Didn't really go to class, didn't really understand the material but ended up with an A- somehow
Take the class with Yilan Tan if possible; he is super enthusiastic, friendly and helpful. Not to mention he curves the class immensely(I somehow got an A despite not "feeling" like I put enough effort to warrant it, if that makes sense).
Took the class with Jacob Greenstein. 70% weekly quizzes and 30% final. All the quizzes had 50% EC, so some students didn't even have to take the final to get an A. I didn't go to class. Study off of the homework solutions before the quiz and it's an easy A+
Took it with Neal Livesay. 40% Final, 60% quizzes. He basically told you what would be on the quiz that week and the final consisted of questions very similar to the quiz questions. I honestly didn't understand what I was doing but I got an A by listening to his hints in lecture.
Had Dr. Livesay. Study the proofs and you'll be fine.
CS011 with Livesay was hard in the beginning until you realize all the quiz questions are either verbatim from examples in lecture or from his suggested problems list that he gives answers to more than 3/4 of. The midterm and final are so similar to previous quarters so if you have a friend that was in it before you, try getting it from them. He also drops your lowest quiz as well. Overall just study the topics and examples for that weeks quiz and you’re bound to get 100% on all of them.
Had Greenstein. Not a very good lecturer, but offers more than enough extra credit to make the class a breeze. Quizzes during discussions; it’s more than enough just to glance at the hw before. Didn’t have to take the final if you had a grade you wanted by the time of the final.
If you have Jacob Greenstein as your professor, it's the biggest dub in the world. No midterm, just 60% quizzes and 40% final. He gives 30% extra credit for watching his video tutorials online, and a max of 20% extra credit on quizzes, so you might not even have to take the final to get an A in the class. His lectures aren't really helpful, study off of the slides and the video tutorials for the quizzes. Quizzes are like the homework problems, just ask the TAs to go over some of the HW questions before the quiz is handed to you. If you have anyone other than Greenstein, this class is very difficult. Many of my friends who had other professors, and it was extremely hard for them. Some barely passed with a C-, but they will be prepared for CS111, which builds upon this course.
Avoid professor Bin Sun if it’s possible, his (I think) Korean accent is such a barrier that his lectures are slow as heck. We had three subsitutes and they were all far better
I had Neal Livesay. He's a nice guy but often times has trouble explaining abstract concepts like why a certain rule makes sense which is really what a lot of students struggle with since this class is not that intuitive. Honestly I felt like I didn’t really know what I was doing for most of this quarter but I just looked at his solutions for the practice problems, tried to find some sort of pattern, and did the same thing. Try to study for this class and attend lecture and make sure you have all the notes written down so you can clarify it on discussion. Still Probably won’t make sense lol. Do well on quizzes and study for the final cuz it’s a huge chunk of the grade (50%)
Had this during coronaszn. Not sure how much that affects the difficulty of this class, but I had prof livesay and it was fairly tough. He was a great prof overall, but a lot of the shorthand notation he used nobody was fully familiar with and he acted like it was common knowledge when he'd write those hieroglyphics on the board lol. I crammed the exams bc i had other difficult classes to cater to, but I'd like to say i did fine. Just make sure you do the practice problems and try to not let this class sit on the backburner like i did. study frequently, bc a lot of this class is very new in terms of notation. its like learning another language kinda. a bunch of proofs too. however, once you get that down its pretty straightforward
Probably the easiest math class I've ever taken at UCR. The class is mostly focused on logic and proofs as opposed to raw computation but they're super easy to learn. I rarely attended lectures or discussions and got a nearly perfect score on the final.
Take this class with Neal Livesay if possible. Explains all the material very clearly and was very knowledgeable.
(Spring'21 - online) - Prof Jacob Greenstein - highly recommend you take Prof Greenstein as there are a lot of ways to earn extra credit, I didn't even give the final and ended the class with an A+ - Easy if you understand the theory but difficult otherwise. Good luck.
Took this class with Dr. Sayan Das in Fall 2022. Honestly I was initially very worried going into discrete math for the first time (it was also my first quarter at UCR as well) but all doubts were relieved the first week into the quarter. His teaching style is very intuitive and I really liked his attitude throughout. I very rarely had to consult the textbook, since he is very open to helping clarify any unclear info about the course material. He also records lectures and his course was hybrid, but I would still recommend going in-person anyway. As long as you pay attention in class you should do fine on homework assignments and midterms/finals. Topics include number theory, set theory, propositional logic, and mapping.
Took this with Javier in Winter 2023. 40% of your grade was based on videos you had to watch as homework. Most of the videos only had one question you had to answer, but there were a few with more. You could retry the question as many times as you wanted though and the correct answer was usually given to you if you answered the question wrong twice, so there was really no reason, not to get 100% in this section. There were also optional videos that could earn you up to 10% extra credit. There were 4 quizzes throughout the course. The quizzes were out of 10 points and each quiz was worth 10% of your grade. These quizzes were impossible to pass if you didn't do any form of studying. The final was multiple choice and worth 20% of your grade. Not too difficult and not too easy, but just like the quizzes, impossible to pass if you didn't do any studying. The class overall, wasn't too difficult, but a lot of the concepts felt "foreign" and even when I did get the right answer in a quiz, I never felt confident when I was writing the answer. Javier is a good professor, and know this because this wasn't my first time having him as a professor, but I feel like this course wasn't his strong suit, and at times he couldn't really explain some of the concepts to the best of his ability. Still, he was accomadating and would push back due dates on videos and quizzes if he felt that people would be falling behind, and made this weird course feel a little bit easier.
Avoid Kejia Zhu if possible. He makes the class very easy, but does so by telling you what questions are on quizzes and finals to make up for poor instruction. Gives no resources other than posting one student's lecture notes. Not really able to properly convey concepts, handwriting makes it difficult to parse what he's teaching. Prepare to self-study, overall content isn't very difficult.
Took it with Professor Kejia Zhu, hella scuffed notes from lecture, but grading was very generous. He basically gave the answers of the quizzes, and final was just MCQ. You probably don't have to go to lecture if you feel confident in your self-learning abilities, since the concepts aren't that hard.
kejia zhu ( winter 24 ) -- kejia ( joe ) is not the best professor. while he makes the course simple with easy ways to make up your grades, you will mostly be relying on yourself to understand this class. the TA you get also matters a lot in this class. some TAs grade discussion worksheets on completion while others grade on accuracy. some TAs teach during discussion, others, not so much. 4 quizzes. no midterm, 1 final.
Took with Boris Tsvelikhovskiy in Spring 24. Cool Russian accent (sorry I am assuming) but class was definately a suprise. I think for most people this was an unenjoyable class because of the amount of material and abstract concepts on top of a sometimes hard to understand accent. Cheat sheet allowed on the exams but honestly you either know it or you don't. Not fun but not the worst class.
Professor was Pallav Goyal, grade was just 5 homeworks, 8 quizzes, midterm, and final (no attendance grade) and the lowest quiz score and lowest homework scores were both dropped.
Took it with Professor Goyal, best math professor I've had. Super knowledgeable in the course, and quick with email answers. The course itself is really easy, just goes over sets and probability. You could get an A just by going to all the lectures and listening.