MATH432 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Steven Chadwick MATH432 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/31/2024	The exams took a minimum of 2 weeks to get graded each time but usually longer for a reasonable class size. Homework grading was equally bad, so there was no solace in that either. We never got material back in time to study for a following exam. Frankly sometimes the homework for material on a coming exam was due a week after the exam itself, so the exam was completely blind on whether you really understood the material. His explanations often left almost everything to be desired with complex topics being sped through while simple things were fixated on for multiple classes, and material was referenced without ever actually being covered. Multiple times in lecture, he would mention that something was similar to something else, or to imagine it as if "x", but we had no basis for that other thing. He didn't pay attention at all to the pre-req's of the class, so if you hadn't previously taken abstract algebra you were pretty much out of luck given his inability to explain the material and the amount of algebra expected in the course on exams and homework. While it was nice that there were not many homeworks it also meant, that given he used basically every textbook problem for homeworks, there was a severe lack of material to review prior to an exam. The exams were a mix of copy pastes of textbook/hw problems, changed up versions of proofs of theorems or simpler but related results, or required you to have a strong intuition for the subject to solve from scratch. The grading on exams was often rather harsh, with a computational mistake easily losing 20% or more of the points of a question. Partial credit would often do a lot of work there, but given I would sometimes get a 60% on a question for vaguely attempting it and an 80% for giving a correct proof with a single mistake, effort never felt particularly rewarding. I also agree he's just too busy with other classes, as when I did go to office hours it was often either very crowded or I felt like he couldn't explain my question at all. Overall he's a very nice person and clearly means well, but is too poor at explaining concepts and helping students develop the needed intuition for a subject like topology to give students room to succeed.
Steven Chadwick MATH432 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2024	Chadwick really shouldn't be teaching these important 400-level courses, at least not yet. MATH432 is the only undergraduate course in topology, an incredibly important field that is used across most of modern mathematics, in addition to being researched in its own right. It's very useful to have a solid foundation in topology, in addition to the insight that it can give about seemingly unrelated things. Chadwick's style is to lecture basically verbatim from the textbook, which already isn't ideal for someone interested in seriously learning any topology, beyond what they could do just on their own. This situation was made significantly worse by his choice of textbook, Martin Crossley's "Essential Topology." The book is really really bad. It chooses to skip a lot of important topics in point-set topology (separation axioms, metric spaces, closures and limit points, etc.) and the exercises (which were often homework problems, and sometimes even exam problems) are not very instructive most of the time (show that Z as a subspace of R is Hausdorff, or which of these topologies on {a,b,c,d} are Hausdorff and none of them are lol). It spends a lot of time talking about algebraic topology, but without any real motivation or depth. It's also very hand-wavy about some technical details, and occasionally makes mistakes. These problems bled into the class, and made it essentially useless for anyone who wants to seriously learn topology. (one more annoying thing: he does not publicly correct errors in his lectures). If you attend any other similar 400-level with a decent professor (403/404, 405, 437, 436, 446 etc.) the difference will be clear. As for the course mechanics, he's a slow grader, and there were three exams. He will curve exams when he thinks they're too hard or long, and I think he adjusted cutoffs at the end? He's a nice guy, and mostly available to answer questions (although you may not get a satisfying answer). I bet some of these problems are because he is the chair for the 140/141 sequence, which seems like a lot of work to do alongside teaching something like 432. I'm sure he's a great MATH140 prof, but for upper-level courses, stay away.
Steven Chadwick MATH432 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/17/2024	horrible professor, do not take him. his lectures are extremely slow and boring, and he consistently fails to provide intuition behind concepts. furthermore, the textbook he chose for the book was awful, oftentimes not giving clear definitions and skipping proofs, and sometimes skipping important concepts needed to fully understand the subject. chadwick also failed to grade assignments in a timely manner, making it hard to prepare for upcoming tests when he hadn't returned the last one. overall, chadwick should really not be teaching 400 level math, and i would recommend no one to take him for an upper level.
Steven Chadwick MATH432 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/14/2024	For MATH432 he was pretty bad at explaining things and was a very slow grader. He would not provide any real intuition and it was left completely up to the students to figure out how to conceptualize something. The class matched the textbook exactly and exam questions mirrored textbook and homework problems pretty well, so I would generally know what to expect on exams. He did give us a lot of time to do the homework, which I appreciated. Overall, the class was fine, and, while Chadwick isn't a terrible teacher, he isn't a good one either.
Steven Chadwick MATH432 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/10/2024	Chadwick should not be teaching 400 levels. He taught Math432 very differently form previous professors, and the course really suffered for it. He doesn't seem like he wants to be teaching it, and although he's nice, he's far too busy with 140/141 to dedicate any serious time to the course. He returns exams very late (returned exam 2 after we had already taken exam 3, and exam 3 after the end of the semester) but provides helpful feedback. If you have any other option for a 400 level, take anyone else.
Gregory Chadwick MATH432 Anonymous 11/22/2024	probably a nice person but he just cant teach math 400s
Boyu Zhang MATH432 Expecting an A- Anonymous 08/23/2024	Boyu Zhang is a very passionate teacher and wants the best for his students. You will rarely meet another teacher who cares more for his students. He is passionate about math and teaching, and he always seeks to improve his teaching. However, I will admit that he is still inexperienced. He is a young professor, and he likely did not have much experience teaching before. As a result, he sometimes rushes or does not explain stuff clearly, and some lectures may leave you completely dumbfounded. Talk with him outside of class, ask him about math (doesn't have to be related to the class), go to his office hours, and he will take care of you. He is also fair with the curve and curves a good portion of the class to an A.
Christian Zickert MATH432 Anonymous 01/23/2022	He's great!! Lectures were entertaining and he's quite passionate about math. The class isn't easy but honestly the exams were very fair and never had crazy proofs or anything like that. Awesome class, nice prof, highly recommend if you're interested in this sort of material.
Harry Tamvakis MATH432 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/10/2019	He goes very fast, and the homework is hard. But I think he is a good professor and he is usually always available as stated. You need to put in a lot of work to do well in the class. MATH432 has a reputation as one of the most difficult undergraduate classes and Tamvakis lives that up. Unlike most of the professors of previous, he chose to forego any discussion on the basics of algebraic topology for more specialized topics, like metric space completion and Arzela-Ascoli.
Sarah Yeakel MATH432 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/11/2018	Does a good job teaching complex material. Really good at drawing stuff for visual intuition. Sometimes moves pretty fast. Organized. Fair exams. Homework is on the hard side but it prepares you for exams.

