Professor

Justin Forlano

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3.4
Overall Ratings
Based on 43 Users
Easiness 2.4 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.1 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 3.5 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 3.5 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (43)

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 24, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR

Professor Forlano made me feel a lot better about my math skills after fall quarter. He explained things pretty clearly and really really aligned with what the textbook was teaching, so anything I wasn't super clear on I could look and find a similar problem in the textbook with a written out explanation. He talks pretty slow, but he has a cool British or Australian accent so it's understandable even at 1.5x speed. His midterms were the first that I felt like would've made sense to give in an in-person setting. They weren't insanely hard like the other exams that professors made for 24 hour midterms, but it still tested the material so it was great. He also provides a lot of practice problems, but we only have to turn in about five specific questions each week. The workload is really light compared to other professors. 10/10 would recommend.

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Feb. 19, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A

Out of all the professors in the math department I've taken classes with, I feel like professor Forlano is probably the lecturer that explains things clearly. He's really good at drawing geometric figures which really helps when trying to understand exactly what the math is trying to represent. Professor Forlano also goes through the trouble of proving essential formulas in a way that makes sense. His tests are of reasonable difficulty and the only thing you need to turn in every week is a few select problems from the homework (which you know beforehand). The workload is very light, but there's a big selection of homework questions you can work on if you feel like you need more practice. Decent class. The professor does talk a bit slow but at 2x speed it's pretty perfect so take advantage of these recorded lectures while they exist.

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MATH 131A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Dec. 17, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: B+

Professor Forlano is a decent professor, if you are OK with getting a B/C.

Cons:
The curve. For my class, the avg for 2 midterms and final are 59%, 49%, 64%, and HE DOES NOT CURVE DOWN for A/A-. YOU NEED 90% TO GET AN A-! (Just to reference, 2 out of 33 people got 90%+ in final, and no one got 90% for midterm 2.)
His handwriting in the lecture notes is kind of hard to understand.

Pros:
Very tiny workload comparing to other professor for 131A. The homework is about 10 problems but you only need to submit the ones he require, which is about 3 problems.
His lectures are clear. He is very helpful.
He allows cheatsheet for final which is very useful.
He gives an extra homework for 7% extra credit, but the problems are hard so it is hard to get all of the 7%.(Most students got 2-5%)

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 25, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR

For a new professor, Justin Forlano is a phenomenal lecturer! Even though I'd heard horror stories of the difficulties of Math 32B, imo he made the content really easy to understand and easier than 32A.

Pros

- Engaging Lecturer - he balances theory with examples, and I didn't feel too worn out after lectures. He also records and posts them on CCLE, which you can watch at 2x speed

- Clear Explanations - he's good at drawing figures and explaining the geometry behind the theorems and formulas that he goes through, making the class easier for you

- Test difficulty - the two 24-hour midterms and the three timed quizzes were all of low difficulty, and as long as you did the work and attended classes, it was easy! The final was a bit trickier and took me 5-6 hours, but still manageable

- Homework - while he gave a lot of homework problems, only 4-5 had to be submitted every week, which only took 2-3 hours. The other problems were given for practise, and some exam questions on the midterms were based on homework problems.

Cons

- Some of the topics he taught were slightly confusing, but the textbook was always there to assist! If you can't buy the textbook, just find a pdf online for reference.

Forlano was really helpful in Office Hours, and would 10/10 recommend him!

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2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Feb. 28, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A

Cool guy

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March 31, 2023
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: A

If you just want an easy A, Forlano is not your professor, as he generally tries to center his exams at an 80-85% median. If you really want to learn the concepts taught in class, Forlano is a great professor to take 170E with. He does a great job of breaking down the concepts in lecture for everyone, including non-math majors, went through all of the 170e curriculum (apparently one of the other 170e professors winter 2023 did not get anywhere close to finishing), and the homework generally does a good job of expanding on the concepts in class. Lectures may have been a bit dry, but he did record them via bruincast, so watching at 1.5x speed worked well, pausing when I needed to take notes. He also posted the annotated slides after the lecture which came in handy a couple of times.

