Anonymous Feedback Comments

This anonymous comment was submitted through collab:

A lot of my fellow classmates and I are concerned about this class because we feel that we aren’t provided with the resources necessary to be able to do the homework in a reasonable amount of time/effort. So many people spend hours and hours at office hours several times a week but even the TAs don’t understand our questions and are not able to help us understand any of the concepts. I understand that we’re supposed to be challenged by the class, but if we aren’t well-equipped to work through the challenges it becomes extremely frustrating. I feel like the class could be improved if the lectures were better structured so that we’re thoroughly taught the concepts and steps we can take to think through a problem rather than going through examples that are hard to understand because we’re only copying down things we don’t fully understand and that don’t apply to other problems we’re expected to solve. I don’t mean to be rude at all so I apologize if it comes off that way, it’s just that so many of the students and I are frustrated and stressed out about how much we don’t understand in the class even after seeking help repeatedly.

One of the drawbacks of anonymous comments, is I have no way to follow-up to better understand what is really going on here. I do appreciate the anonymous comments, but you shouldn’t be worried about making comments like this directly — I view any student making comments with the goal of improving their own learning and making things better for the class as a positive thing, and you shouldn’t be worried that I would count any thoughtful and respectful comment against you.

As for the content, as best as I’m able to interpret it, the perception that the problems are too hard does not fit with what I’m seeing in the assignments. For all of the problem sets so far, more than 90% of students have received grades at least 5 (the exception was for PS3, where it was 89%), which means nearly all answers correct (with some justifications that could be better). On all the assignments, fewer than 5% of the submissions have been 4 or below. So, either we are grading them too generously and students are getting 5+s without actually understanding much (which I don’t think is the case, but perhaps we are giving too much benefit of the doubt for unclear answers), or, more likely, people are acutally understanding things quite well, but it is taking more “pain” and effort to get there than you expect.

It doesn’t make sense to spend time in lecture copying down things you don’t understand. If there are things you don’t understand in lecture, please stop and ask questions, or if you aren’t comfortable doing that, at least post questions on slack. If you don’t ask questions, I don’t know what is confusing, or what should be explained. I make the slides and notes available so you can spend lecture time thinking instead of writing (that said, I think it is often helpful to write things down yourself as part of understanding them, or discovering what is unclear).

There are lots of resources available, but I think you are expecting the wrong kind of problems if you are looking for resources to tell you how to solve them. I understand why this is, since it is what you expect from most of your previous classes. You were all good students, and great at redoing things you saw in class, that’s why you got into UVA.

But, you shouldn’t expect most problems from now on (in this class, and in any worthwhile classes you take after this one) to be like this. You’re not learning anything (useful), if you are just re-solving problems you’ve already seen, or making straightforward symbol replacements in them.

Nearly all of the problems you did in previous math classes were problems you could type into Wolfram Alpha and it could solve instantly; this isn’t surprising - if a problem is something you can solve by following given rules in a straightforward way, it shouldn’t be a problem for humans to spend time on, the rules should be encoded in programs that can do it automatically. Sometimes its worthwhile for humans to learn what the rules are and get some experience following them, but the further along you get, and the more advanced computing systems get, the more ridiculous it is for humans to spend tons of time learning to do things computers already do well.

So, we do learn steps for solving problems in this class, both in lecture and in the book. And, all of the problems on the problem sets are related to things you learn in class. But, many of the problems also involve some creative step that isn’t a straightforward replication of something you’ve seen in class or the book. Without that, I wouldn’t really see the point in assigning them - I’m not assigning problem sets to check if you are doing the reading and coming to class, the point of the problem sets is to develop your understanding of the concepts by having you figure out how to apply them in new ways that go beyond things you’ve already seen and (more importantly) to develop your abilities as mathematical thinkers and problem solvers. You can’t do that by replicating problems you’ve already done, or by solving problems that are straightforward repetitions of problems you’ve already seen solved. But, before trying to solve new problems, you should make sure you understand the examples you’ve seen in the book and in class. It is usually much harder to come up with your own solutions to problems than to understand ones that are provided by others.

All that said, I would encourage anyone who feels like they are spending an unreasonable amount of time on this, or feeling frustrated and stressed out by it, to come to office hours to talk to me (or to make an appointment if you can’t make it then). My office hours have mostly been fairly empty, and the best sense I get of what is going on in the class is from students who come to talk to me during office hours, so I hope you’ll do that rather than just getting frustrated.