As the weakest student entered the classroom Brian Shin realized he realized the student was about to drop. He asked the student “are you not studying enough because you are failing or are you failing because you are not studying enough”. The student who had left it all behind responded equally “If you were unable to understand any of the concepts, would you drop?” Brian Shin responded “Nah I’d learn”. He knew it was time to take action, and said “Stand Proud you are capable”. Unbeknownst to the student, Brian Shin activated his domain expansion “extended office hours”. As the overwhelming intensity of the linear algebra crushed the student, he could only ask one thing, “how?” Brian Shin responded “You failed to consider two things: one, always bet on the professor. And two, throughout heaven and earth, i alone am the diagonalizable one”

If Brian Shin has a million supporters, I AM ONE OF THEM. If Brian Shin has a thousand supporters, I AM ONE OF THEM. If Brian Shin has one supporter, I AM THAT SUPPORTER. If he has no supporters, THEN I AM DEAD. IF THE WORLD IS AGAINST BRIAN SHIN, I AM AGAINST THE WORLD.

Lectures are structured, professor is responsive, exams are similar to hw, hws are a bit long but fair, grading is fair, nice guy, nice class.

Take this man's class. He assigns a short, easy homework and a short, easy quiz once a week. His midterms and finals use questions that are extremely similar to the homework questions he assigns, and his lectures are closely based on the textbook. He also skipped a bunch of sections in the textbook and told us we wouldn't have to worry about them on the exams, which took a huge load off of us when studying.

Honestly, now that it's the end of the term, it seems like our assignments were graded by 2 different people a lot of the time. In fact, I think the TA was grading the HW and the professor was trying to grade our exams most times, so it felt like when one topic/assignment was graded well, the corresponding exam ones should have also been graded similarly but weren't. This was otherwise a tough class in general, I mean it has a reputation as being one of the hardest classes but it's also required if you want to major in math at all.

The professor was really, really nice and tried to be as helpful as humanely possible but unfortunately, I cannot recommend taking this class with him based on this term. He made himself available when he could, but he was also just absent a lot of the term with some other stuff he was dealing with, so we had a substitute as well for some weeks, sometimes unexpectedly. Sometimes the HW wouldn't be posted on time, and our assignments were not graded in time for us to use them for studying. When we did finally get them back, some of the comments left on the exams/HW were also kind of...abrasive? They were not kind, constructive, or really explanatory; they also felt a little judgy rather than aiming to help guide you in a better direction or deeper understanding. There was no clear answer or response for what we did wrong per se, just what didn't make sense to whoever was grading or what we didn't manage to prove/complete. I'm sure some other students had a great time and received helpful feedback, but in my case, it was not helpful and actually makes me not ever want to really try this class again if I can help it, or any class similar to it. The HW and exams were long, the lectures were sometimes not paced well, and there was definitely room for concept simplification or improvements to give us the actual building blocks to better writing proofs. The textbook was unhelpful for me, personally.

BRIAN IS MY FATHER

I love Brian Shin, great professor!

Side rant:
Unfortunately, his TA this quarter was terrible. During an exam, I asked for clarification on a problem and he told me I did it completely wrong. I ended up panicking as I had no time left and tried to bs some work and ended up boxing something else as my answer. When I got my grade back, I actually had everything done correctly and would have gotten full credit if the TA had not said anything. It was quite frustrating as this quite literally was the reason I did not get an A in the class. I only got one point for that problem even with all my original and correct work, but since it was not boxed, I got zero credit. The TA also tried his very best to make sure I did not get any credit for his own ego which sucked as the professor seemed to be chill with giving me credit. I did fine on the final but that midterm score dropped me down and I ended with an 89.5%. Shin didn't round me up and ik that might not be valid to complain about, but given my situation it did really suck. I won't name-drop, but I hope that TA just learns to just accept when he's wrong lol.

Other than that, homework is doable, exams are fair and his grading scheme is fair. Shin is always willing to help, just don't doubt yourself and ask the TAs for help on an exam.

Shin is one of the best profs you could take this class with!! He is funny and SO clear. Classes were recorded, 2 mandatory midterms (with a grading scheme that favors both or one), and final was easy. Homework every week, quizzes (2 true or false questions) almost every week.

I might be bad at math but linear algebra did not make any sense to me after the first midterm. I'm not sure if I wasn't paying attention enough, but I felt like Shin didn't explain the topics after the first midterm that well. Me and other people I know in the class had to reread the textbook multiple times because we didn't feel like the lectures were that helpful in explaining the concepts. However, his midterms and finals were still incredibly fair since they were extremely similar to the homework and you could drop a midterm. As long as you understand the homework really well, especially the computational questions, you should be able to get an A in the class. Be prepared to self study a lot though, it definitely is not an easy A math class where you don't have to put effort in.

Brian Shin is a great professor. Honestly, this class was lowkey easy since the material and computations were not hard. The problems are mostly row reducing, formula based, and mathematically computational. There was one problem set of homework assigned each week that was due the following Monday. He gives a list of problems from the textbook, but only 2 per lesson was turned in and graded on accuracy. I recommend doing ALL of the problems to do well on the midterm and final. The homework was harder than the exams. They involved more complexity and required additional knowledge than what he covered in lecture, such as theorems or formulas in the textbook. I found doing the previous problem of the homework helpful. For example, if he assigned #2, I would do #1 to get a sense of what to do for #2. Homework was very manageable. There was a 2 question quiz almost at the end of every week that were mostly true and false.

There are two midterms that consisted of 5 free response problems and 5 true and false. The free response problems are easy if you do the homework since they are much more basic and less complex than the homework problems. Final involved about 10 free response and 10 true and false. The true and false questions were my weakness. They involved much more intuition and studying outside of class. I would look at all the theorems in the textbook, not only the theorems he mentions in class. He let us use a notecard for the 2nd midterm and final. I did worse on the first midterm due to the true and false questions because I did not go over the theorems in depth. I thought the true and false on the second midterm were easier because I studied the theorems as I did my notecard. You can see both midterms on Gradescope, but he doesn't allow you to see the final unless you schedule an appointment next quarter. Most of the free response problems on the final were also on the midterms, but he added some additional free response.

Lecture is recorded through Bruincast. In lecture, he goes over theorems, formulas, etc. and does some examples but not a lot. Homework is where you need to practice. He teaches material decently well. However, there are some things he doesn't cover in class, but these things never show up on the midterm or final. I would just ignore whatever he doesn't mention in class even if it's in the textbook. He states all material in the textbook can be on the exams, but he never puts them anyway. Students would ask if a certain thing would be on the midterm, and he always stated anything in the textbook is fair game. The textbook goes over the material in depth, so I didn't find it useful to read. I would only go over the theorems or definitions in boxes.

Attendance wasn't recorded in discussion. Discussion only consisted of doing problems from worksheets. I didn't find discussion that useful as I could do the worksheet another time and some of the worksheet problems were much more complex than needed. 2 homeworks and 2 quizzes were dropped. If 60% of class fills out the course evaluation, then an additional homework and quiz was dropped.