Kathryn Truman | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/05/2024	tl;dr: one of my favorite professors and courses, but it's hard AND time consuming for most. prepares you really well though. median scores: Groupwork: 95.63% Homework: 87.96% Quizzes: 66.26% Exam 1: 80.38% Exam 2: 63.00% Exam 3: 63.50% Final: 73.25% Grade Median: ~75.52% (aligns with PlanetTerp grade data) Lectures: Energetic professor with really engaging lectures. Pretty necessary unless you're going to office hours to make up for what you missed, since the textbook isn't enough to go straight into the homework. Structure is introducing the topic, giving you the important definitions, and then walking through as many examples as possible, step by step, until time runs out. The examples are usually proofs that are already in the textbook or going to be on the homework, but sometimes it's a really hard proof (that you'll never have to recreate or remember) that introduces the topic at a high level to you. Homework: A few questions are similar to the ones walked through in class, but it's never as easy as just switching up the numbers in your answer. For the rest, you need the notes and textbook with you. The questions scale up in difficulty and build off each other, so it's not like you have to stare blankly at a question until a full proof pops in your head. Grading is mostly off attempting/completing every question, with 3 of them randomly selected to get graded on accuracy. (you should be going to office hours at least once a week before the deadline to get your homework checked over) Quiz and exam questions are modified homework questions, or something close enough that doing the homework would prepare you to solve it within the time limit. It won't always be a graded question that's selected for exams, so you really have to complete and understand the entire HW to be prepared for them. Quizzes: 10 minutes long and happen the lecture after the homework was due (so 2 days). Structure is one definition and one proof or just one proof. Exams: A lot for 50 minutes, but still doable imo. The second you get stuck, you should probably move on to rack up as much partial credit. At the start of exam review days, Kate tells you the weight of each question, what section it covers, and its format -- true/false, working with definitions, or a full proof. Grading: Partial credit is big, if you couldn't get the algebra down or connect the dots on one last part, you'd still get like 70-80% of the points on that question. You lose a small number of points for not including minor justifications like "because f is a function" or "because f is continuous". It's necessary you include them/understand why, but a little annoying since those points can add up to like 3-5% on exams when you're stressed and pressed for time. Other: - one homework, one quiz, and one groupwork dropped - lectures recorded on request - spent 6-10 hours per week, peaking at the start of proofs (week 2) and again at the MATH410 content (the last third) - the final is cumulative but really just Exam 3.5 - if you took CMSC250, basic proofs, set theory and relations/functions are the main overlap, but i don't remember if 250 went as deep as this for relations and functions - hints to groupwork posted after they're due - there's a day-by-day "reading calendar" on canvas that suggests what sections of the textbook to read and what homework questions you should try to have completed i think the course being so dense means it sticks with you heavy, cause this was the final I studied for the least
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/15/2024	Highly recommend taking Kate for 310. She's super nice and her lectures are extremely clear. Just start your homeworks as early as possible since they do admittedly take a while and go to office hours/email her as often as possible. The homeworks are only partially graded and 2 out of 10 points of each one are based on completion. It might feel weird to have so many questions and only have some of them graded but trust me when I say it works better that way. If you're anything like me, then unless you're a genius or you already know how to write proofs, you really need the basically forced practice or you'll probably fail or at least not get a very good grade, since I know for sure I wouldn't have done nearly as many problems if they weren't required. Definitely make sure to memorize and understand your definitions or you'll get cooked by the timers. Other than that, quizzes and exams are extremely fair and are more or less just slight variations on homework/quiz/groupwork questions.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A anonymous1 12/13/2023	One of my favorite professors of all time. You must go to office hours if you need help because there is no TA, but Prof Truman is so sweet, approachable, and funny. She makes the content as easy as possible, and if you genuinely try she will genuinely help. Definitely start homework well in advance, all of the exam questions come from homework, group work, or lecture/quiz questions, so it exams are pretty fair. If you are not afraid of hard work, the class will go well. As for Professor Truman, she is a really nice person and a caring professor.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/25/2022	I'm not a fan of Truman. Homework assignments took hours and weren't similar to any of the problems we covered in class. The averages for the exams were all around 50%. I would go for a different professor when taking 310.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/17/2022	I'm only getting a C because I bombed my first midterm. The homework feels like a lot of work because it's due right when you finish learning the material that is covered in the homework and you're not able to solve it easily just yet. But I promise when you look back at the homework questions to study for the final, you'll realize how easy it is to solve them and laugh at yourself for spending so much time than necessary. It took me a lot of self-studying to fully understand how to write proofs, but once you understand everything the material becomes fun. Dr Truman is a great professor, she'll do anything to help you understand the material, so don't worry too much !
