't though). Lecture-wise, he's pretty good. Just, it gets a bit tiring after a while especially because a lot of the content is cumulative (especially near the end of the course), so if you forget things from previous lectures, you're kinda F-ed. That being said, the accent isn't really an issue and you get kinda used to the whole structure of the course after a while. All in all, I'd just suggest being TOTALLY aware that you're interested in DSP stuff before taking this course becuase while the material can be extremely interesting and fun to learn, if you're not interested enough for it to motivate getting through the times where you're misunderstanding things or have to read through the notes, you'll ultimately end up hating the course and neglecting it leading to not great outcomes. Overall, pretty good course, but requires more mathematical maturity than just a MATH240+MATH141 prereq (I think he should also add a MATH401 or MATH405 pre-req as well since some of the linalg does get a bit crazy). Make sure to attend lecture and focus/lock-in on the shit so you don't fall behind.

Wojciech Czaja
MATH416

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
02/20/2024

416 content is definitely challenging but Czaja explains it very well. Content is genuinely interesting. He writes exams so that all questions have 2-3 line simple (elegant) answers, especially proofs, but if you don't catch it at the moment exams are hard. Cheat sheet is allowed and he drops one midterm. Getting a good grade in this class isn't hard if you keep up with homework and average 70s on exams. He changed the final to be optional for our class.

Stefan Doboszczak
MATH416

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/17/2021

Very generous with grading. Any homework if you emailed him he would give you an extension. Office hour appointments out of scheduled times if you asked, and generous test grading. Very fair teacher for a wicked hard class.

Charles Levermore
MATH416

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/29/2020

Levermore is cool - as long as you can endure his snarky attitude. His lecture is fine, but I find the pace a bit slow. That said, this man should be banned from teaching new courses. He couldn't finish writing the homework on time for most of the time of the semester, so we had 5 psets for spring break and 4 psets for final's week. That was just not very reasonable. The exams were take-homes because of the pandemic. While the first exam was long and easy (the format was similar to the hw with the workload doubled), the second one was really tedious (he picked the hardest + longest problem from each hw and compiled them together). That was one of the instances when I look at my solution and wonder how on earth would the instructor have the mental power to read through my solution. He graded things very leniently at the end, I'm not sure if it was because he felt sorry for the way he bombarded us with giant hw packages or he's just lenient. Anyway.. the material is very interesting, I recommend learning some harmonic analysis on your own if you get a chance. The text used was Wickerhauser - alright but not the best for self-study (<- so you can't learn everything by reading the book and not attending lectures).

Wojciech Czaja
MATH416

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/10/2019

For this class, he's honestly a really good lecturer. He explains how things came to be and why things matter, which is always a good thing when introducing left field concepts. So I enjoyed his lectures a lot. Overall the class is pretty straightforward in the content, as his lecture notes span maybe 30 or 40 pages for the entire course (of course, they are not fully complete). He also allows for students to make up grades with an extra-credit project worth around 10%, but the project comes with very high standards. The exams are what I call "troll": as a veteran student of mathematics they consist of various little tricks which are decently easy to see if you are decently mathematically mature and which seem intractable if you are not, which is why the exam averages are 60-70%. Overall the course is interesting and I would recommend people take it for an elective or something like that.

Reviews for MATH416