Prof. Chatterjee clearly cares a lot about his students, but his lectures are very convoluted and not super helpful. I learned pretty much all of the material from going to discussion and reading the textbook. Random participation checks are taken, especially towards the end of the quarter, so would recommend attending and keeping your audio on in case the professor calls your name. The quizzes weren't difficult, but would recommend knowing how to solve every single kind of problem for the midterms because they're surprisingly difficult. I think the professor curved the class quite a bit which is nice, and seems to take into account how hard you try so show that you're putting in effort and you'll do well.

Taken during quarantine. I'll repeat what a lot of reviewers have also said which is that Professor Chatterjee is a nice guy who really does genuinely care about his students learning the material. He asked us for feedback many times and did his best to accommodate us.

However, that's kind of where the positives end. A lot of the issues with this class came from it being online, but some of the issues are just with Chatterjee's teaching style in general. There's no doubt he knows what he's talking about, but he's one of those teachers that understand the material so well that they have no idea how to explain the more "simple" aspects to other people. The hardest part is that he teaches exclusively through powerpoints. For me, the best way to be taught is through examples that the teacher writes down step-by-step. Chatterjee has examples in his notes, but he never actually writes them down and goes through them; instead he takes the pre-written notes and simply narrates what each line is supposed to mean. I don't think this is nearly as effective as actually writing through each example. The only way I actually started learning how to do problems was from the TA who actually went through examples and wrote them down during discussion.

The grading scheme was kind of weird to me as we had homework, 2 quizzes, a midterm, and the final. Even with the 2 quizzes (which you would think would lessen the amount the final was worth) the final was still worth 45%. Because of all the exams in this class in addition to my other classes I only had a total of 3 weeks this entire quarter without some sort of assessment, which was really rough on me and made me feel super burnt out. One helpful thing was that Chatterjee did say that if you did better on the final than the quizzes and midterm then he would just use the final and homework to calculate your final grade.

All in all, even though I ended up doing well in the class, it was a huuuge headache and more trouble than it was worth. If you need to take this class then there's a very high chance you'll have to take it with Chatterjee, so there's not really much you can do except try and be prepared for the dumpster fire that will probably ensue. Crossing my fingers for you that he manages to get better at the whole online learning thing!

Taking this class online was nothing short of a mess. Chatterjee pre-wrote his notes and scanned and uploaded them and so during lecture he would just explain what he had written down, which I found really hard to follow. When people would ask him questions in class, he would often give explanations that were really hard to follow. I really struggled with learning the material in this class and even though I ended up passing, my knowledge of the content is very poor. He really does care a lot about his students though, and was pretty receptive to the survey responses he got when he asked about his class. It's just hard to go to OH and ask him questions when his explanations often just don't really make sense, especially because it's so hard with doing everything online.

Chatterjee had really good intentions but I had a really hard time with this class. I ended up having to get a tutor for me to understand the material because I felt the book didn't go as in-depth as Chatterjee wanted, but I wasn't able to follow Chatterjee's lectures or slides. He was very nice and understanding during his office hours and was willing to talk to me about my grades and go through problems with me step by step. He expects you to know a lot of conceptual stuff and you have to go to lecture and pay attention to what he says will be on the tests. He asks for seemingly random things on the tests that I definitely would not have paid attention to if he hadn't told us it would be on there. I also highly recommend studying past tests because his wording style can be confusing and several times I gave a wrong answer because I just didn't understand what he was asking. I'm not sure if I just found the material difficult or if it was the professor, but overall I wouldn't recommend this class.

At the start of the quarter I did not have the best impressions of Professor Chatterjee, as his slides were often very confusing and his assumption of our knowledge varied wildly. However, Chatterjee truly does care about his students in a way that I don't notice genuinely in other professors. He adapted the way he taught the course as the quarter went on and asked us multiple times to give him feedback on what was working for us (such as doing more practical problems as opposed to math theory). As far as grading goes, he is pretty lenient. The homework problems are graded for correctness, but he does give the answer to most of the problems in the problem set itself to help you. Sometimes it is hard to pay attention to lectures (especially at the beginning of the quarter), but if you want to do well it is a MUST to pay attention, as he will explicitly say what he will likely include on the midterm/quizzes/final. I starred the parts of my notes where he said this and I was prepared for 95% of the problems on every assessment (the other 5% was me being lazy for the first quiz and not doing what I suggest here). Overall, I do recommend taking this course with this teacher, you will surely learn a lot if you stick with it and communicate with Chatterjee.

P.S. I did not utilize professor office hours that much, although the one time I went when I had a pressing question he walked me through understanding what he expected of us (I did not go to TA office hours).

Chatterjee really cares about his students doing well. The issue is that he has good intentions, but the execution is not all there. His lectures from start to finish can be confusing and his lecture slides are a mess. It's easy to get lost in just one step as he tends to skip steps when doing problems. So, its best to stop him when he's doing the problem and ask him for clarification. Chatterjee will be the most helpful when you ask him to be, so don't shy away from asking questions in class cause he won't make anyone feel bad for asking a question. He assumes that we can see how he skipped like 8 steps and got to an answer, so watch out for that.

He won't solve problems in office hours, but DO go at least once. He talks about what's going to be on the quizzes, midterm, and final, sometimes in detail. He also does some derivations in Office Hours, which may seem useful at first, but then somehow pop back up again on exams, so just a heads up to write those down even if you don't understand where he's going with them.

My TA was super helpful and he went over problems in detail step by step during discussion and office hours, which proved to be really helpful. This class can get confusing cause there's so many methods you learn when solving diff. eqn's , and all the formulas get convoluted at times, so utilize discussions since my TA broke down how to identify which formula was best used to solve a problem depending on the type of diff eqn given.

Overall, Chatterjee is a nice professor who wants you to succeed, and if you take it upon yourself to communicate with him regarding any concerns you have, he will listen.

Super nice guy, solid professor. He really wants every student to succeed and even gives us his personal cell number at the start of the quarter. One homework assignment due each week, but they tended to be pretty long and kind of difficult. The quizzes were pretty easy. I didn't go to his office hours but apparently he basically went over the exact midterm and final problems. He did have a sign-in sheet that he passed around each class. Overall awesome guy and I would take this class with him again.

I took this class during winter quarter in 2019. The Professor is monotone and quite a few people fell asleep in class midway through lectures. He may not be the most engaging lecturer but he has a life’s worth of knowledge and wisdom. I wasn’t able to realize this until close to the end of the quarter when he cracked a few jokes. He even gave us some life advice to always find something to laugh about regardless of the situation in order to live a long and fulfilling life. In regards to the class, he gives homework (10%), 2 quizzes (10% each), a midterm (20%), and a final (50%). He gives a study guide before each quiz and exam so as long as you study the specific topics he outlines and understand the homework, you’ll be ready. Chaterjee does offer a second grading scheme that consists of just the final and homework categories in order to give you a final chance to do well in case you had trouble with the quizzes and midterm. The final was honestly not that bad and Chaterjee even said before hand it wouldn’t be too hard as he wanted to give the students a final chance to do well. Chaterjee is like a caring grandfather and I would highly recommend you take MAE 82 with him. Just work hard, do your part, and you will be successful!