MATH 172C
Actuarial Models II
Description: Lecture, four hours. Enforced requisite: course 172B. Designed to prepare students for Society of Actuaries Models for Life Contingencies examination. Theoretical basis of certain actuarial models and application to insurance, pensions, and other financial risks. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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I had PIC 10A with this professor. I didn't really talk to him, but he seemed nice enough and he encouraged questions during lecture, which was cool. You definitely should go to lecture in my opinion. Sometimes a couple questions (or similar ones) from lecture show up on the tests. My only problem, was that he went a quite fast and seemed like he thought we all had some background in programming even though it's an intro class(which it seems like a lot did). I did not have any prior knowledge so sometimes I found myself lost in class because he went quickly. He also covered a lot of material. His first midterm was easy and I did well, but then he moved a lot faster and made the second one a lot harder and the average went way down. His final was somewhere more in the middle. I had to study quite a bit, but I ended up with a B. It's doable, but I would suggest a slower professor if you've never done any programming to make your life a little easier.
I had PIC 10A with this professor. I didn't really talk to him, but he seemed nice enough and he encouraged questions during lecture, which was cool. You definitely should go to lecture in my opinion. Sometimes a couple questions (or similar ones) from lecture show up on the tests. My only problem, was that he went a quite fast and seemed like he thought we all had some background in programming even though it's an intro class(which it seems like a lot did). I did not have any prior knowledge so sometimes I found myself lost in class because he went quickly. He also covered a lot of material. His first midterm was easy and I did well, but then he moved a lot faster and made the second one a lot harder and the average went way down. His final was somewhere more in the middle. I had to study quite a bit, but I ended up with a B. It's doable, but I would suggest a slower professor if you've never done any programming to make your life a little easier.
Most Helpful Review
**IGNORE THE ABOVE, I TOOK PIC 10A** Bing was awesome -- really enjoyed having him as a professor. He teaches upper division math classes as well as intro programming ones, so he really knows what he's doing. He's a clear lecturer, and helpful, welcoming, and approachable both in class and in office hours (go to office hours and he'll come to YOU to ask if you have questions!). He sometimes talked a little too fast but would always stop and ask for questions, so it was forgivable. Programming is not an easy subject to learn for the first time -- or to teach well -- and I really applaud Prof. Cheng for exceeding my expectations. I had no programming experience at all going in -- hadn't ever seen code in my life -- I feel like I really did learn a lot in this class. That said, some of the homeworks were TOUGH -- definitely had to go to office hours for lots of help with a few of them -- but they did help me understand the material. I wish I'd known before going into this class just how big of a time commitment it was going to be. The workload was sporadic; I didn't really do any work outside of class for the first few weeks, and starting weeks 4-5 I'd spend at least 15 hrs/week. I guess that's more of the nature of the course, but just be ready for it. Lots of people drop this class because they aren't prepared for the time commitment and difficulty if you haven't programmed before. That's not to say it's impossible, because it's definitely not -- but you should know and be ready for a LOT of work regardless of your professor. Programming, like learning any other foreign language, takes time to learn. You won't be able to slack off all quarter and get everything right in the end. But, when your programs work, even if some of them do useless crap like rearrange the letter in names, they're pretty cool. One of the good things about Bing is that some of the homeworks, though probably more difficult and time-consuming than those from other professors, are definitely worth saving for future classes and programming (especially when you write a class that handles arbitrarily large integers). Exams were fair and pretty standard. Could be a little tricky, but he'd never throw the complete "wtf is this?!" questions at us, which was nice. Posts all his detailed lecture notes and lots of good exercises online -- very helpful. He posts a lot more stuff than you'll probably have time to work through, but they're all good; the more you do, the better you'll get. All in all, I definitely had my fair share of struggling and cursing out this class -- but all of my frustration was against debugging my programs, not Bing. He's a solid professor and I'd take him again any day. BOTTOM LINE: For PIC 10A, Bing's class might be a tad more difficult than other profs, but if you haven't programmed before, you won't be getting off easy in this class no matter what, so might as well take Cheng to make sure it's worth your time.
**IGNORE THE ABOVE, I TOOK PIC 10A** Bing was awesome -- really enjoyed having him as a professor. He teaches upper division math classes as well as intro programming ones, so he really knows what he's doing. He's a clear lecturer, and helpful, welcoming, and approachable both in class and in office hours (go to office hours and he'll come to YOU to ask if you have questions!). He sometimes talked a little too fast but would always stop and ask for questions, so it was forgivable. Programming is not an easy subject to learn for the first time -- or to teach well -- and I really applaud Prof. Cheng for exceeding my expectations. I had no programming experience at all going in -- hadn't ever seen code in my life -- I feel like I really did learn a lot in this class. That said, some of the homeworks were TOUGH -- definitely had to go to office hours for lots of help with a few of them -- but they did help me understand the material. I wish I'd known before going into this class just how big of a time commitment it was going to be. The workload was sporadic; I didn't really do any work outside of class for the first few weeks, and starting weeks 4-5 I'd spend at least 15 hrs/week. I guess that's more of the nature of the course, but just be ready for it. Lots of people drop this class because they aren't prepared for the time commitment and difficulty if you haven't programmed before. That's not to say it's impossible, because it's definitely not -- but you should know and be ready for a LOT of work regardless of your professor. Programming, like learning any other foreign language, takes time to learn. You won't be able to slack off all quarter and get everything right in the end. But, when your programs work, even if some of them do useless crap like rearrange the letter in names, they're pretty cool. One of the good things about Bing is that some of the homeworks, though probably more difficult and time-consuming than those from other professors, are definitely worth saving for future classes and programming (especially when you write a class that handles arbitrarily large integers). Exams were fair and pretty standard. Could be a little tricky, but he'd never throw the complete "wtf is this?!" questions at us, which was nice. Posts all his detailed lecture notes and lots of good exercises online -- very helpful. He posts a lot more stuff than you'll probably have time to work through, but they're all good; the more you do, the better you'll get. All in all, I definitely had my fair share of struggling and cursing out this class -- but all of my frustration was against debugging my programs, not Bing. He's a solid professor and I'd take him again any day. BOTTOM LINE: For PIC 10A, Bing's class might be a tad more difficult than other profs, but if you haven't programmed before, you won't be getting off easy in this class no matter what, so might as well take Cheng to make sure it's worth your time.
