MATH416 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
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
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