MATH 33A
Linear Algebra and Applications
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 3B or 31B or 32A with grade of C- or better. Introduction to linear algebra: systems of linear equations, matrix algebra, linear independence, subspaces, bases and dimension, orthogonality, least-squares methods, determinants, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, matrix diagonalization, and symmetric matrices. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - The only bad thing about his lecture is he spends too much time at the easy stuff (before midterm 1) and goes super fast afterward for the difficult topics. His class is pretty clear and involves much proof rather than calculation, but the homework is extremely challenging. You should expect to see the homework requires as hard proof as he teaches on lectures. Fortunately, only calculation parts of homework are graded and the exams consist mainly of calculations. EDIT: After the final, I changed Overall score from 4 to 2. The final exam is not difficult in terms of analyzing and prooving, but it involved INSANE numbers in 3 of 8 questions, each requiring 4-digit multiplying 4-digit for about 30 times. I actually finished the equations 80 minutes ahead of time, but still couldn't finish the calculations by the end of exam. Apparently, he did not do a single step to solve the questions after making the exam paper, or he would have discovered how absurd are the numbers he gave.
Fall 2018 - The only bad thing about his lecture is he spends too much time at the easy stuff (before midterm 1) and goes super fast afterward for the difficult topics. His class is pretty clear and involves much proof rather than calculation, but the homework is extremely challenging. You should expect to see the homework requires as hard proof as he teaches on lectures. Fortunately, only calculation parts of homework are graded and the exams consist mainly of calculations. EDIT: After the final, I changed Overall score from 4 to 2. The final exam is not difficult in terms of analyzing and prooving, but it involved INSANE numbers in 3 of 8 questions, each requiring 4-digit multiplying 4-digit for about 30 times. I actually finished the equations 80 minutes ahead of time, but still couldn't finish the calculations by the end of exam. Apparently, he did not do a single step to solve the questions after making the exam paper, or he would have discovered how absurd are the numbers he gave.
Most Helpful Review
He is a pretty clear Lecturer, and his tests are not hard. But I did not understand why he cared about brackets and those details so much! I missed two points during the whole quarter because of not writing the brackets and not indicating which one is Q and R for QR factorization. Because of this I missed A+ by 0.3%!!!! He is a harsh grader, he made 94% to be A and 98% to be A+. Just be careful about those brackets when you take him he is a fun of brackets!
He is a pretty clear Lecturer, and his tests are not hard. But I did not understand why he cared about brackets and those details so much! I missed two points during the whole quarter because of not writing the brackets and not indicating which one is Q and R for QR factorization. Because of this I missed A+ by 0.3%!!!! He is a harsh grader, he made 94% to be A and 98% to be A+. Just be careful about those brackets when you take him he is a fun of brackets!
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Winter 2016 - I love this professor! Though his lectures are intense because there is always new stuff every lecture, he presents his lecture in a coherent and clear way. He assigns homework with different difficulty level. Though some problems are quite challenging, they are fun and he won't collect the homework. The every week quiz is based on the homework but the quizzes are easy to deal with. The exam is not that difficult but requires you to compute carefully and check your answer. Linear algebra is really beautiful and just take this class.
Winter 2016 - I love this professor! Though his lectures are intense because there is always new stuff every lecture, he presents his lecture in a coherent and clear way. He assigns homework with different difficulty level. Though some problems are quite challenging, they are fun and he won't collect the homework. The every week quiz is based on the homework but the quizzes are easy to deal with. The exam is not that difficult but requires you to compute carefully and check your answer. Linear algebra is really beautiful and just take this class.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2018 - The lectures moved fast, so at times students were scrambling to keep up/write stuff down. The average for the first midterm was a 35/40, and was in the lower B range for the second midterm and final I think. Her exams were generally reasonable, the hardest part was the True/False, which required a deeper understanding of concepts and applications of theorems that one would not know unless they had spent a significant amount of time working through many problems (and even then, one might not completely get the problem). There was an issue with how she graded the second midterm's true/false section, giving 2 points for a correct answer, 1 point for no answer, and -1 points for an incorrect answer. According to her, the reason behind this was to discourage people from simply choosing an answer without truly knowing the reason behind it, but it actually punished the people who may have put effort into studying but just arrived at the wrong answer (tricky questions) and benefited those who may not have put in the effort to study, did not know the answer, and therefore just left it blank. There is no way of distinguishing those who simply circled an answer for the sake of guessing and possibly earning points from those who knew their shit and just arrived at the wrong answer for any other reason. Still, the final was reasonable if one truly knew the material, and she was very generous with the final grading (generally rounding people who were in between grades up; the grade distribution was better than that of the average math class at UCLA). Out of the homework that Bhaskar assigned, only a few (generally trickier problems that required a lot of thought) were mandatory to turn in weekly. No quizzes. Would recommend!
