I liked the class and I got an A. My TA, Paul, was really really helpful, though. I went to his office before both midterms and that helped a lot. The homework load was okay, though I didn't like how the TAs weren't allowed to answer homework questions until after the homework was turned in. I do understand that we need to get grades on the homework, but since some people just have the solutions that's kind of unfair. I think it's unfair to grade math homework on correctness anyways. The professor was kind of mean by telling his TAs that we would not be graded on a curve when in fact we were. I also did not like his email a week before the final which said "do not ask me questions anymore to be fair to the students who worked hard all quarter." He was kind of condescending at times, and seemed to resent everyone in the class. Also, his french accent was a little hard to deal with for about 2 weeks. Overall, I'd say take him if you've got to, and you won't be so bad off. The lectures are just OK. Watch the MIT lectures! I watched one and it fueled me to success on an entire week's lecture. Should have applied there I guess.

This math class was a relief after 32B, however professor Balmer was particularly rude to me. He cancelled the last 2 lectures before the final, although he had not finished the material. I sent him an email with my concerns about the final, and he responded by not answering my questions and telling me he is grateful that not all of his students act as I do. He proceeded to test us on the material that he had not gotten to lecture about in class. If I could go back in time, I would meet up with my past self and tell me to avoid taking Balmer if at all possible.

Dr. Balmer is insanely smart. He taught the whole class without notes! Very rarely, he would look at a note card to copy an example problem, but that was only to make sure he had the numbers right. He was sick the last two lectures, and he did test on material that he did not cover, but he did so in a fair way. He more or less "guided" us through the problem, outlining the steps one by one. I did find his final challenging and most of the class used the full three hours to complete the exam. Dr. Balmer is an incredibly gifted teacher who is challenging but in no means impossible. I definitely recommend him.

Professor Balmer was kind of an asshole. He sent an email out a week before the final saying that he wouldn't answer any more student emails "to be fair to those who went to lecture."

He would also get upset when people wouldn't participate in lecture. I'm sorry, is this 10th grade again?

Overall, he wasn't bad at teaching the concepts, but his French accent was a little distracting. I recommend watching the MIT lecture in addition to his lecture for some of the topics. The book is good overall, and you can learn well from it.

Here's what bothers me about classes with homework that is graded for correctness: it seems as though there are always a lot of students with the solutions (which are not for sale, either at the bookstore, or online), and they get very high marks on the homework. This is very unfair to those who actually spend the time to do the homework.

Professor Balmer was a very clear instructor and if you read the sections before going to class as he asks you do you can really benefit a lot from lecture. The beginning of the course was fairly easy with matrices and row reducing. He lets you drop your lowest midterm grade if you do better on the final which was very helpful for me and he lets you use a notecard on the midterms and final. As said before he missed the last two lectures and could not find anyone to fill in and before the final I was freaking out trying to teach myself the new information and put it on my notecard. On the final however the problem on the material not covered led you through the steps and we was very fair with teaching the information through the last problem on the final. Although the average on the final was very low, he curved everyone's grades at the end and if you took the final you got at least a D- in the class and a raw score in the class of a 78.9 was an A-. I would not hesitate to take Balmer again, his lectures were enjoyable and worthwhile and his tests and policies were fair.

There are 2 midterms and 1 final, like any usual math class. Hw is 10% and you only need to turn in 8 to get full credit. even though you don't finish all of the problems. If you do better on the final than one of the midterms, grade is the higher midterm is 15% and final for 75%. If else, it's 15 for each midterm and 60 for the final. The professor himself is super duper smart, you can tell from his CV (available at UCLA math department). However, the thing about professor Balmer is he thinks we know everything. He tells us to read the material beforehand from day 1, but I don't have that kind of time towards the end of the quarter. After you read the book, you will see he is a really good professor because he explains those tough stuff. But if you do not read the material beforehand, you have almost no idea what he is talking about during the whole lecture. (That's me pretty much the whole quarter.) The mean and median for the three exams did not go over 50 out of 100. The 2 midterms have the full credit of 25 and the final is 49. There is 5 true or false questions for midterms and 10 for final. The feeling you get from seeing the problems at first sight is you don't know how to use what you know to solve them. During dis sessions, we usually do hw problems. However, the TA never tell us why he did what he did. He always writes down a claim and prove that claim afterwards when we don't even know how he came up with that claim. :/ And sometimes he will make a mistake and spend some time finding out where or leave a problem unsolved because he does not know how, either. Good thing that he only teaches 2 undergrad classes, 33A and 115A.

Balmer is really funny and smart. He is a low key, amusing Frenchman with a talent for simplifying complex ideas. He is very available and helpful during office hours, and leads good lectures. This is a very difficult course, there is no denying. But if you are going to have to take it, take it with him.

Balmer does a great job at making his students understand linear algebra. His lectures are clear, he makes a good joke from time to time, he assigns an appropriate amount of homework, and his exams do a good job at testing your depth of knowledge. He is a tough grader, but getting a 0/5 on a problem can be better for learning than a 3/5 because it forces you to reflect on what concept you might not be grasping. Not a generous curve (I was top 15% of the class for the final which was worth 60-75%, and top 33% for both midterms which are worth 15% each if final is with 60%, and got a B+), but you'll be well prepared for other upper division math after this class.

If you're as terrified of taking M115A as I was, this review is for you. I probably couldn't have been any less prepared for this class - I had taken lower division linear algebra at my community college years ago and our work was entirely computational. As such I didn't remember any of the computations and had literally no experience doing proofs going into this class.

Professor Balmer definitely expects you to have some familiarity with proofs - he uses all the standard notation that you should familiarize yourself with. As for his lectures, I did not find them to be even remotely helpful. It was 50 minutes of him racing across the board and I found it impossible to keep up with him. I was usually lost within the first few minutes and spent the remainder of class in silent agony.

Here is the good news - this class does become easier as the quarter progresses. And by easier I mean there are actual computations you can do! Yay! Not only that, but the proofs are a bit easier to understand - similar to proving trigonometric identities, in my opinion. As for the midterms, the median for the 1st midterm was 52%, the 2nd was 44%, and the final was 58%. If you get scores within the average you should at least be in the B range - lower than average will be in the C range.

My advice if you are struggling with this class is to visit him during his office hours as often as possible. He was a bit ornery during his first office hours session but he quickly warmed up to us afterwards. Good luck!

Balmer was a tough professor, but I'm only a math minor so take this with a grain of salt. The exams were really difficult, as the previous poster said, but he was always inviting people to his office hours so it's not like he didn't want to help. Sometimes the homework was misguided, especially when there were sections that had multiple problems within a problem. I think the homework would have been better had there been less problems selected more carefully, even if it were graded for correctness rather than completion. He's super smart though if that's any consolation.