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a P Anonymous 03/09/2022	I took this course in 2020 Spring. I like Dr. Truman and she is nice. But the course experience is really bad, Midterm 1 was too difficult and the average is 59. The materials are not Math theorems, you just recite the proof and write it down. I don't like it at all. I got 70+ as the final grade.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/23/2021	I really liked Dr. Truman, She's super nice and approachable. Even if you ask her a "dumb" question, she doesn't react like it's dumb, and often jokes like "oh, we all forget algebra here and there." I would recommend her, but her class definitely has a hard workload so plan accordingly. You know how every semester you have that "one" class that takes up most of your time? This is that class. I don't think it matters if you have other hard courses, this one will dominate your time. Also, get a copy of "the Book of Proof" by Richard Hammack, it's free and WAY better than the crappy textbook this course uses. How to succeed in her class: start homework the day the topics are covered. The homework is long and hard because she wants you to spend time on it. You can't do it in one day, I promise. A good week was an 8 hour long homework, worse was maybe 16 hours, but it did take a bit for me to understand some stuff so I may be on the longer side. When doing the homework, write all the relevant definitions and theorems down on a notecard and only reference that for homework. You'll memorize it, eventually. Go to office hours and ask every single question you could possibly think of. My exam grades had an upward trend once I started going to every single office hours (D first exam, C- second exam, A+ on 3rd exam and B+ on final). Email her any questions you have, she really doesn't mind. Exams are almost identical to homework, even in the online environment. The best way to prepare for these are to redo the homework and check with her to make sure you did proofs correctly. Only select homework problems are graded, so if 1, 3, and 9 are graded, you have no idea if you did 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 right or not. She's not going to put anything harder than the homework on an exam or quiz. Quizzes also have almost identical homework content, but the question is often disguised a bit-- if you really know and understand the homework, you'll realize it's the same question. The hardest weeks in this class are week 2 and week 10. Week 2 is when you're thrown into proof writing with a very long homework and only about 5 days to do it. Week 10 is when you start the advanced calculus (math 410) content. That was pretty hard for me, but eventually it all clicked after spending a lot of time in office hours and watching various YouTube videos. Exam 3 content is nothing worse than the respective homework, in fact I found it to be some of the easiest questions from the homework, but it may vary semester to semester. I think if you do all of the above, you'll do well in her course. Take it with other light courses so you can spend adequate time on the content. I think if you enjoy the content, it's actually a kind of fun class. Proofs are really cool once you get the basic intuition for it :)
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a B CrazeddRabbi 01/13/2021	Probably the best instructor for MATH310. She would assign quick 5-10 minute videos containing definitions to watch before class when needed (not that often), otherwise we only had to attend live lecture. Most, if not all, of live lecture time was dedicated to student understanding of concepts and the homework. She would have two or three examples, but would build in time for students to ask questions or allow them to interject their own questions instead of the prepared examples. She was also really responsive and helpful on Piazza - you'd often get a response within 10 minutes, regardless of the time or day. Only reason that this a 4 and not 5 star review is the time allotted for quizzes and especially exams felt unrealistic since we were supposed to stop ~10 minutes earlier to scan and submit. CLASS TIPS (Regardless of teacher): 1. Start the HW early! She doesn't give you a week to do it because she's nice (which she is), she does it because it takes a week(or at least a weekend) to do it! Seriously. Except for the first HW, I would consider it a godsend to finish a HW in six hours or less. 2. When studying for an exam, I recommend writing all the terms and definitions you learned that unit on two sheets of paper. That way you have everything you need to look at when studying in one place. Also very good when cramming. Also, it's obvious but bears saying, study by doing problems! Specifically, the problems you got wrong or had trouble with on HW and quizzes. 3. Start doing math at least thirty minutes prior to an exam. That way when it starts you're already in "math mode". 4. (This one might be more Truman and/or online-specific, but is still useful). Finally, you should be in a blitzkrieg mindset during this exam. You really do not have time for mistakes. If you read a problem and after thirty seconds still don't know how to approach it, SKIP IT.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/15/2020	Professor Truman is energetic and really cares about her class but unfortunately, that means having a lot of work and assignments. I took this class because I am pursuing a math minor and this class was more work than my major requirement courses. She does not post homework, exam, group work, or quiz solutions. The only time you can get an idea of what the solution may be is if you go to office hours or email her with an attempt to the question in which she will give you tips on how to get to the solution but never tell you the solution itself. She would give a quiz a day after the homework was due meaning we wouldn't get our graded homework back in time to study for the quiz and see what mistakes we were making. Since there were no homework solutions posted, there were many ocassions where people would do poorly on the homework and the quiz because we didn't get feedback on time. You can tell she cares about students really learning the concepts because this is an important class for MATH410 but that meant getting a lot of work in and outside of class. I personally think this class was too much work for what it is worth and multiple people dropped from our class before our second midterm (some of them dropping the course for a second time). We also did not have enough time to complete our midterms with more than half of the class not fully completing the exams.