Spring 2018 - The lectures moved fast, so at times students were scrambling to keep up/write stuff down. The average for the first midterm was a 35/40, and was in the lower B range for the second midterm and final I think. Her exams were generally reasonable, the hardest part was the True/False, which required a deeper understanding of concepts and applications of theorems that one would not know unless they had spent a significant amount of time working through many problems (and even then, one might not completely get the problem). There was an issue with how she graded the second midterm's true/false section, giving 2 points for a correct answer, 1 point for no answer, and -1 points for an incorrect answer. According to her, the reason behind this was to discourage people from simply choosing an answer without truly knowing the reason behind it, but it actually punished the people who may have put effort into studying but just arrived at the wrong answer (tricky questions) and benefited those who may not have put in the effort to study, did not know the answer, and therefore just left it blank. There is no way of distinguishing those who simply circled an answer for the sake of guessing and possibly earning points from those who knew their shit and just arrived at the wrong answer for any other reason. Still, the final was reasonable if one truly knew the material, and she was very generous with the final grading (generally rounding people who were in between grades up; the grade distribution was better than that of the average math class at UCLA). Out of the homework that Bhaskar assigned, only a few (generally trickier problems that required a lot of thought) were mandatory to turn in weekly. No quizzes. Would recommend!
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - I was in his math 174E, but couldn't find a page for that course, so I'll write here. I have had lot of math courses as a third-year math major, and Bonk is hands down the worst math professor I've ever encountered in UCLA so far. His lectures are fast-paced, and always lack explanation. His homeworks are ridiculously impractical and largely not related to his lecture contents, which means you have to self-learn loads of stuff and end up messing up the scores (yeah, the grading is harsh). He posted practice midterm and asked students to work through it, but he wouldn't give solutions in lecture or online (what's the point then mate?). The course materials are actually very easy, but he made it so much more difficult than it really has to be.
Fall 2017 - I was in his math 174E, but couldn't find a page for that course, so I'll write here. I have had lot of math courses as a third-year math major, and Bonk is hands down the worst math professor I've ever encountered in UCLA so far. His lectures are fast-paced, and always lack explanation. His homeworks are ridiculously impractical and largely not related to his lecture contents, which means you have to self-learn loads of stuff and end up messing up the scores (yeah, the grading is harsh). He posted practice midterm and asked students to work through it, but he wouldn't give solutions in lecture or online (what's the point then mate?). The course materials are actually very easy, but he made it so much more difficult than it really has to be.
Most Helpful Review
This one probably the most dysfunctional class I have ever taken. No one paid attention and random students were calling out in class, disrupting class, and acting like idiots for most of the lectures. Every single day the entire class would just talk to their friends and she just kept right on teaching. Whenever she tried to get everyone to pay attention they would just ignore her. If you want an easy A then go ahead and take her. At the beginning of the class she said, "If you guys all deserve an A then I will give you all an A and I will just deal with the department myself." Then she made the average on her tests like 80%+ so we all ended up "deserving it". She was a very easy professor. If you want to learn the material then maybe don't. She has a great graphical insight to the math she is teaching but can't get her point across if no one is listening anyway.
This one probably the most dysfunctional class I have ever taken. No one paid attention and random students were calling out in class, disrupting class, and acting like idiots for most of the lectures. Every single day the entire class would just talk to their friends and she just kept right on teaching. Whenever she tried to get everyone to pay attention they would just ignore her. If you want an easy A then go ahead and take her. At the beginning of the class she said, "If you guys all deserve an A then I will give you all an A and I will just deal with the department myself." Then she made the average on her tests like 80%+ so we all ended up "deserving it". She was a very easy professor. If you want to learn the material then maybe don't. She has a great graphical insight to the math she is teaching but can't get her point across if no one is listening anyway.
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