MATH 31B
Integration and Infinite Series
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 31A with grade of C- or better. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 3B. Transcendental functions; methods and applications of integration; sequences and series. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Watson was pretty douchey, but after having taken some other math classes in comparison he was ok. The homework was difficult and often involved concepts not discussed in lecture, but his tests were very fair. Although they definitely were a bit of a time crunch, if you understood the material there was no reason not to do well. I got an 84 on midterm 1, a 90 on midterm 2, and a 92 on the final and got an A overall so his grading was pretty fair.
Watson was pretty douchey, but after having taken some other math classes in comparison he was ok. The homework was difficult and often involved concepts not discussed in lecture, but his tests were very fair. Although they definitely were a bit of a time crunch, if you understood the material there was no reason not to do well. I got an 84 on midterm 1, a 90 on midterm 2, and a 92 on the final and got an A overall so his grading was pretty fair.
Most Helpful Review
David is probably one of the best math professors that will ever be. He teaches very well in class. He emphasizes not remembering formulas, but actually understanding concepts. His tests are straightforward, and he gives you practice exams that are almost identical to the exams you will take. He also doesn't curve down. He truly wants as many students to get As as possible. For our class, it is 20% for each midterm, 20% for quizzes, and 40% for the final. (Or the 100% final option if your score is that good.) Easy first midterm, semi-harder second midterm, and pretty fair final. Plus, there's an extra credit project that can boost your grade even more.
David is probably one of the best math professors that will ever be. He teaches very well in class. He emphasizes not remembering formulas, but actually understanding concepts. His tests are straightforward, and he gives you practice exams that are almost identical to the exams you will take. He also doesn't curve down. He truly wants as many students to get As as possible. For our class, it is 20% for each midterm, 20% for quizzes, and 40% for the final. (Or the 100% final option if your score is that good.) Easy first midterm, semi-harder second midterm, and pretty fair final. Plus, there's an extra credit project that can boost your grade even more.
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Spring 2017 - I really liked Professor White. I'm terrible at Calculus and despise it as a subject but he made it very bearable. His tests were tough but got easier throughout the quarter. Doing lots of practice problems from the textbook will be extremely helpful for doing decently on the exams. He was funny, engaging, and had an australian accent.
Spring 2017 - I really liked Professor White. I'm terrible at Calculus and despise it as a subject but he made it very bearable. His tests were tough but got easier throughout the quarter. Doing lots of practice problems from the textbook will be extremely helpful for doing decently on the exams. He was funny, engaging, and had an australian accent.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Taking Math 31B with Professor Wink was an amazing experience. I would agree on the part that he is one of the hardest professors for Math 31B, but he is one of the best ones as well. Grading He had two grading schemes and would use the one which yielded a better score for each individual student out of the two. Scheme 1 Homework: 10% Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2: 20% Final exam: 50% Scheme 2 Homework: 10% Higher of midterm 1 or 2: 30% Final exam: 60% Homework He assigned weekly problems from the exercises in the textbooks which had to be turned in during the lecture on Friday every week. The difficulty level of the problems ranged between easy, moderately difficult, and hard. Though they offered good practice, in order to perform well on his midterms and finals, just the homework problems definitely wouldn't suffice and extra practice of the examples and other problems from the exercises are important. In addition to that, I'd strongly advise to solve his practice midterms and final, and also the problem sheets assigned by the TA (if your TA does)- they're extremely helpful and a great source of practice. Also, he drops your two lowest homework scores and a score of 75% and above on the homeworks is considered as a 100%, so that even if you make some error, you can learn from it and avoid it later on without putting your grade at risk. Midterms and Finals His midterms and finals were hard- no kidding. The averages on the first and second midterms were a 50% and 61% respectively, and that on the final was a 63%. But that doesn't mean they were completely impossible to handle. The exams being hard just meant that he really made you work if you wanted to secure a good score. The one drawback