MATH 33B
Differential Equations
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 31B with grade of C- or better. Highly recommended: course 33A. First-order, linear differential equations; second-order, linear differential equations with constant coefficients; power series solutions; linear systems. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Dr. Grossman is rather difficult but it is matched by his willingness to help. I took two courses with him and throughout both quarters he would stay well after office hours to help me (sometimes 3 hours over and this was not an isolated event). The homework questions that he writes are difficult and I almost always had to ask him how to do it but they make you think and you get a good grasp of the material after that. So, he is difficult but take the initiative to ask for help and you will be okay. Good luck.
Dr. Grossman is rather difficult but it is matched by his willingness to help. I took two courses with him and throughout both quarters he would stay well after office hours to help me (sometimes 3 hours over and this was not an isolated event). The homework questions that he writes are difficult and I almost always had to ask him how to do it but they make you think and you get a good grasp of the material after that. So, he is difficult but take the initiative to ask for help and you will be okay. Good luck.
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Winter 2018 - I had an AWFUL experience in this class, and that says a lot considering I'm a math person. 33B doesn't have very hard material, but this professor was so inadequate it ruined the entire course. She came to lectures unorganized and unprepared. The lectures were so confusing, it sounded like she did not even understand what she was teaching. She would constantly make mistakes in the lectures and say "Uh, sorry" over and over again. The concepts were not clearly split up, so at any point in time the class was not *exactly* sure what they were even *trying* to learn. Don't get me started about the tests.. first of all, this professor REFUSED to upload the practice test solutions online. Instead, she would do them in the last 10 minutes of class, but this was NEVER enough time for her to finish or give reasonable explanations for the answers. In the case of the final, she gave us a set of practice problems and did not even finish giving us the answers to half before the final. When asked if she would put them online (considering it was our last day of class and our final was a few days away) she simply shrugged and said "Well if you don't know this by now its your fault". Not to mention, our midterms were trivially easy but the final was RIDICULOUSLY hard in comparison and seemed to touch of concepts outside the scope of the class. A lot of students got screwed over because of that. Last things: she doesn't collect homeworks. Instead she gives weekly quizzes, so discussion is mandatory. The TA I had was almost as bad as the professor... Also, she wasted about 10-15 minutes of each midterm passing out tests because she seems to be the only professor who can't figure out how to do it...
Winter 2018 - I had an AWFUL experience in this class, and that says a lot considering I'm a math person. 33B doesn't have very hard material, but this professor was so inadequate it ruined the entire course. She came to lectures unorganized and unprepared. The lectures were so confusing, it sounded like she did not even understand what she was teaching. She would constantly make mistakes in the lectures and say "Uh, sorry" over and over again. The concepts were not clearly split up, so at any point in time the class was not *exactly* sure what they were even *trying* to learn. Don't get me started about the tests.. first of all, this professor REFUSED to upload the practice test solutions online. Instead, she would do them in the last 10 minutes of class, but this was NEVER enough time for her to finish or give reasonable explanations for the answers. In the case of the final, she gave us a set of practice problems and did not even finish giving us the answers to half before the final. When asked if she would put them online (considering it was our last day of class and our final was a few days away) she simply shrugged and said "Well if you don't know this by now its your fault". Not to mention, our midterms were trivially easy but the final was RIDICULOUSLY hard in comparison and seemed to touch of concepts outside the scope of the class. A lot of students got screwed over because of that. Last things: she doesn't collect homeworks. Instead she gives weekly quizzes, so discussion is mandatory. The TA I had was almost as bad as the professor... Also, she wasted about 10-15 minutes of each midterm passing out tests because she seems to be the only professor who can't figure out how to do it...
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would wait with excitement to hear Prof. Hlushchanka's intro to every lecture: "'ellao evrybdy and welcome to the wrld of differenshul equashuns." Okay, jokes aside, this course as a whole isn't that difficult as a whole, especially considering I took Math 32B the quarter before this one. Prof. Hlushchanka (whose name I definitely misspelled at least once and I never really knew how to pronounce, sorry prof!) explains things very clearly and plainly with very little room for misinterpretation. He understands how to present the material in a way that helps the students learn. He's also just genuinely a nice guy. He was very accommodating to my needs as a student. For context, this was during the COVID-19 quarantine, when we were doing everything remotely. Some of you may also remember that many online classes during this time were prone to "Zoom bombing," where random people would invade meetings to spew racial slurs and abusive language for the sake of internet trolling. We were the constant victim of that for the first two weeks of the course. In response, Prof. Hlushchanka took an hour out of his busy schedule to redo the lecture and bent over backward to make sure the lectures were safe and had adequate security to prevent that from happening. He also sent out emails apologizing to the students who felt threatened and that he would take suggestions on how to improve the security of the meetings, which was a pretty heartwarming move on his part. Great professor, would take again. :)
Spring 2020 - Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would wait with excitement to hear Prof. Hlushchanka's intro to every lecture: "'ellao evrybdy and welcome to the wrld of differenshul equashuns." Okay, jokes aside, this course as a whole isn't that difficult as a whole, especially considering I took Math 32B the quarter before this one. Prof. Hlushchanka (whose name I definitely misspelled at least once and I never really knew how to pronounce, sorry prof!) explains things very clearly and plainly with very little room for misinterpretation. He understands how to present the material in a way that helps the students learn. He's also just genuinely a nice guy. He was very accommodating to my needs as a student. For context, this was during the COVID-19 quarantine, when we were doing everything remotely. Some of you may also remember that many online classes during this time were prone to "Zoom bombing," where random people would invade meetings to spew racial slurs and abusive language for the sake of internet trolling. We were the constant victim of that for the first two weeks of the course. In response, Prof. Hlushchanka took an hour out of his busy schedule to redo the lecture and bent over backward to make sure the lectures were safe and had adequate security to prevent that from happening. He also sent out emails apologizing to the students who felt threatened and that he would take suggestions on how to improve the security of the meetings, which was a pretty heartwarming move on his part. Great professor, would take again. :)
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Most Helpful Review
I'll put it this way: if you liked Park, Norberg, Corbin, and Hainline (astro TA), we'd have similar opinions on who teaches well. Kucherenko is added to the list. Explains everything, well-organized, knows her material, pacing is perfect, homework is manageable, and midterms/final is ... well relative. I had an alright time, scoring B+/A-'s, but I see some people had difficulty; probably because they took 32B here (hint: take it at SMC; they combine 32A&B so you'll dominate the first three weeks). Thankfully, I skipped 33A and went ahead to diff equations, which is no bs, concrete, understandable study. Even if you have five classes, I doubt you'd fall behind in her class, not because her 33B is easy (it was, imo), but because you won't find much reason to procrastinate with this class.
I'll put it this way: if you liked Park, Norberg, Corbin, and Hainline (astro TA), we'd have similar opinions on who teaches well. Kucherenko is added to the list. Explains everything, well-organized, knows her material, pacing is perfect, homework is manageable, and midterms/final is ... well relative. I had an alright time, scoring B+/A-'s, but I see some people had difficulty; probably because they took 32B here (hint: take it at SMC; they combine 32A&B so you'll dominate the first three weeks). Thankfully, I skipped 33A and went ahead to diff equations, which is no bs, concrete, understandable study. Even if you have five classes, I doubt you'd fall behind in her class, not because her 33B is easy (it was, imo), but because you won't find much reason to procrastinate with this class.
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