I know someone in here also has him this semester, cause I've seen you t-dubbin it during class. What do yall think of the class? I mean, do yall think the tests are representative of what we have been taught?

I'm looking over the past two tests (3 & 4) and there is a marked difference between what was on the test and what we covered. The example tests (supposedly from last year...) he gives out are stupidly easy, and the real test seems to have the same numbers, but usually asks for different things, which is a bit confusing, to say the least... Also, he seems to love to cover the really easy examples and stuff in class, which is more or less what the book also does. Then, on the test he throws us a curve and asks us questions that he has never gone over or that have a twist to them that he's never discussed.

I personally am of the opinion that you should model your test, for the most part, based on the examples you give in class and the practice problems from the book. Looking over his examples and the problems in the book, I see very little that was comparable. I mean, honestly, when did we do an example involving the derivative shit with diagonalization? Never. We've only talked about derivatives and the like ONCE in class, that I can think of, and the book, itself, has rarely mentioned it. Yeah, its easy to do, especially w/ polynomials, but its an entirely different way of thinking about the problems, and I just don't think you do something like that on a freaking test, especially when tests are 95% of the grade.

I'm caught in the middle here, because I understand that knowing the concept and the material means that you should be able to look at the problem from a different (and undiscussed) angle and still solve it. At the same time, I don't think you should do that exclusively on a test while mainly neglecting the types of problems that you specifically discussed. Also, I think that by using a text which has primarily only one kind of problems and also only covering those kinds of problems in class that you cause students to only think of the concepts with that narrow focus (inertia of thought or whatever from psychology...) and that in turn it is difficult for them to throw off that narrow focus on a test, especially after having studied the original type of problems almost exclusively because that is the only thing you have available to you...

Anybody else got any thoughts?

11/17/2005 6:38:55 PM

honestly, he almost makes the class impossible because he is VERY hard to follow and I have to count on the book to learn the material. The book is terrible at explaining things too, so it's like I have to learn the stuff on my own.

The tests are alot harder than the practice tests too.

11/22/2005 2:34:33 AM

i rest my case. I mean, i just LOVE it when a teacher puts a problem on the final exam that he glossed over in a haphazard 5 minutes. Thank you OH so very much.

12/6/2005 10:23:59 PM

yeah math teachers are especially bad about this. they think that once they teach you a couple basic principles you'll be able to extrapolate the rest... im glad im taking this class credit only

12/7/2005 2:19:26 PM

How horrible was this class really? It's just linear algebra, right? Did Jing require actual thought, as opposed to repetition of past material? So what if he did? You should be doing more than just learning to recapitulate calculations by now.

12/7/2005 4:33:18 PM

Well, the material itself wasn't all that hard, but Dr. Jing did one hell of a good job of making sure you were thoroughly confused. That and, yeah, he would test you on stuff that he really hadn't taught.

The sad part is that I probably made an A and I couldn't tell you what the crap we did or what the hell it does.

12/7/2005 11:38:40 PM

i had him for MA 241

the only C ive gotten since I've been at state

12/7/2005 11:41:32 PM

that's to bad, linear algebra is the most beautiful yet practical math out there. It appears again and again at the heart of all interesting mathematics. I was just studying it again for the like tenth time in the context of some new math I'm interested in. Anyway, congrats on the A.

12/8/2005 1:07:24 AM