The homework tends to be on the theoretical side, with lots of "demonstrate X given Y" questions; some are fairly trivial, a few required a lot of calculation that I felt was unnecessarily long (extensive double sum problems anyone?) and/or required some insight, so I would definitely recommend blocking off your schedule to attend, in addition to discussions, office hours with a TA or the professor for the occasional question you get stuck on. I also heard before taking his class that homeworks are very long, but I personally didn't experience that, probably because I took heavy advantage of office hours (the TAs for my class were awesome but are graduating soon - thanks Ben Jarman for all of your support!). While the homework was not super close to the actual exams (the exams were almost all computational), I felt that it did a good job of forcing understanding of the topics needed for them if you first put in decent effort on the homework yourself before getting help. At the beginning, homeworks due friday only used concepts taught the week before it was due, but towards the end it started catching up with concepts touched on wednesday being used in the homeworks due that friday.

Exams were in my opinion fair: they were very similar to the practice exams Forlano gave out (but not like copy-pasted wording) and weren't super difficult but they weren't easy either. Forlano also clearly made an effort to minimize multi-part question penalties, so almost always part B was solvable even without knowing how to do part A, and grading was also generous and fast (<7 day turnaround for all exams even with 160 students). Definitely make sure you work on a cheat sheet for the exams as you go along, as you'll need to know the different types of random variables and how to use them by the second midterm.

Not specific to Forlano but just 170e in general, but definitely get used to doing basic double integrals before taking this class. It appears at the very end, and unfortunately 32a isn't a prereq/coreq but 95%+ will have taken it, so you'll be at a massive disadvantage if you don't.

All in all, I would definitely take another math class with Forlano, You do not need the textbook.

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MATH 131A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 8, 2021
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: N/A

Professor Forlano was a decent professor. He was very clear and organized with his lectures and notes. He pretty much never went off topic, and his notes were very organized and neat, and they helped a lot for his exams.

Homework
The homework was straightforward and overall pretty easy to do. The TA graded them very leniently, and I always ended up with a higher grade on them than I expected. A downside to this was that the homework was not indicative at all of the exams.

Exams
2 Midterms, 1 final, pretty standard.
His first midterm was pretty difficult and long. Definitely not doable in 1 hour.
It had 5 questions with multiple parts and the average was a 68%

He responded very well to the feedback on the first midterm and the second midterm was much shorter and easier with an average of 80%

The final had 9 questions, each with multiple parts, but it was much more straightforward and doable compared to his midterms and was actually much easier than his midterms, although it took a long time to finish.

He grades relatively leniently, with a ton of partial credit, but it's also true that little mistakes can take off points too.
I lost 20% off my grade on the first midterm due to "assuming the conclusion" on a question. Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't a simple "if this then that" question, but a much more complicated proof involving showing that the intersection of intervals has a non empty intersection or something like that. Definitely not a straightforward "if, then" claim and I made the grave mistake of assuming the conclusion by mistake.
But it is a rigorous analysis course so you have to be almost perfect in your analysis and structure of your proofs, but overall, I believe he graded pretty leniently.

Overall, Professor Forlano was a decent professor to have for Analysis, his notes and lectures were clear and organized and he responded very well to feedback.

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 30, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A

He's aight

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 4, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR

Dr. Forlano's lectures were a little on the dry side, but I felt like I really understood the concepts presented in this class. Every concept is explained to the fullest extent and Justin is always receptive to any questions regarding difficult topics in lecture. Examples are very helpful, and the exams greatly reflect these and the homework questions (which are not too lengthy but do a very good job at facilitating comprehension of the topics). Overall this class feels much better than Math 32A, and I would highly recommend this professor for any math class in general.