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/18/2016	I mostly agree with the other reviews. Kate is very energetic and knowledgeable. She is normally very clear with her explanations (written and spoken). With just those things, she's already better than most of the other math teachers I've had at UMD which were terrible at communicating course material. What's scary is how much of the two textbooks she has memorized including questions and question numbers. However, the class was too much work (for me at least). If anyone is to blame, it's the math department's (ludicrously?) high standards. If she didn't jam as much in as possible, then students wouldn't be prepared for Math410. But, because there was so much material, she could hardly give us a brief explanation and short example for each topic. So now after finishing the class, I feel like a Jack of all trades but master of none, and spending so little time on each topic means I'll probably forget almost everything (except broad topics) over the summer. If there was less material, I could have mastered more of it, and it would likely stick longer. But I guess for a cursory preview/review of a bunch of math topics, Math310 served its purpose. It's funny how I put more way effort into my math classes (including Math310) than my 4xx level comp sci classes, and I get a B in math and A in comp sci (without even having to take the final in comp sci). It's hard to say if comp sci is a bit too easy or if math is a bit too hard, but I'm leaning towards math being too hard. It's great that Kate (and the other math teachers) drop a bunch of assignments and nudge grades so the class averages work out, but I'd rather they curve things around student performance than what percentage of the content they can cram into their brains and regurgitate onto paper in an hour. For example, comp sci classes might set the B/C cutoff at the median for the class, and have the other grades based on standard deviations from the median. (median - 2(std dev) = D, median - 1(std dev) = C, median = B, median + 1(std dev) = A). That means you have to do well compared to your classmates which is mostly independent of how well the teacher is at preparing the students for tests. If the teacher's style doesn't fit with how the students learn (on average), then students can still do well compared to each other. With the math department's system, if the teacher's style doesn't fit with how the students learn on average, then the students won't know all of the material, so they will do poorly on average. So for math, a student can put in way more effort than others and get a better grade than most of them and still get a bad grade in the class if the class average was low (or a B when they put in a ton of effort). Dropping and nudging scores helps, but it can still leave students that put in a ton of effort with a less-than-ideal grade. This problem wasn't as severe with Kate's Math310, but I wish she did something to curve tests with low averages, or did an overhaul to compare students vs each other instead of vs the textbook. In general, I spent nearly all of every Saturday working on Math310 homework and several hours throughout the week on the other assignments. This felt overwhelming, but it didn't even feel like enough practice for all the content. So, if you have to rush and sacrifice quality for quantity to pack material into a class, is there too much material? Does the math department want its 3xx classes to be more work than other majors' 4xx classes? (Not to mention Math1xx and 2xx tend to feel like 3xx or 4xx classes). And the icing on the cake is that taking CMSC250 places you out of Math310, but Math310 is unarguably much more difficult. That was a lot of complaining, but at least Kate tried her best and was better than other math teachers. (Hmm, what a useful metric comparing people against their peers is).
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/05/2014	I don't know how you guys are bringing yourselves to give her high ratings. This class is an asinine waste of time and money; the last 30-40 percent of it is basically math410 REALLY poorly explained and rushed at a ridiculous pace. The rest of the class is really easy material and studying various proof techniques, which is actually fairly useful. She has really lost most of the class at this point with the 410 stuff. She assigns ungodly long homework assignments, and then she uses class time to go over the answers. This is great and all, but it leaves her with little time to explain the material for the subsequent hw assignments. My grades are suffering miserably because of the 410 rush, so I'm planning on getting a C at this point. I would say pick up a book like Daniel Vellman's "how to prove it", or the book for the class by Zhang, read over it, learn proof techniques, and avoid this stupid class all-together. I'm trying not to get discouraged from 410 because I really want to know it, but she's doing a very fine job of making me lose my interest in the subject.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/01/2011	As has been said, Dr. Truman is great. Very conscious of students' needs. Exams are easy. Homeworks can be a bit daunting at times and only having <1hr office hours once per week doesn't help. However, I found the class to be a bit of a waste of time. Roughly 80% of the course is easy. I'd say the other 20% is manageable at worst. The only reason I'm getting a B is because I missed one of the exams. If you're confident with your mathematical skill, I'd say either take 307 during the summer with her or don't take it at all.
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A- Anonymous 04/30/2010	Dr. Truman is a very energetic and knowledgeable instructor. She is also an academic adviser, so if you take class with her she will know your strengths and really know what kind of schedule you can handle. Teaching wise she knows what she is doing and she makes herself available via email if you ever need extra help. 310 was a pretty easy class up until the last section when we started calculus proofs. She is definitely one of the best 310 instructors at CP, I am going to try and get her to teach me 406
Kathryn Truman MATH310 Expecting an A Anonymous 06/03/2009	Kate was one of the best math instructors i have ever had. She went over anything and everything that was on tests. Tests were straight forward and about 90% of test questions were hw's. she gives 15 free points before exams with "group quizzes." If you stay on top of hw's you will completely fine and get an A
Kathryn Truman MATH406 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/02/2008	she is awesome. if you are taking math406 take her class. go over your homeworks and any theorems that she says you have to know!! do the work and you will do well.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A
Anonymous
02/05/2024

