Professor
Lieven Vandenberghe
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Most Helpful Review
Okay well this course in general isn't the best course you can take in the EE department. It was basically Linear Algebra with MAJOR twists and turns. As for the professor, well he's an okay lecturer. His lectures were dry, for the most part, and it was a reason why many people in my class started to not care about the course around midterm season. As far as homework assignments go, Vandenberghe assigns REALLY difficult problems from his course reader. However, if you go to his office hours, which were held right after class, he would be EXTREMELY helpful on whatever homework problems you are having trouble with. The TAs' office hours helped quite a lot too. The midterm was pretty difficult (average was just above 50%), and the final pretty much owned everyone (average was just above 40%). I did scored a little above average on both exams and ended up with a B+. If you have to take EE 103, Vandenberghe would be an okay professor to take, but if you can find another one who's better (and not to mention easier), take the other one instead.
Okay well this course in general isn't the best course you can take in the EE department. It was basically Linear Algebra with MAJOR twists and turns. As for the professor, well he's an okay lecturer. His lectures were dry, for the most part, and it was a reason why many people in my class started to not care about the course around midterm season. As far as homework assignments go, Vandenberghe assigns REALLY difficult problems from his course reader. However, if you go to his office hours, which were held right after class, he would be EXTREMELY helpful on whatever homework problems you are having trouble with. The TAs' office hours helped quite a lot too. The midterm was pretty difficult (average was just above 50%), and the final pretty much owned everyone (average was just above 40%). I did scored a little above average on both exams and ended up with a B+. If you have to take EE 103, Vandenberghe would be an okay professor to take, but if you can find another one who's better (and not to mention easier), take the other one instead.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - This was an extremely challenging class. Probably the most challenging among the core upper division EE classes. The class consisted of 7 homework assignments, a midterm, and a final. The homeworks were very tricky and took a lot of time to understand. Most of them took upwards of 6 hours to complete (in my and many others' experiences). Many of the homework questions are just impossible to understand without knowing some trick that you wouldn't think of immediately. Going to TA office hours and discussions are necessary if you want to do well on the homeworks. Course hero was also an extremely great resource because many homework questions are recycled from previous years, so they can be found there. Vandenberghe's lectures were quite dry. They mainly consisted of him reading off of his prepared lecture slides and writing some annotations on the chalkboard. He is pretty monotone and tends to mumble a bit. However, Vandenberghe is an extremely great guy with a good sense of humor. He is very concerned about the students' success and is very helpful in office hours. I would give him a soft recommendation as a professor for this class. The material was extremely uninteresting in the beginning. It mainly consisted of a review of concepts from Math 33a (definitions of vectors, matrices, and operations). However, it got much more interesting later on as we talked more about regression and how the concepts we were learning were applied to fields like machine learning, image processing, and more. While the material is quite dry at times, it is beneficial and useful to know if you have any interest in continuing studies in Machine Learning and related fields.
Fall 2018 - This was an extremely challenging class. Probably the most challenging among the core upper division EE classes. The class consisted of 7 homework assignments, a midterm, and a final. The homeworks were very tricky and took a lot of time to understand. Most of them took upwards of 6 hours to complete (in my and many others' experiences). Many of the homework questions are just impossible to understand without knowing some trick that you wouldn't think of immediately. Going to TA office hours and discussions are necessary if you want to do well on the homeworks. Course hero was also an extremely great resource because many homework questions are recycled from previous years, so they can be found there. Vandenberghe's lectures were quite dry. They mainly consisted of him reading off of his prepared lecture slides and writing some annotations on the chalkboard. He is pretty monotone and tends to mumble a bit. However, Vandenberghe is an extremely great guy with a good sense of humor. He is very concerned about the students' success and is very helpful in office hours. I would give him a soft recommendation as a professor for this class. The material was extremely uninteresting in the beginning. It mainly consisted of a review of concepts from Math 33a (definitions of vectors, matrices, and operations). However, it got much more interesting later on as we talked more about regression and how the concepts we were learning were applied to fields like machine learning, image processing, and more. While the material is quite dry at times, it is beneficial and useful to know if you have any interest in continuing studies in Machine Learning and related fields.
Most Helpful Review
Vandenberghe is a co-author of the Nonlinear Programming book so he lectures pretty much straight off slides based off of the textbook. HWs were difficult and fairly time-consuming with both written and MATLAB questions, but if you read the material from the textbook, there are many similar examples that are helpful. The final exam is worth 75% of the overall grade but its difficulty is on par with the HWs. He's very helpful at his office hours, and also provides HW help during class. Goes fairly quickly in lecture over course material, but he does go through almost all the proofs/examples step-by-step. Overall a very good professor, I would definitely recommend him.
Vandenberghe is a co-author of the Nonlinear Programming book so he lectures pretty much straight off slides based off of the textbook. HWs were difficult and fairly time-consuming with both written and MATLAB questions, but if you read the material from the textbook, there are many similar examples that are helpful. The final exam is worth 75% of the overall grade but its difficulty is on par with the HWs. He's very helpful at his office hours, and also provides HW help during class. Goes fairly quickly in lecture over course material, but he does go through almost all the proofs/examples step-by-step. Overall a very good professor, I would definitely recommend him.
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