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 6, 2021
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A

Math 32B with Forlano was actually pretty good. I came into 32B reading online that this would be one of the worst/ hardest lower div math in the 30 series while also struggling a bit with 32A. Forlano explained things really clearly in my opinion and I often felt like I understood the topics. I never really had to rewatch lectures like I did in 32A and just going to lectures live + reviewing with the textbooks was enough to understand what was going on. His homework structure was pretty nice where he had a list of problems he would give every week but only about 5-6 problems were usually due (usually takes about 2-3 hours depending how well u knew the mateiral). Homework was a combination of textbook problems and his own problems. I never did/ looked at the extra homework problems and did okay in this class lol. I think the problems he gives are enough practice to grasp the topics. Exams wise, they were all very fair. The first midterm was super easy and the second one was definitely harder but still doable. The final was pretty straightforward though kinda long. All the exams related well to lecture material and homework problems so if you do the homework/ followed with lectures you should be fine. Quizzes were a bit more tricky since they were timed (supposed to take 30 min but he gave us 90 min to do+upload our work). He's also pretty chill and understanding. For our last quiz he forgot to put a timer and just let us have 24 hrs to take it. I'm honestly very glad I took 32b with Forlano as I learned the material well and exams were fair. 10/10 would recommend!!!

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MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR
March 24, 2021

Professor Forlano made me feel a lot better about my math skills after fall quarter. He explained things pretty clearly and really really aligned with what the textbook was teaching, so anything I wasn't super clear on I could look and find a similar problem in the textbook with a written out explanation. He talks pretty slow, but he has a cool British or Australian accent so it's understandable even at 1.5x speed. His midterms were the first that I felt like would've made sense to give in an in-person setting. They weren't insanely hard like the other exams that professors made for 24 hour midterms, but it still tested the material so it was great. He also provides a lot of practice problems, but we only have to turn in about five specific questions each week. The workload is really light compared to other professors. 10/10 would recommend.

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3 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
Feb. 19, 2021

Out of all the professors in the math department I've taken classes with, I feel like professor Forlano is probably the lecturer that explains things clearly. He's really good at drawing geometric figures which really helps when trying to understand exactly what the math is trying to represent. Professor Forlano also goes through the trouble of proving essential formulas in a way that makes sense. His tests are of reasonable difficulty and the only thing you need to turn in every week is a few select problems from the homework (which you know beforehand). The workload is very light, but there's a big selection of homework questions you can work on if you feel like you need more practice. Decent class. The professor does talk a bit slow but at 2x speed it's pretty perfect so take advantage of these recorded lectures while they exist.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 131A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: B+
Dec. 17, 2021

Professor Forlano is a decent professor, if you are OK with getting a B/C.

Cons:
The curve. For my class, the avg for 2 midterms and final are 59%, 49%, 64%, and HE DOES NOT CURVE DOWN for A/A-. YOU NEED 90% TO GET AN A-! (Just to reference, 2 out of 33 people got 90%+ in final, and no one got 90% for midterm 2.)
His handwriting in the lecture notes is kind of hard to understand.

Pros:
Very tiny workload comparing to other professor for 131A. The homework is about 10 problems but you only need to submit the ones he require, which is about 3 problems.
His lectures are clear. He is very helpful.
He allows cheatsheet for final which is very useful.
He gives an extra homework for 7% extra credit, but the problems are hard so it is hard to get all of the 7%.(Most students got 2-5%)

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR
March 25, 2021

For a new professor, Justin Forlano is a phenomenal lecturer! Even though I'd heard horror stories of the difficulties of Math 32B, imo he made the content really easy to understand and easier than 32A.

Pros

- Engaging Lecturer - he balances theory with examples, and I didn't feel too worn out after lectures. He also records and posts them on CCLE, which you can watch at 2x speed

- Clear Explanations - he's good at drawing figures and explaining the geometry behind the theorems and formulas that he goes through, making the class easier for you

- Test difficulty - the two 24-hour midterms and the three timed quizzes were all of low difficulty, and as long as you did the work and attended classes, it was easy! The final was a bit trickier and took me 5-6 hours, but still manageable

- Homework - while he gave a lot of homework problems, only 4-5 had to be submitted every week, which only took 2-3 hours. The other problems were given for practise, and some exam questions on the midterms were based on homework problems.

Cons

- Some of the topics he taught were slightly confusing, but the textbook was always there to assist! If you can't buy the textbook, just find a pdf online for reference.

Forlano was really helpful in Office Hours, and would 10/10 recommend him!

