evaluation

RUN DATE: 05/20/14
TIME: 08:17:31
SEMESTER: SPRING 2014

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

INSTRUCTOR AND COURSE EVALUATION
FINAL STATISTICS

REPORT: SCHL_RPT

SCHOOL:	ARTS & SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT:	MATHEMATICS	SUBJECT:	MATHEMATICS

COURSE ID	T.SCHL	ACTV	COURSE SECTION NAME	INSTRUCTOR NAME	ENROLL	ELIGIBLE	RESPONSES	% ENROLL
MATH312001	AS	LEC	LINEAR ALGEBRA	NANDA,VIDIT	74	74	71	96

		AVERAGE RATINGS PER QUESTION				NUM	THIS INSTRUCTOR ONLY WORST RATING ... BEST RATING
QUESTION (SUMMARIZED)		INST	SECT	CRSE	-	RESP	0	1	2	3	4
01	Overall quality of the instructor. [Scale: 0 to 4: Poor,Fair,Good,Very good,Excellent]	3.54	3.54	3.07	-	70	1% 1	0% 0	7% 5	26% 18	66% 46
02	Overall quality of the course. [Scale: 0 to 4: Poor,Fair,Good,Very good,Excellent]	3.07	3.07	2.74	-	70	1% 1	4% 3	14% 10	46% 32	34% 24
03	Overall quality of the TA(s) if applicable. [Scale: 0 to 4: Poor,Fair,Good,Very good,Excellent,N/A,]	2.07	2.07	2.24	-	41	2% 1	32% 13	29% 12	29% 12	7% 3
04	The instructor clearly communicated the subject matter. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.65	3.65	3.21	-	63	0% 0	0% 0	3% 2	29% 18	68% 43
05	The instructor effectively stimulated my interest. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.52	3.52	3.13	-	62	2% 1	2% 1	5% 3	27% 17	65% 40
06	The instructor was appropriately accessible outside of class time. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.21	3.21	3.38	-	61	0% 0	3% 2	15% 9	39% 24	43% 26
07	As a result of taking this course, I have a better understanding of factual knowledge, principles and/or theories in this area. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.62	3.62	3.43	-	61	2% 1	0% 0	0% 0	31% 19	67% 41
08	This course helped me to improve my ability to analyze, solve problems and/or think critically. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.38	3.38	3.29	-	61	2% 1	0% 0	7% 4	43% 26	49% 30
09	This course helped me to understand how this field asks and answers questions. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.24	3.24	3.19	-	62	2% 1	3% 2	13% 8	34% 21	48% 30
10	This course challenged me to consider new ideas, concepts, or ways of thinking. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.30	3.30	3.18	-	61	2% 1	2% 1	10% 6	39% 24	48% 29
11	As a result of taking this course, I am more excited by this field of study. [Scale: 0 to 4: Strongly disagree,Disagree,Neither agree nor disagree,Agree,Strongly agree]	3.05	3.05	2.85	-	62	2% 1	5% 3	24% 15	26% 16	44% 27
12	Please rate the difficulty of the course. [Scale: 0 to 4: Easy 0,1,2,3,Difficult 4]	2.65	2.65	2.85	-	62	0% 0	2% 1	40% 25	50% 31	8% 5
13	Please rate the amount of work required for this course. [Scale: 0 to 4: Very Little 0,1,2,3,Very Much 4]	2.34	2.34	2.74	-	61	0% 0	13% 8	41% 25	44% 27	2% 1
14	To your knowledge, has there been cheating in this course? [Scale: 0 to 1: Y,N]	.98	-	-	-	62	2% 1	98% 61	-	-	-

		AVERAGE RATINGS PER QUESTION	NUM	THIS INSTRUCTOR ONLY WORST RATING ... BEST RATING
QUESTION (SUMMARIZED)	INST	SECT	CRSE	-	RESP	0	1	2	3	4
15	Math QuestionWould you take another course from this professor - [S$LN] ? [Scale: 0 to 5: No,Unlikely,Possibly,Likely,Yes]	4.66	4.66	4.06	-	58	2% 1	0% 0	0% 0	5% 3	16% 9

RUN DATE: 05/20/14
TIME: 08:17:31
SEMESTER: SPRING 2014

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

INSTRUCTOR AND COURSE EVALUATION
FINAL STATISTICS

REPORT: SCHL_RPT

SCHOOL:	ARTS & SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT:	MATHEMATICS	SUBJECT:	MATHEMATICS

COURSE ID	T.SCHL	ACTV	COURSE SECTION NAME	INSTRUCTOR NAME	ENROLL	ELIGIBLE	RESPONSES	% ENROLL
MATH312001	AS	LEC	LINEAR ALGEBRA	NANDA,VIDIT	74	74	71	96

Cheating Comment

Textbook solutions available online.

Comment Suggestion

Overall, the course was very good, and Professor Nanda was an excellent professor. Here are some things that I liked about the course: 1. Professor Nanda taught the material very effectively. His lectures and lecture notes were easy to follow, and I learned a lot from the course. 2. Professor Nanda really wanted to make sure that his students understood the material and was very willing to provide additional help/explanations. 3. Professor Nanda remained very organized throughout the semester. 4. Professor Nanda was very enthusiastic and gave interesting lectures. I can't think of any areas that need improvement on the top of my head, but I just wanted to note that there was significant overlap between MATH-312 and MATH-240. I personally found it useful to review the fundamentals of linear algebra, but I'm not sure if Professor Nanda intended to have this much overlap.