tl;dr: one of my favorite professors and courses, but it's hard AND time consuming for most. prepares you really well though. median scores: Groupwork: 95.63% Homework: 87.96% Quizzes: 66.26% Exam 1: 80.38% Exam 2: 63.00% Exam 3: 63.50% Final: 73.25% Grade Median: ~75.52% (aligns with PlanetTerp grade data) Lectures: Energetic professor with really engaging lectures. Pretty necessary unless you're going to office hours to make up for what you missed, since the textbook isn't enough to go straight into the homework. Structure is introducing the topic, giving you the important definitions, and then walking through as many examples as possible, step by step, until time runs out. The examples are usually proofs that are already in the textbook or going to be on the homework, but sometimes it's a really hard proof (that you'll never have to recreate or remember) that introduces the topic at a high level to you. Homework: A few questions are similar to the ones walked through in class, but it's never as easy as just switching up the numbers in your answer. For the rest, you need the notes and textbook with you. The questions scale up in difficulty and build off each other, so it's not like you have to stare blankly at a question until a full proof pops in your head. Grading is mostly off attempting/completing every question, with 3 of them randomly selected to get graded on accuracy. (you should be going to office hours at least once a week before the deadline to get your homework checked over) Quiz and exam questions are modified homework questions, or something close enough that doing the homework would prepare you to solve it within the time limit. It won't always be a graded question that's selected for exams, so you really have to complete and understand the entire HW to be prepared for them. Quizzes: 10 minutes long and happen the lecture after the homework was due (so 2 days). Structure is one definition and one proof or just one proof. Exams: A lot for 50 minutes, but still doable imo. The second you get stuck, you should probably move on to rack up as much partial credit. At the start of exam review days, Kate tells you the weight of each question, what section it covers, and its format -- true/false, working with definitions, or a full proof. Grading: Partial credit is big, if you couldn't get the algebra down or connect the dots on one last part, you'd still get like 70-80% of the points on that question. You lose a small number of points for not including minor justifications like "because f is a function" or "because f is continuous". It's necessary you include them/understand why, but a little annoying since those points can add up to like 3-5% on exams when you're stressed and pressed for time. Other: - one homework, one quiz, and one groupwork dropped - lectures recorded on request - spent 6-10 hours per week, peaking at the start of proofs (week 2) and again at the MATH410 content (the last third) - the final is cumulative but really just Exam 3.5 - if you took CMSC250, basic proofs, set theory and relations/functions are the main overlap, but i don't remember if 250 went as deep as this for relations and functions - hints to groupwork posted after they're due - there's a day-by-day "reading calendar" on canvas that suggests what sections of the textbook to read and what homework questions you should try to have completed i think the course being so dense means it sticks with you heavy, cause this was the final I studied for the least

