He's the nicest guy, although his lecture's aren't the greatest. Jeff Hanson carried me through this class, and Prof. Chatterjee's grading was also very lenient. I don't understand the bad reviews, this class, although it wasn't the greatest, was doable and interesting.

I saw plenty of horrible reviews of Chatterjee from past COVID quarters (when he taught 82) and was almost dissuaded from taking this class this quarter, but then I decided to give it a chance. While it’s true that his lecturing isn’t great and his slides are jam-packed with information to the point that they’re almost unreadable, I have to give him credit for being the most helpful and available professor I’ve ever had at UCLA. He even gave us his phone number and told us to call him at any time we had a question about the course material, in which he would almost immediately set up a Zoom meeting for some one-on-one discussion. He never hesitates in explaining a concept in multiple different ways to make sure that you fully understand the mechanics (pardon the pun) behind the materials. I wish I started going to office hours a lot sooner in the quarter, since my understanding of the course content prior to and after the midterm was like night and day thanks to his explanations.
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That’s unfortunately where the positives end. Here is a general breakdown of the grading scheme and my opinion on each component:
Homework: 10%
Quizzes: 10% each
Midterm: 20%
Final: 50%
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Lectures: Like I said earlier, they were pretty hard to follow. While they were definitely thorough, they were extremely disorganised. There was just way too much information jam-packed on a single slide which made it difficult to pay attention during lecture and difficult to use as a study tool. Honestly the most helpful part of his lectures was when he opened up a separate slide and derived equations and solutions to problems by hand, but he rarely did this. For the most part, he was just reading from the slides, which honestly was not particularly engaging, especially since the lecture was an hour and 50 minutes straight with no break.. He did stop often to ask if we had any questions, further lending credence to the fact that he was a very helpful professor. I was tempted to stop going to lectures and just watch online YouTube videos (look up Jeff Hanson - he’s a lifesaver), but a lot of the information in the lectures does come up on exams.
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Homework: Questions were straight from the textbook. They spanned a good range of difficulty, with some extremely easy questions to others that may take a few hours of thought. He provided the numerical solutions to problems but didn't tell us how to solve them, which was great because it gave us an easy check to ensure our solution was correct. If you really get stuck, you can find the solution guide to the entire book on Library Genesis, but I don’t recommend looking at this until you’ve tried the problem yourself in multiple different ways. The homework also was not assigned weekly. PDF files just appeared on CCLE out of nowhere and we had a week to complete it.
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Discussion: We had a weekly optional discussion. The TA would go over a worksheet (which just consisted of additional exercises from the book). Like the other users said, it was nice to see someone talk and work through the problems live, since that part of learning was absent from lecture.
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Quizzes: Both quizzes were only two questions, and we were given an hour to complete them. The first quiz was extremely easy, but there was a twist in one of the problems. Chatterjee has a grading policy where if you mess up something fundamental about the problem (like misinterpreting the question or drawing the wrong free body diagram) you would get a 0. I messed up the FBD on literally the easiest exam problem in the entire class and I was contemplating taking the course P/NP week 3. But he really only says this to scare you and to emphasize that this is in fact a statics course and these are the most important aspects of the material. The second quiz, however, was extremely difficult. The entire exam had no numbers on it, and we had to write out answers in terms of a million variables. I never knew what grade I got on it, but I assume it wasn’t good.
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Midterm: About the same difficulty as the first quiz, just four questions instead of two.
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Final: Chatterjee definitely talked up the importance of the final exam, and I think this was the reason why I ended up doing well in the class. The final made up 50% of our grade, or 100% if we did better on it than everything before it. There were six questions in total, all from material in the latter part of the class. Half of the test questions were on beam deflections, which we covered the last two weeks of class but we never had homework for it. The rest of it was on torsion of circular shafts, stresses and strains, and friction. I think if I had some additional practice on beam deflection I probably would have been more comfortable going into it. Thankfully, the other half of the test was fairly straightforward. I honestly felt that the way the final exam was structured was a bit unfair - given that it was such a large percentage of our final grade, I think it would have made sense to cover material from both the statics section and mechanics of materials section equally. He did give us a practice final from 2016 to help us study, which was very nice of him. The practice exam was a lot more difficult than the actual exam too.
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Overall: Chatterjee isn’t the greatest lecturer and I don’t like how his class was structured. The tests ranged from straightforward to extremely difficult. However he was extremely available and always made time to help us on a one-on-one basis. In the unlikely event that this class is taught in an online format by him some time in the future, I wouldn’t recommend it. But seeing his reviews from pre-COVID quarters makes me think that he is much better in in-person, so do with that as you will.

