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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. |
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Boyu Zhang
MATH410 Expecting an A- Anonymous 06/01/2023 |
I took this class in the fall of 2023 - Boyu's first time teaching MATH410. The class initially started off with high hopes, but as more time passed by, it was understood that this class would basically be impossible. The grade split was 20% homework (essentially completion/how much you tried), 25% for each midterm (there were 2), and 30% on the final. Homework was weekly (even on the week of tests). Boyu's teaching was very fast-paced, however, he was good at answering questions and clarifying concepts when needed. However, there would be no review of past sections/theorems every class. Once the topic introduction had passed, you were expected to be an expert in it and recall the definition and be well versed in it. This class covers a lot of dense material in a very short time, and other is no forgiveness for the student who falls behind even the slightest amount. Exams (in theory) were nicely formatted - 75% (3/4 questions) of exams would be directly from the textbook. This sounds nice until you look at the textbook. It is almost unreadable at times, unreasonably dense at times, and often steps are skipped. Furthermore, no solutions were ever given to homework or textbook problems. To get solutions to a specific problem you would have to go to his office hours or send him an email - something that isn't feasible for 300+ textbook problems. Often, we had to resort to trying to find half solutions online and working off of those (we didn't understand them well at all). Giving a practice exam with similar types of problems to the exam coming up would be much better. The lack of clear solutions and explanations to practice problems makes this almost impossible to do. When asked about this at the start of the course, Boyu responded "Well its a proof. You will know if your proof is correct or not". This doesn't make sense and just isn't true. The averages of the exams went 64%, 49% and the average of the final was 47%. Apparently, these averages were "good" according to Boyu. The saving grace in this class was the curve. 75-95 A, 65-75 A-, 63-65 B+, 58-63 B-, 53-55 C+, 49-53 C, 40-49 C-, <40 D/F. Boyu is one of the instructors that believes that the curve is necessary, and would rather curve the class at the end rather than give easier/better exams. Essentially, to see how you're doing in the class, just see how you are doing compared to the average. Overall, I would not recommend taking this class with Boyu unless it really is your only option or you are already a genuis at real analysis (then this class review shouldn't matter to you). It is not a simple or straightforward class, and the only way to do well is to spend 10-15 hours outside of class every single week understand the concepts by yourself and trying to solve textbook exercises. How will you find the answers to those problems? Good luck. Try emailing him or finding a math genuis/tutor that can do all of them. |