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/15/2024

Highly recommend taking Kate for 310. She's super nice and her lectures are extremely clear. Just start your homeworks as early as possible since they do admittedly take a while and go to office hours/email her as often as possible. The homeworks are only partially graded and 2 out of 10 points of each one are based on completion. It might feel weird to have so many questions and only have some of them graded but trust me when I say it works better that way. If you're anything like me, then unless you're a genius or you already know how to write proofs, you really need the basically forced practice or you'll probably fail or at least not get a very good grade, since I know for sure I wouldn't have done nearly as many problems if they weren't required. Definitely make sure to memorize and understand your definitions or you'll get cooked by the timers. Other than that, quizzes and exams are extremely fair and are more or less just slight variations on homework/quiz/groupwork questions.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A
anonymous1
12/13/2023

One of my favorite professors of all time. You must go to office hours if you need help because there is no TA, but Prof Truman is so sweet, approachable, and funny. She makes the content as easy as possible, and if you genuinely try she will genuinely help. Definitely start homework well in advance, all of the exam questions come from homework, group work, or lecture/quiz questions, so it exams are pretty fair. If you are not afraid of hard work, the class will go well. As for Professor Truman, she is a really nice person and a caring professor.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a C+
Anonymous
05/25/2022

I'm not a fan of Truman. Homework assignments took hours and weren't similar to any of the problems we covered in class. The averages for the exams were all around 50%. I would go for a different professor when taking 310.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
05/17/2022

I'm only getting a C because I bombed my first midterm. The homework feels like a lot of work because it's due right when you finish learning the material that is covered in the homework and you're not able to solve it easily just yet. But I promise when you look back at the homework questions to study for the final, you'll realize how easy it is to solve them and laugh at yourself for spending so much time than necessary. It took me a lot of self-studying to fully understand how to write proofs, but once you understand everything the material becomes fun. Dr Truman is a great professor, she'll do anything to help you understand the material, so don't worry too much !

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a P
Anonymous
03/09/2022

I took this course in 2020 Spring. I like Dr. Truman and she is nice. But the course experience is really bad, Midterm 1 was too difficult and the average is 59. The materials are not Math theorems, you just recite the proof and write it down. I don't like it at all. I got 70+ as the final grade.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/23/2021

I really liked Dr. Truman, She's super nice and approachable. Even if you ask her a "dumb" question, she doesn't react like it's dumb, and often jokes like "oh, we all forget algebra here and there." I would recommend her, but her class definitely has a hard workload so plan accordingly. You know how every semester you have that "one" class that takes up most of your time? This is that class. I don't think it matters if you have other hard courses, this one will dominate your time. Also, get a copy of "the Book of Proof" by Richard Hammack, it's free and WAY better than the crappy textbook this course uses. How to succeed in her class: start homework the day the topics are covered. The homework is long and hard because she wants you to spend time on it. You can't do it in one day, I promise. A good week was an 8 hour long homework, worse was maybe 16 hours, but it did take a bit for me to understand some stuff so I may be on the longer side. When doing the homework, write all the relevant definitions and theorems down on a notecard and only reference that for homework. You'll memorize it, eventually. Go to office hours and ask every single question you could possibly think of. My exam grades had an upward trend once I started going to every single office hours (D first exam, C- second exam, A+ on 3rd exam and B+ on final). Email her any questions you have, she really doesn't mind. Exams are almost identical to homework, even in the online environment. The best way to prepare for these are to redo the homework and check with her to make sure you did proofs correctly. Only select homework problems are graded, so if 1, 3, and 9 are graded, you have no idea if you did 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 right or not. She's not going to put anything harder than the homework on an exam or quiz. Quizzes also have almost identical homework content, but the question is often disguised a bit-- if you really know and understand the homework, you'll realize it's the same question. The hardest weeks in this class are week 2 and week 10. Week 2 is when you're thrown into proof writing with a very long homework and only about 5 days to do it. Week 10 is when you start the advanced calculus (math 410) content. That was pretty hard for me, but eventually it all clicked after spending a lot of time in office hours and watching various YouTube videos. Exam 3 content is nothing worse than the respective homework, in fact I found it to be some of the easiest questions from the homework, but it may vary semester to semester. I think if you do all of the above, you'll do well in her course. Take it with other light courses so you can spend adequate time on the content. I think if you enjoy the content, it's actually a kind of fun class. Proofs are really cool once you get the basic intuition for it :)