I had heard sub-optimal thinks about past professors of this course, but Vidit brings energy and enthusiasm to every lecture, which is very necessary when you have to walk all the way to DRL at 11am. Vidit is very knowledgable in the subject area and was clear in explaining things. However, I would prefer to have more practice problems to work on for the exams.

Course concepts were very useful and applicable to a wide range of fields, and the professor did a great job explaining key ideas and kept the students engaged.

Professor Nanda is extremely charismatic and passionate. I thoroughly enjoyed taking this course with him. He mentioned that the way he teaches the course is not the standard or traditional way. Given how logical and sensible Nanda's structuring of the course material has been, I cannot imagine how the course was structured in the past.

Vidit is fantastic.

Professor Nanda was amazing! Always stimulated interest and did a great job of presenting materials and answering questions. Amazing experience.

I think Professor Nanda is absolutely incredible at explaining material in a fun and engaging way. He is by far, the best math professor I have had at Penn.

Vidit is the best math professor I've ever had at Penn!

Vidit is an amazing professor that cares about his students and is very conscious of how he presents the material.

Vidit is really cool and a fantastic instructor. I convinced my friends to take this class. He's great and knows how to command a lecture. I'm just bad at math and don't really understand how topics come together...

Vidit is by far the best math teacher I have had at Penn so far. He made the class interesting and fun.

Vidit was by far the best Math professor that I've had at Penn. He was young and fun and made the material more exciting to learn than previous professors. This sometimes had a downside, as his presentation of difficult material often made it appear easier than it really was. Overall great course.

First, the conceptual illustration of the material was excellent. This class really turned the skills gained from MATH 240 into a cohesive picture, which is impressive for the level of abstractness of the material. Second, the set of applications of linear algebra that we learned was rich: how to compress an image into JPEG format without sacrificing quality, how noise-canceling headphones work, how Markov chains are the premise for both Google's PageRank algorithm and for many stock-trading algorithms, and more. Overall, I am very pleased with how much I learned from this course. Vidit is both a highly effective teacher and an approachable, fun person. Great course.

Vidit is awesome and I am so excited that he has joined the Math faculty at Penn. He occasionally dumbs things down a little, but compensates for it with increasing the pace of lecture - all the time upholding the same level of clarity. It also helped that Vidit never forgets to connect what we did in class with its application in the real world. Perhaps it's because he's younger than all the other professors - he certainly seems more enthusiastic about class and genuinely invested in his students. If I had Vidit for my earlier math classes, I would've aced them. The only downside of the class is that exams were always very long and didn't give students any room to think and reason during the exam. If you began the exams a little rocky on a couple ideas, there's a very slim chance that you'll be able to figure it out during the exam.

Prof Nanda was by far the best professor I have ever had in a math course at Penn. He effectively taught the course, and seemed to be actually involved in student learning. This course and this teacher is the standard to which all other math courses should be held.

This is definitely the best math course I've taken in my life.

Ironically hates doing actual math despite being a math professor... Tests focus exclusively on doing numerical problems so it'd be nice to do a tad bit more in class. But overall, Vidit is engaging, meaning everything he says Im at least listening to which is a plus

Thank you

Professor Nanda was very enthusiastic about the material and his classes were enjoyable to go to. The first half of the semester focused on solving linear algebra problems while the second half was mainly theoretical. I thought the practical subjects to be much more interesting.

The applied aspect of the class was really well taught, and I thought the overall curriculum was interesting and very well done!

I have never given a professor such a high rating. Professor Nanda is one of, if not, the best math professors I have had at Penn. He conveys the subject matter in a clear manner, both in class and in his online lectures. I have never seen material so well-organized for any class before. He is very accessible via e-mail, in office hours, and after class. I also genuinely appreciates how he wants his students to succeed and is very flexible in that regard. He does not require more work than is necessary, and I would strongly recommend him as a professor to anyone interested in taking linear algebra. The material, though it can be very theoretical and dense, was clearly construed and he reviewed the previous lecture at the start of every class to maximize our understanding.

Vidit is the best math lecturer I've had at Penn. His notes on the board are clear and easy to understand. He is very thorough in whatever topic he is teaching, and he seems to genuinely care about his students. He's honestly a breath of fresh air in the Penn math department.

Linear Algebra is not the most interesting topic but this professor was able to shift the class to use the topics in real world situations and lecture in a way that would create interest in class.

It depends. He teaches well, but unfortunately his grading is quite subjective and not reflective of what you would assume would be suitable in other math classes.

This course was my least favourite math course at Penn so far. The material I learnt felt to be very repetitive from 240 and the new material that I did learn, did not feel particularly useful. The exams in this course tested your ability to compute in a speedy manner. In my opinion, I don't believe that should be the focus of mathematics exams. One could do well in the class just by memorising techniques and solving the same problems over and over to gain speed. We were never tested on proofs and even though, this class is not geared towards math majors, I do believe especially on the midterms that it would have been useful to test short proofs because the exams were only an hour long. I did not really understand the point of performing the same operation multiple times and being docked severely just for making computational errors. I believe a proof would have been a better way to distinguish between who really understood the material and who didn't.

The professor was excellent. He made showing up to class actually enjoyable. The course material itself was a lot like any normal math class but the lectures were always enjoyable and definitely worth going to.

Vidit is an amazing communicator, and he truly brought linear algebra to life. I walked into the course with very limited knowledge of linear algebra, but now I feel like I am leaving the course with an understanding not only of how to compute linear algebra problems but also a general idea of where linear algebra is applied. I found the applications to be very exciting, and this is one of those few courses that truly changed the way I think. I'll never look at Facebook, page rank, digital images, and many other topics the same way.