To be honest, I think he just struggled a bit with the online format. His slides were often cluttered, hard to understand, and it would take you a second or two to actually figure out what he's trying to express. But after you get it, he actually isn't all that bad of a professor. I think I learned the first chapters very well from him, but I will say that you will very likely need to use outside resources like youtube to really understand the concepts.

The last couple chapters, which dealt with circular shafts and beam bending, were what made me take this class P/NP. I was doing alright until then but for some reason, these concepts did not stick in my mind and from what I've heard from other students, this was an exceptionally challenging section as well. I found youtube videos to be much more helpful than the class during this time.

His tests were very hit and miss. Sometimes they were very conceptual and difficult problems that did not look like our homework at all, which was pure straightforward calculation. Sometimes the test problems were almost exactly like homework problems.

In the end though, I can tell he genuinely does care about teaching, and I think the online format messed with him as it did with all of us. I'd say if you do have to take him, don't get too scared but just watch yourself near the end.

Lectures: quite challenging in the online environment. His slides can get really full and difficult to decipher, and he's not the best at online lecturing.

Discussions: really nice to be able to hear the concepts explained by another person, and he has good exercise problems too

Homework: good practice for the lecture concepts, but does not seem to reflect the type of questions he gives on the exams

Exams: tends to include some conceptual questions and a lot of letters (very little numbers). They can be quite difficult.

Overall: he's a really nice professor but he doesn't always teach you everything you need to know. There are YouTube channels which you should definitely watch on top of his lectures, and expect to have to study beyond looking at the resources that he gives.

Chatterjee has quite a lot of experience in teaching, but he just has a really soft voice that is difficult to hear if you sit in the back of the room. Even when I sat in the front of the room it was kind of difficult to hear exactly what he was saying. Nevertheless, he's still a good professor, but his lectures are REALLY dry, especially after the midterm.

We had lecture for two hours, but instead of taking a break in between, he decided to give a 100-minute continuous lecture and let us out ten minutes early; supposedly, it's to maintain the flow of lecture, but it would really help if we got a 10-minute break during lecture. Given his really dry lectures, only about 20 people (including me) showed up to lecture during the second half of the course...and among those 20 about half of them were asleep during lecture. I, myself, had to lie down on the floor right in front of Professor Chatterjee (but he didn't mind me doing it) just to keep myself alert in class.

The homework assignments were majorly time-consuming, and if you don't have the solutions to the assignments, you'll most likely be spending most of your weekends trying to do a lot of complex math and figuring out where you made your mistakes.

Chatterjee can be pretty tricky on his exams, and I thought he was a little unfair during the final. During class, he said that he didn't want us to take the time to memorize formulas and that he would give us a formula sheet. But during the final, he didn't even provide all the formulas necessary to solve the problems!

Nevertheless, I got an A in the class mainly because my TA was pretty good in discussion, during which she would go over a few problems in the textbook to give us an idea of how to solve our homework; they weren't exactly the same problems, but they were able to force us to learn the different methods of solving problems.

Professor Chatterjee is the best professor I've had at UCLA. He is like a loving grandfather- always concerned about his students and makes sure everyone understands the material. He even gives us his phone number so that we can call him for questions. No other professor has done that for me.

His tests are fair, especially since he tells you what will be on it and makes sure you understand all the material. Overall, he's a wonderful persona and a great teacher.