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a B
CrazeddRabbi
01/13/2021

Probably the best instructor for MATH310. She would assign quick 5-10 minute videos containing definitions to watch before class when needed (not that often), otherwise we only had to attend live lecture. Most, if not all, of live lecture time was dedicated to student understanding of concepts and the homework. She would have two or three examples, but would build in time for students to ask questions or allow them to interject their own questions instead of the prepared examples. She was also really responsive and helpful on Piazza - you'd often get a response within 10 minutes, regardless of the time or day. Only reason that this a 4 and not 5 star review is the time allotted for quizzes and especially exams felt unrealistic since we were supposed to stop ~10 minutes earlier to scan and submit. CLASS TIPS (Regardless of teacher): 1. Start the HW early! She doesn't give you a week to do it because she's nice (which she is), she does it because it takes a week(or at least a weekend) to do it! Seriously. Except for the first HW, I would consider it a godsend to finish a HW in six hours or less. 2. When studying for an exam, I recommend writing all the terms and definitions you learned that unit on two sheets of paper. That way you have everything you need to look at when studying in one place. Also very good when cramming. Also, it's obvious but bears saying, study by doing problems! Specifically, the problems you got wrong or had trouble with on HW and quizzes. 3. Start doing math at least thirty minutes prior to an exam. That way when it starts you're already in "math mode". 4. (This one might be more Truman and/or online-specific, but is still useful). Finally, you should be in a blitzkrieg mindset during this exam. You really do not have time for mistakes. If you read a problem and after thirty seconds still don't know how to approach it, SKIP IT.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/15/2020

Professor Truman is energetic and really cares about her class but unfortunately, that means having a lot of work and assignments. I took this class because I am pursuing a math minor and this class was more work than my major requirement courses. She does not post homework, exam, group work, or quiz solutions. The only time you can get an idea of what the solution may be is if you go to office hours or email her with an attempt to the question in which she will give you tips on how to get to the solution but never tell you the solution itself. She would give a quiz a day after the homework was due meaning we wouldn't get our graded homework back in time to study for the quiz and see what mistakes we were making. Since there were no homework solutions posted, there were many ocassions where people would do poorly on the homework and the quiz because we didn't get feedback on time. You can tell she cares about students really learning the concepts because this is an important class for MATH410 but that meant getting a lot of work in and outside of class. I personally think this class was too much work for what it is worth and multiple people dropped from our class before our second midterm (some of them dropping the course for a second time). We also did not have enough time to complete our midterms with more than half of the class not fully completing the exams.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/18/2016

