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I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here. Pros: 1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth go

I took his Math 1A class (1st semester of calculus) in Fall 2013, which was his first semester here. Pros: 1)He made calculus engaging, exciting, and worth going to for an 8AM class. I never felt like it wasn't worth it. 2)Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math. 3)He genuinely cares and spend an enormous amount of time working 1-on-1 with students to help everyone. He freely gives out his cell phone number and asks students to call him any time if they need help. Cons: 1)His class is very poorly structured. No quizzes. The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final. 2)His Graduate Student Instructors that teach smaller group discussions get carte blanche to be as lazy as they want. They don't have to administer quizzes and the three that I saw didn't give a rat's ass. 3)His exams are a joke. Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof. The basic derivatives and integrals on the test are really easy. Many of the pre-med and pre-Haas students love him because of the easy A's he gives out. In Summary: The department has valid claims against his classes, but he is doing something Berkeley's math department desparately needs: teaching lower division math better.

jacobolus 11y ago
One of his letters suggests that folks at the math department insisted that he water the exam down and reduce the number of questions. Do you know if other Math 1A sections have more/less difficult exams?
- psykovsky 11y ago
  I suspect he found those exams easy because of the quality teaching he got from the man...
  - MengerSponge 11y ago
    That was my guess too. Calculus is actually really simple, and any reasonable test is going to be easy if you were taught well.
rootlocus 11y ago
"The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final." And that's your choice. How is it his fault for giving you a choice? "Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof." Proofs are more important than memorizing a formula and forgetting it after a couple of month. "Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math." That's way more important than stuffing you with formulas, algorithms and problems. If you have a passion for something, learning comes more easily and naturally. By giving you confidence and passion, he gave you the greatest gift he could possibly give. You can find theorems, proofs, problems and solutions in countless books. The information is there, all of it. Structured in many different ways. And he gave you the courage to go out and explore. I wish I had that as a freshman. Instead I got fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being mocked in class. Fear of not being good enough. And I cowered in fear. I learned mechanically, memorizing formulas and problems by heart. What good where the quizzes, hard exams and midterms to me when I couldn't understand and apply what I was supposed to be learning?
- TruePath 11y ago
  While I agree that the most important thing is convincing the 1 person out of 1,000 to be a math major (or physics or whatever) I'm afraid the university isn't ok with handing everyone else As without mastering a certain minimum skill set. Besides, the math department isn't a free agent in this. Other departments expect students who have passed math 1A to have certain skills. If the math department was free to teach math 1A as an advertisement for mathematics (the way other departments get to teach their base courses) it would be a much different class. Hell, it wouldn't even be about calculus. So long as the physicists, economists, chemists etc.. etc.. say "we need students with skills X, Y and Z" there has to be a class whose content (and hence a decent grade in) is X, Y and Z. The name of that class is 1A and it helps no one to just teach a different class under that name without reforming the system. The math department ALREADY OFFERS OTHER CLASSES DESIGNED TO DO EXPOSE STUDENTS TO MATH IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU MENTION. These are courses that deliberately avoid the equations and rote memorization that generated so much fear in high school and are designed to be low stress while showing off the wonder and creativity of mathematics. Unfortunately, few people ever take these courses because students don't want any more math than they have to take and the guidance counselors and university won't push or require them. As you said about the final (which I wholeheartedly agree with) if you give students the choice how is it the department's fault you take it. Students have a choice to approach math in a more exploratory, more encouraging fashion but they choose to do the minimum needed to take whatever other class they need. It's ironic because that's also what makes calculus so hard for them...they want to apply a rule and confidently move on...not think hard about a math problem in ways that might be dead ends. That is what's so sad about math education. Understanding comes from trying to fit the concepts together and even (especially) professional mathematicians fail 90% of the time. Students, especially those who haven't done well in math find that very distressing. Hell, pick any subject you aren't good at (which has clear success/failure conditions) and really try to do it well. It makes you feel dumb and you give up. Add to that years of pre-college math (often taught by teachers who themselves seek the reassurance of rote procedure) which brain washes the curious kids into believing that doing math is just applying procedures and it's an uphill battle. Ultimately, I think the problem is that we try and force kids who aren't really interested to know math they don't need. Just like other subjects let the students who want to learn come to you. With the advent of modern computer algebra system no one benefits making kids memorize rote procedures beyond basic arithmetic since without understanding they will never apply it in the real world.
wbillingsley 11y ago
Some of this might be from his Oxford background - Oxford and Cambridge have a very strong culture of small-group tuition, where the tutor ("supervisor") has an enormous amount of freedom. And students typically have end-of year exams -- everything up until that is formative. If you look at it from a semester course-by-course system's perspective it would seem very strangely designed. But Oxford and Cambridge's pedagogy is very effective at producing independently-minded, creative, and somewhat fearless students, who "get" the subject matter. And there is quite a lot of research elsewhere supporting the effectiveness of small group tutoring (which might go a long way to explaining why the Oxbridge teaching style works as well as it does there). So when you say that in his first semester, he gave a great deal of independence to the TAs, especially in small-group discussions, and gave students freedom for all the mid-term testing to be just formative if they wish, that sounds to me as if perhaps he was experimenting with bringing some of what he valued about Oxford's teaching practice to Berkeley.
willyt 11y ago
I can also remember my teacher explaining calculus and doing stuff like deriving the formulae for volume of a cone, it was pretty interesting to me; I remember having lots of ideas for engineering problems that could be solved with techniques like this. I know the system is different in the US, you start university earlier I think? Are the students taking this class 17-18 yrs? I'm curious to know more about what your syllabus and exam is like, are there past papers online? Here is the maths exam[0] I took when I was about 17 (it's been a while) http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/249523-question-paper.pdf http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/249523-question... By the way, I doubt I could answer any of the questions now...
nilkn 11y ago
My favorite math classes were actually structured like that. I don't regard it as a bad structure, just an unconventional one by US standards. For what it's worth, memorizing proofs is a lot more than I was expected to do when I took Calculus I. You have to remember that in the modern age Calculus I is a very basic class. I'd expect it to be considered borderline remedial at a place like Berkeley. It wasn't even offered at all at the college I went to from what I remember.
justifier 11y ago
> free from quizzes, midterms and your final can be 100% of your grade sounds nearly mathematically utopian i once was failed in an intro to logic course at an undergraduate university i spent the class time working on my own projects, and sitting under trees when the final came it was maybe the third time i attended the class i got an A on the final, but when i received my final grade i found that attendance was monitored by daily quizzes that accounted for 40% of my grade was the class intended to evaluate my understanding of truth tables or to determine how i spent an hour of my day three days a week? because i thought the final more than confirmed the former