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Winter 2016 - First of all the course material is not that hard. Yet the professor does a really bad job at organizing and explaining, he gives out brunch of papers every single class and most of them are missing the title and written by himself with an extremely poor writing. His english is not that easy to understand and he likes to make fun on student. I personally do not recommend to take his class cause I don't like his attitude and judgement on student. (If he thinks you are not one of those"good" students you are pretty much getting a bad grade).
Winter 2016 - First of all the course material is not that hard. Yet the professor does a really bad job at organizing and explaining, he gives out brunch of papers every single class and most of them are missing the title and written by himself with an extremely poor writing. His english is not that easy to understand and he likes to make fun on student. I personally do not recommend to take his class cause I don't like his attitude and judgement on student. (If he thinks you are not one of those"good" students you are pretty much getting a bad grade).
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Actual Course: Life Science 30A (the new pre-med math sequence) A lot of people are confused about the actual class, as I was when I first decided to take it. Life Science 30A is a math class. It is supposedly "calculus" based, but we only used first derivatives and quotient rule and product rule. The main meat of the class is about mathematical modeling and differential equations, though we don't go into any of the "math" stuff of differential equations at all. We focus on the concepts. The computer programming part of the course threw me off at first, but the TAs are very helpful and understanding during lab sections and will help you with your coding. Also, there is no coding on any exams in the class. As for Conley, he is a great teacher, and I have no complaints. I've been to 2 of his office hours and he was extremely helpful each time. Also, he is NOT boring, which is something really unique about a math professor.
Actual Course: Life Science 30A (the new pre-med math sequence) A lot of people are confused about the actual class, as I was when I first decided to take it. Life Science 30A is a math class. It is supposedly "calculus" based, but we only used first derivatives and quotient rule and product rule. The main meat of the class is about mathematical modeling and differential equations, though we don't go into any of the "math" stuff of differential equations at all. We focus on the concepts. The computer programming part of the course threw me off at first, but the TAs are very helpful and understanding during lab sections and will help you with your coding. Also, there is no coding on any exams in the class. As for Conley, he is a great teacher, and I have no complaints. I've been to 2 of his office hours and he was extremely helpful each time. Also, he is NOT boring, which is something really unique about a math professor.
Most Helpful Review
Review 31A: Professor Greene is seriously a terrible professor. He doesn't show enough interest in students' questions, and whenever I go to his office hours, he ignores me. Or he thinks I don't know what I am talking about. His midterms and quizzes come from the homework so that was alright. and the final is based on the midterms and homework. He also has terrible handwriting, and he jumps around the topics so often that he always leave the students handing confused at the end of the class. Of course there are always students that understood him and appreciate his efforts, trust me, I do too. But because since the first lecture I was already confused about his lecture style, I end up regretting to ever picked him in the first place.
Review 31A: Professor Greene is seriously a terrible professor. He doesn't show enough interest in students' questions, and whenever I go to his office hours, he ignores me. Or he thinks I don't know what I am talking about. His midterms and quizzes come from the homework so that was alright. and the final is based on the midterms and homework. He also has terrible handwriting, and he jumps around the topics so often that he always leave the students handing confused at the end of the class. Of course there are always students that understood him and appreciate his efforts, trust me, I do too. But because since the first lecture I was already confused about his lecture style, I end up regretting to ever picked him in the first place.
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Three words: WORST PROFESSOR EVER No joke, this guy is so bad, and i have had a lot of bad math professors at UCLA. His teaching style is very "unique" as some people like to say, where as i just call it awful. He stands doesn't really lecture just does problems as fast as he can. He does not read the question just starts writing a formula on the board and then says "and the rest is just details" and moves on... Good luck with this guy, my opinion he should just go back to working as an actuary because he is not doing the future of the profession a favor by teaching it
Three words: WORST PROFESSOR EVER No joke, this guy is so bad, and i have had a lot of bad math professors at UCLA. His teaching style is very "unique" as some people like to say, where as i just call it awful. He stands doesn't really lecture just does problems as fast as he can. He does not read the question just starts writing a formula on the board and then says "and the rest is just details" and moves on... Good luck with this guy, my opinion he should just go back to working as an actuary because he is not doing the future of the profession a favor by teaching it
Most Helpful Review
NOTE: I took PIC 10A with him He's a decent professor. Nice guy who wants you to learn, and knows what he's talking about. He has an accent but is still understandable. His tests are pretty straightforward and are based off his lecture slides and the examples he does in class. He's not an extraordinary lecturer or anything, but he gets the job done. For homework you have a project due each week, and they are usually pretty doable.
NOTE: I took PIC 10A with him He's a decent professor. Nice guy who wants you to learn, and knows what he's talking about. He has an accent but is still understandable. His tests are pretty straightforward and are based off his lecture slides and the examples he does in class. He's not an extraordinary lecturer or anything, but he gets the job done. For homework you have a project due each week, and they are usually pretty doable.
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