I mostly agree with the other reviews. Kate is very energetic and knowledgeable. She is normally very clear with her explanations (written and spoken). With just those things, she's already better than most of the other math teachers I've had at UMD which were terrible at communicating course material. What's scary is how much of the two textbooks she has memorized including questions and question numbers. However, the class was too much work (for me at least). If anyone is to blame, it's the math department's (ludicrously?) high standards. If she didn't jam as much in as possible, then students wouldn't be prepared for Math410. But, because there was so much material, she could hardly give us a brief explanation and short example for each topic. So now after finishing the class, I feel like a Jack of all trades but master of none, and spending so little time on each topic means I'll probably forget almost everything (except broad topics) over the summer. If there was less material, I could have mastered more of it, and it would likely stick longer. But I guess for a cursory preview/review of a bunch of math topics, Math310 served its purpose. It's funny how I put more way effort into my math classes (including Math310) than my 4xx level comp sci classes, and I get a B in math and A in comp sci (without even having to take the final in comp sci). It's hard to say if comp sci is a bit too easy or if math is a bit too hard, but I'm leaning towards math being too hard. It's great that Kate (and the other math teachers) drop a bunch of assignments and nudge grades so the class averages work out, but I'd rather they curve things around student performance than what percentage of the content they can cram into their brains and regurgitate onto paper in an hour. For example, comp sci classes might set the B/C cutoff at the median for the class, and have the other grades based on standard deviations from the median. (median - 2(std dev) = D, median - 1(std dev) = C, median = B, median + 1(std dev) = A). That means you have to do well compared to your classmates which is mostly independent of how well the teacher is at preparing the students for tests. If the teacher's style doesn't fit with how the students learn (on average), then students can still do well compared to each other. With the math department's system, if the teacher's style doesn't fit with how the students learn on average, then the students won't know all of the material, so they will do poorly on average. So for math, a student can put in way more effort than others and get a better grade than most of them and still get a bad grade in the class if the class average was low (or a B when they put in a ton of effort). Dropping and nudging scores helps, but it can still leave students that put in a ton of effort with a less-than-ideal grade. This problem wasn't as severe with Kate's Math310, but I wish she did something to curve tests with low averages, or did an overhaul to compare students vs each other instead of vs the textbook. In general, I spent nearly all of every Saturday working on Math310 homework and several hours throughout the week on the other assignments. This felt overwhelming, but it didn't even feel like enough practice for all the content. So, if you have to rush and sacrifice quality for quantity to pack material into a class, is there too much material? Does the math department want its 3xx classes to be more work than other majors' 4xx classes? (Not to mention Math1xx and 2xx tend to feel like 3xx or 4xx classes). And the icing on the cake is that taking CMSC250 places you out of Math310, but Math310 is unarguably much more difficult. That was a lot of complaining, but at least Kate tried her best and was better than other math teachers. (Hmm, what a useful metric comparing people against their peers is).

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a C
Anonymous
05/05/2014

I don't know how you guys are bringing yourselves to give her high ratings. This class is an asinine waste of time and money; the last 30-40 percent of it is basically math410 REALLY poorly explained and rushed at a ridiculous pace. The rest of the class is really easy material and studying various proof techniques, which is actually fairly useful. She has really lost most of the class at this point with the 410 stuff. She assigns ungodly long homework assignments, and then she uses class time to go over the answers. This is great and all, but it leaves her with little time to explain the material for the subsequent hw assignments. My grades are suffering miserably because of the 410 rush, so I'm planning on getting a C at this point. I would say pick up a book like Daniel Vellman's "how to prove it", or the book for the class by Zhang, read over it, learn proof techniques, and avoid this stupid class all-together. I'm trying not to get discouraged from 410 because I really want to know it, but she's doing a very fine job of making me lose my interest in the subject.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/01/2011

As has been said, Dr. Truman is great. Very conscious of students' needs. Exams are easy. Homeworks can be a bit daunting at times and only having <1hr office hours once per week doesn't help. However, I found the class to be a bit of a waste of time. Roughly 80% of the course is easy. I'd say the other 20% is manageable at worst. The only reason I'm getting a B is because I missed one of the exams. If you're confident with your mathematical skill, I'd say either take 307 during the summer with her or don't take it at all.

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
04/30/2010

Dr. Truman is a very energetic and knowledgeable instructor. She is also an academic adviser, so if you take class with her she will know your strengths and really know what kind of schedule you can handle. Teaching wise she knows what she is doing and she makes herself available via email if you ever need extra help. 310 was a pretty easy class up until the last section when we started calculus proofs. She is definitely one of the best 310 instructors at CP, I am going to try and get her to teach me 406

Kathryn Truman
MATH310

Expecting an A
Anonymous
06/03/2009

Kate was one of the best math instructors i have ever had. She went over anything and everything that was on tests. Tests were straight forward and about 90% of test questions were hw's. she gives 15 free points before exams with "group quizzes." If you stay on top of hw's you will completely fine and get an A