jacobolus 11y ago

One of his letters suggests that folks at the math department insisted that he water the exam down and reduce the number of questions. Do you know if other Math 1A sections have more/less difficult exams?

psykovsky 11y ago
I suspect he found those exams easy because of the quality teaching he got from the man...
- MengerSponge 11y ago
  That was my guess too. Calculus is actually really simple, and any reasonable test is going to be easy if you were taught well.

rootlocus 11y ago

"The midterms don't count if you don't want them to, which means 100% of your grade can be the final." And that's your choice. How is it his fault for giving you a choice? "Most of it is literally just memorizing a proof." Proofs are more important than memorizing a formula and forgetting it after a couple of month. "Convinced me to be a math major by inciting my passion for math." That's way more important than stuffing you with formulas, algorithms and problems. If you have a passion for something, learning comes more easily and naturally. By giving you confidence and passion, he gave you the greatest gift he could possibly give. You can find theorems, proofs, problems and solutions in countless books. The information is there, all of it. Structured in many different ways. And he gave you the courage to go out and explore. I wish I had that as a freshman. Instead I got fear. Fear of failing. Fear of being mocked in class. Fear of not being good enough. And I cowered in fear. I learned mechanically, memorizing formulas and problems by heart. What good where the quizzes, hard exams and midterms to me when I couldn't understand and apply what I was supposed to be learning?