Steven Chadwick
MATH432

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/31/2024

The exams took a minimum of 2 weeks to get graded each time but usually longer for a reasonable class size. Homework grading was equally bad, so there was no solace in that either. We never got material back in time to study for a following exam. Frankly sometimes the homework for material on a coming exam was due a week after the exam itself, so the exam was completely blind on whether you really understood the material. His explanations often left almost everything to be desired with complex topics being sped through while simple things were fixated on for multiple classes, and material was referenced without ever actually being covered. Multiple times in lecture, he would mention that something was similar to something else, or to imagine it as if "x", but we had no basis for that other thing. He didn't pay attention at all to the pre-req's of the class, so if you hadn't previously taken abstract algebra you were pretty much out of luck given his inability to explain the material and the amount of algebra expected in the course on exams and homework. While it was nice that there were not many homeworks it also meant, that given he used basically every textbook problem for homeworks, there was a severe lack of material to review prior to an exam. The exams were a mix of copy pastes of textbook/hw problems, changed up versions of proofs of theorems or simpler but related results, or required you to have a strong intuition for the subject to solve from scratch. The grading on exams was often rather harsh, with a computational mistake easily losing 20% or more of the points of a question. Partial credit would often do a lot of work there, but given I would sometimes get a 60% on a question for vaguely attempting it and an 80% for giving a correct proof with a single mistake, effort never felt particularly rewarding. I also agree he's just too busy with other classes, as when I did go to office hours it was often either very crowded or I felt like he couldn't explain my question at all. Overall he's a very nice person and clearly means well, but is too poor at explaining concepts and helping students develop the needed intuition for a subject like topology to give students room to succeed.