with his midterms that I would say is that they were just worth 26 points. So if you made even a small error, that would drop your score in terms of percentages a lot. If you're consistent with practice and don't put off the syllabus for just before the midterms and final, then I don't think you'd have any major problems in performing decently on his tests. The material in Math 31B is much, and a lot of it is in interconnected with each other (for example, you can't move ahead with infinite series or Taylor polynomials without having your concepts of all the convergence and divergence tests crystal clear). That is why it is important that you follow through with the practice and material as it progresses in the class so that you allow yourself to get familiar with it at a comfortable pace, which is really crucial to ensure in this class if you wanna perform well. Also, Professor Wink gave two points of extra credit for filling out the instructor evaluations at the end of the quarter. Curve He said that he wouldn't curve any exams (midterms or finals) individually, but would scale the overall scores after all the exams. The class was scaled down to quite an extent, with the cutoffs for letter grades in comparison to the overall scores being as follows- 100% or above: A+ >=85%: A >=82%: A- >=79%: B+ >=72%: B >=69%: B- >=64%: C+ >=53%: C >=43%: C- >=33%: D In all, I'd definitely recommend someone who loves to learn more about the intricacies of Math to take Wink's class because although it is hard, you learn a lot and get used to taking difficult tests. He does a great job of preparing you well for harder classes to come along.
Winter 2019 - Taking Math 31B with Professor Wink was an amazing experience. I would agree on the part that he is one of the hardest professors for Math 31B, but he is one of the best ones as well. Grading He had two grading schemes and would use the one which yielded a better score for each individual student out of the two. Scheme 1 Homework: 10% Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2: 20% Final exam: 50% Scheme 2 Homework: 10% Higher of midterm 1 or 2: 30% Final exam: 60% Homework He assigned weekly problems from the exercises in the textbooks which had to be turned in during the lecture on Friday every week. The difficulty level of the problems ranged between easy, moderately difficult, and hard. Though they offered good practice, in order to perform well on his midterms and finals, just the homework problems definitely wouldn't suffice and extra practice of the examples and other problems from the exercises are important. In addition to that, I'd strongly advise to solve his practice midterms and final, and also the problem sheets assigned by the TA (if your TA does)- they're extremely helpful and a great source of practice. Also, he drops your two lowest homework scores and a score of 75% and above on the homeworks is considered as a 100%, so that even if you make some error, you can learn from it and avoid it later on without putting your grade at risk. Midterms and Finals His midterms and finals were hard- no kidding. The averages on the first and second midterms were a 50% and 61% respectively, and that on the final was a 63%. But that doesn't mean they were completely impossible to handle. The exams being hard just meant that he really made you work if you wanted to secure a good score. The one drawback with his midterms that I would say is that they were just worth 26 points. So if you made even a small error, that would drop your score in terms of percentages a lot. If you're consistent with practice and don't put off the syllabus for just before the midterms and final, then I don't think you'd have any major problems in performing decently on his tests. The material in Math 31B is much, and a lot of it is in interconnected with each other (for example, you can't move ahead with infinite series or Taylor polynomials without having your concepts of all the convergence and divergence tests crystal clear). That is why it is important that you follow through with the practice and material as it progresses in the class so that you allow yourself to get familiar with it at a comfortable pace, which is really crucial to ensure in this class if you wanna perform well. Also, Professor Wink gave two points of extra credit for filling out the instructor evaluations at the end of the quarter. Curve He said that he wouldn't curve any exams (midterms or finals) individually, but would scale the overall scores after all the exams. The class was scaled down to quite an extent, with the cutoffs for letter grades in comparison to the overall scores being as follows- 100% or above: A+ >=85%: A >=82%: A- >=79%: B+ >=72%: B >=69%: B- >=64%: C+ >=53%: C >=43%: C- >=33%: D In all, I'd definitely recommend someone who loves to learn more about the intricacies of Math to take Wink's class because although it is hard, you learn a lot and get used to taking difficult tests. He does a great job of preparing you well for harder classes to come along.
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