Great introductory class into calculus for life science students. Lectures were engaging and helpful with multiple TAs walking around to ask questions in the middle of class. Coding labs were a fun challenge to supplement my learning and a good way to meet new people in a class so large.

Don't go to lectures. I primarily learned this class through the textbook, labs, and homeworks. Lectures are a waste of time because they go so slowly. The iClicker is worth only 1 or 2% of the grade so it's okay if you skip.

Not as bad as 30A, but literally take any other professor if you want to keep your sanity. I actually have never been so frustrated with a course, we didn't learn midterm material until the literal week of the midterm, and we were behind on final content. the capstone project is poorly managed depending on your TA- but my experience wasn't good, no feedback, no email responses etc. you have a lab weekly, plus the capstone, plus homework and studying towards the end and they are piling too much work on, it became very stressful. in my PLF sessions we were taught from the other professors slides because she was either behind or not teaching something that we actually needed to know.

If you took 30A with a good professor, prepare to be disappointed in 30B. Nobody pays attention in class and everyone is always talking over Jane which makes it impossible to hear her. The only time I actually could pay attention and learn was when class was online when she was sick. She would spend 99% of the lecture going through long computations that finally "come together" in the last 2 mins of class when everyone was already packing up and leaving. The concepts in this class are genuinely ridiculous and something I will never be using in the future. The homework was also absurdly long for no reason and they had a 20 page homework assignment due the week of the final. The labs were awful and so much worse than 30A especially if you don't have an LA that is helpful. The capstone project was a joke and they didn't even care when half of our group never did any work and we told our TA about it countless times. This capstone project genuinely kept me up morning and night stressing from weeks 7-10. And each week you would still have labs due along with the group project work. At the end it was literally just a completion grade so don't stress over it as much as I did. I honestly am unsure how I passed this class because even though I did all of the homework and labs well, the midterm and final were very bad. I am not good at math and didn't study at all for the midterm so that was to be expected. I studied so hard for the final and it was so absurdly long and hard for no reason, they are still barely done grading it hours before the final grade deadline. This series is fake math and I am so glad to be done. DO NOT TAKE LS40. Don't let them suck you back into the lifesci fake math hole again, just take stats 13. Stay safe and get out when you can.

if you have to take the ls 30 series avoid this woman at all costs. take it with pretty much any other professor if you can. the material itself gets pretty convoluted, and it does not help that she will go on yap sessions where there is no clear point to be taken. the homework becomes more and more excessive as the quarter goes on with it feeling like busy work. it is a struggle with the combined amount of homework and difficulty of the test. some of the test questions are on material that was never explained enough. any incoming students, be warned, save yourselves, fight to take it with someone else. i had it with bennoun for 30a and i miss those days so much, he is a way better teacher for this course.

The instructor connected all the topics very well and at the end of the course, I had the big picture of all the concepts we were taught.

Professor Shevtsov is pretty unhelpful, but this doesn't mean you can't succeed if you're stuck taking this class with her. Shevtsov is a very, very slow lecturer. I went to her lectures for the first 2 weeks of class before deciding that it wasn't worth my time. Shevtsov will show an image of a graph, ask if it's a time series or a trajectory, then give you five minutes to think and discuss with the people around you. When she tells you that it is a trajectory, she will give you an additional five minutes to process this. The lectures are so outrageously slow-paced, that even if you haven't taken calc in high school, it's honestly not worth attending lectures. iClicker is only worth 1% of your grade, so it's okay if you skip the lectures. Luckily, the homework assignments involve reading and doing problems from the textbook, which is much easier to understand than the lectures. At the same time, you will review class material with your TAs. There is a VERY steep learning curve for this class, but I promise that if you put in an honest effort to learn, by the end it will start to make sense. At the same time, LS30B which will have more conceptual applications, and the coding will be a lot more fun. It will make learning this bizarre form of math a little bit more rewarding.

Also shoutout to TA Sarah! She is such an awesome TA, and if you get her you're super lucky. She had a Minecraft theme for all of our slides, and always came to class with an insane positive energy, even though it was Monday at 8AM.