TruePath 11y ago
While I agree that the most important thing is convincing the 1 person out of 1,000 to be a math major (or physics or whatever) I'm afraid the university isn't ok with handing everyone else As without mastering a certain minimum skill set. Besides, the math department isn't a free agent in this. Other departments expect students who have passed math 1A to have certain skills. If the math department was free to teach math 1A as an advertisement for mathematics (the way other departments get to teach their base courses) it would be a much different class. Hell, it wouldn't even be about calculus. So long as the physicists, economists, chemists etc.. etc.. say "we need students with skills X, Y and Z" there has to be a class whose content (and hence a decent grade in) is X, Y and Z. The name of that class is 1A and it helps no one to just teach a different class under that name without reforming the system. The math department ALREADY OFFERS OTHER CLASSES DESIGNED TO DO EXPOSE STUDENTS TO MATH IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU MENTION. These are courses that deliberately avoid the equations and rote memorization that generated so much fear in high school and are designed to be low stress while showing off the wonder and creativity of mathematics. Unfortunately, few people ever take these courses because students don't want any more math than they have to take and the guidance counselors and university won't push or require them. As you said about the final (which I wholeheartedly agree with) if you give students the choice how is it the department's fault you take it. Students have a choice to approach math in a more exploratory, more encouraging fashion but they choose to do the minimum needed to take whatever other class they need. It's ironic because that's also what makes calculus so hard for them...they want to apply a rule and confidently move on...not think hard about a math problem in ways that might be dead ends. That is what's so sad about math education. Understanding comes from trying to fit the concepts together and even (especially) professional mathematicians fail 90% of the time. Students, especially those who haven't done well in math find that very distressing. Hell, pick any subject you aren't good at (which has clear success/failure conditions) and really try to do it well. It makes you feel dumb and you give up. Add to that years of pre-college math (often taught by teachers who themselves seek the reassurance of rote procedure) which brain washes the curious kids into believing that doing math is just applying procedures and it's an uphill battle. Ultimately, I think the problem is that we try and force kids who aren't really interested to know math they don't need. Just like other subjects let the students who want to learn come to you. With the advent of modern computer algebra system no one benefits making kids memorize rote procedures beyond basic arithmetic since without understanding they will never apply it in the real world.

wbillingsley 11y ago

Some of this might be from his Oxford background - Oxford and Cambridge have a very strong culture of small-group tuition, where the tutor ("supervisor") has an enormous amount of freedom. And students typically have end-of year exams -- everything up until that is formative. If you look at it from a semester course-by-course system's perspective it would seem very strangely designed. But Oxford and Cambridge's pedagogy is very effective at producing independently-minded, creative, and somewhat fearless students, who "get" the subject matter. And there is quite a lot of research elsewhere supporting the effectiveness of small group tutoring (which might go a long way to explaining why the Oxbridge teaching style works as well as it does there). So when you say that in his first semester, he gave a great deal of independence to the TAs, especially in small-group discussions, and gave students freedom for all the mid-term testing to be just formative if they wish, that sounds to me as if perhaps he was experimenting with bringing some of what he valued about Oxford's teaching practice to Berkeley.

willyt 11y ago

I can also remember my teacher explaining calculus and doing stuff like deriving the formulae for volume of a cone, it was pretty interesting to me; I remember having lots of ideas for engineering problems that could be solved with techniques like this. I know the system is different in the US, you start university earlier I think? Are the students taking this class 17-18 yrs? I'm curious to know more about what your syllabus and exam is like, are there past papers online? Here is the maths exam[0] I took when I was about 17 (it's been a while) http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/249523-question-paper.pdf http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/249523-question... By the way, I doubt I could answer any of the questions now...

nilkn 11y ago

My favorite math classes were actually structured like that. I don't regard it as a bad structure, just an unconventional one by US standards. For what it's worth, memorizing proofs is a lot more than I was expected to do when I took Calculus I. You have to remember that in the modern age Calculus I is a very basic class. I'd expect it to be considered borderline remedial at a place like Berkeley. It wasn't even offered at all at the college I went to from what I remember.

justifier 11y ago

> free from quizzes, midterms and your final can be 100% of your grade sounds nearly mathematically utopian i once was failed in an intro to logic course at an undergraduate university i spent the class time working on my own projects, and sitting under trees when the final came it was maybe the third time i attended the class i got an A on the final, but when i received my final grade i found that attendance was monitored by daily quizzes that accounted for 40% of my grade was the class intended to evaluate my understanding of truth tables or to determine how i spent an hour of my day three days a week? because i thought the final more than confirmed the former