Steven Chadwick
MATH432

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/21/2024

Chadwick really shouldn't be teaching these important 400-level courses, at least not yet. MATH432 is the only undergraduate course in topology, an incredibly important field that is used across most of modern mathematics, in addition to being researched in its own right. It's very useful to have a solid foundation in topology, in addition to the insight that it can give about seemingly unrelated things. Chadwick's style is to lecture basically verbatim from the textbook, which already isn't ideal for someone interested in seriously *learning* any topology, beyond what they could do just on their own. This situation was made significantly worse by his choice of textbook, Martin Crossley's "Essential Topology." The book is really really bad. It chooses to skip a lot of important topics in point-set topology (separation axioms, metric spaces, closures and limit points, etc.) and the exercises (which were often homework problems, and sometimes even exam problems) are not very instructive most of the time (show that Z as a subspace of R is Hausdorff, or which of these topologies on {a,b,c,d} are Hausdorff and none of them are lol). It spends a lot of time talking about algebraic topology, but without any real motivation or depth. It's also very hand-wavy about some technical details, and occasionally makes mistakes. These problems bled into the class, and made it essentially useless for anyone who wants to seriously learn topology. (one more annoying thing: he does not publicly correct errors in his lectures). If you attend any other similar 400-level with a decent professor (403/404, 405, 437, 436, 446 etc.) the difference will be clear. As for the course mechanics, he's a slow grader, and there were three exams. He will curve exams when he thinks they're too hard or long, and I think he adjusted cutoffs at the end? He's a nice guy, and mostly available to answer questions (although you may not get a satisfying answer). I bet some of these problems are because he is the chair for the 140/141 sequence, which seems like a lot of work to do alongside teaching something like 432. I'm sure he's a great MATH140 prof, but for upper-level courses, stay away.

Steven Chadwick
MATH432

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/17/2024

horrible professor, do not take him. his lectures are extremely slow and boring, and he consistently fails to provide intuition behind concepts. furthermore, the textbook he chose for the book was awful, oftentimes not giving clear definitions and skipping proofs, and sometimes skipping important concepts needed to fully understand the subject. chadwick also failed to grade assignments in a timely manner, making it hard to prepare for upcoming tests when he hadn't returned the last one. overall, chadwick should really not be teaching 400 level math, and i would recommend no one to take him for an upper level.

Steven Chadwick
MATH432

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/14/2024

For MATH432 he was pretty bad at explaining things and was a very slow grader. He would not provide any real intuition and it was left completely up to the students to figure out how to conceptualize something. The class matched the textbook exactly and exam questions mirrored textbook and homework problems pretty well, so I would generally know what to expect on exams. He did give us a lot of time to do the homework, which I appreciated. Overall, the class was fine, and, while Chadwick isn't a terrible teacher, he isn't a good one either.

Steven Chadwick
MATH432

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/10/2024

Chadwick should not be teaching 400 levels. He taught Math432 very differently form previous professors, and the course really suffered for it. He doesn't seem like he wants to be teaching it, and although he's nice, he's far too busy with 140/141 to dedicate any serious time to the course. He returns exams very late (returned exam 2 after we had already taken exam 3, and exam 3 after the end of the semester) but provides helpful feedback. If you have any other option for a 400 level, take anyone else.

Gregory Chadwick
MATH432

Anonymous
11/22/2024

probably a nice person but he just cant teach math 400s

Boyu Zhang
MATH432

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
08/23/2024

Boyu Zhang is a very passionate teacher and wants the best for his students. You will rarely meet another teacher who cares more for his students. He is passionate about math and teaching, and he always seeks to improve his teaching. However, I will admit that he is still inexperienced. He is a young professor, and he likely did not have much experience teaching before. As a result, he sometimes rushes or does not explain stuff clearly, and some lectures may leave you completely dumbfounded. Talk with him outside of class, ask him about math (doesn't have to be related to the class), go to his office hours, and he will take care of you. He is also fair with the curve and curves a good portion of the class to an A.

Christian Zickert
MATH432

Anonymous
01/23/2022

He's great!! Lectures were entertaining and he's quite passionate about math. The class isn't easy but honestly the exams were very fair and never had crazy proofs or anything like that. Awesome class, nice prof, highly recommend if you're interested in this sort of material.

Harry Tamvakis
MATH432

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/10/2019

He goes very fast, and the homework is hard. But I think he is a good professor and he is usually always available as stated. You need to put in a lot of work to do well in the class. MATH432 has a reputation as one of the most difficult undergraduate classes and Tamvakis lives that up. Unlike most of the professors of previous, he chose to forego any discussion on the basics of algebraic topology for more specialized topics, like metric space completion and Arzela-Ascoli.

Sarah Yeakel
MATH432

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/11/2018

Does a good job teaching complex material. Really good at drawing stuff for visual intuition. Sometimes moves pretty fast. Organized. Fair exams. Homework is on the hard side but it prepares you for exams.

Reviews for MATH432