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
Feb. 28, 2021

Cool guy

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2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 170E
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: A
March 31, 2023

If you just want an easy A, Forlano is not your professor, as he generally tries to center his exams at an 80-85% median. If you really want to learn the concepts taught in class, Forlano is a great professor to take 170E with. He does a great job of breaking down the concepts in lecture for everyone, including non-math majors, went through all of the 170e curriculum (apparently one of the other 170e professors winter 2023 did not get anywhere close to finishing), and the homework generally does a good job of expanding on the concepts in class. Lectures may have been a bit dry, but he did record them via bruincast, so watching at 1.5x speed worked well, pausing when I needed to take notes. He also posted the annotated slides after the lecture which came in handy a couple of times.

The homework tends to be on the theoretical side, with lots of "demonstrate X given Y" questions; some are fairly trivial, a few required a lot of calculation that I felt was unnecessarily long (extensive double sum problems anyone?) and/or required some insight, so I would definitely recommend blocking off your schedule to attend, in addition to discussions, office hours with a TA or the professor for the occasional question you get stuck on. I also heard before taking his class that homeworks are very long, but I personally didn't experience that, probably because I took heavy advantage of office hours (the TAs for my class were awesome but are graduating soon - thanks Ben Jarman for all of your support!). While the homework was not super close to the actual exams (the exams were almost all computational), I felt that it did a good job of forcing understanding of the topics needed for them if you first put in decent effort on the homework yourself before getting help. At the beginning, homeworks due friday only used concepts taught the week before it was due, but towards the end it started catching up with concepts touched on wednesday being used in the homeworks due that friday.

Exams were in my opinion fair: they were very similar to the practice exams Forlano gave out (but not like copy-pasted wording) and weren't super difficult but they weren't easy either. Forlano also clearly made an effort to minimize multi-part question penalties, so almost always part B was solvable even without knowing how to do part A, and grading was also generous and fast (<7 day turnaround for all exams even with 160 students). Definitely make sure you work on a cheat sheet for the exams as you go along, as you'll need to know the different types of random variables and how to use them by the second midterm.

Not specific to Forlano but just 170e in general, but definitely get used to doing basic double integrals before taking this class. It appears at the very end, and unfortunately 32a isn't a prereq/coreq but 95%+ will have taken it, so you'll be at a massive disadvantage if you don't.

All in all, I would definitely take another math class with Forlano, You do not need the textbook.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 131A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: N/A
Jan. 8, 2021

Professor Forlano was a decent professor. He was very clear and organized with his lectures and notes. He pretty much never went off topic, and his notes were very organized and neat, and they helped a lot for his exams.

Homework
The homework was straightforward and overall pretty easy to do. The TA graded them very leniently, and I always ended up with a higher grade on them than I expected. A downside to this was that the homework was not indicative at all of the exams.

Exams
2 Midterms, 1 final, pretty standard.
His first midterm was pretty difficult and long. Definitely not doable in 1 hour.
It had 5 questions with multiple parts and the average was a 68%

He responded very well to the feedback on the first midterm and the second midterm was much shorter and easier with an average of 80%

The final had 9 questions, each with multiple parts, but it was much more straightforward and doable compared to his midterms and was actually much easier than his midterms, although it took a long time to finish.

He grades relatively leniently, with a ton of partial credit, but it's also true that little mistakes can take off points too.
I lost 20% off my grade on the first midterm due to "assuming the conclusion" on a question. Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't a simple "if this then that" question, but a much more complicated proof involving showing that the intersection of intervals has a non empty intersection or something like that. Definitely not a straightforward "if, then" claim and I made the grave mistake of assuming the conclusion by mistake.
But it is a rigorous analysis course so you have to be almost perfect in your analysis and structure of your proofs, but overall, I believe he graded pretty leniently.

Overall, Professor Forlano was a decent professor to have for Analysis, his notes and lectures were clear and organized and he responded very well to feedback.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 30, 2021

He's aight

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1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: NR
March 4, 2021

Dr. Forlano's lectures were a little on the dry side, but I felt like I really understood the concepts presented in this class. Every concept is explained to the fullest extent and Justin is always receptive to any questions regarding difficult topics in lecture. Examples are very helpful, and the exams greatly reflect these and the homework questions (which are not too lengthy but do a very good job at facilitating comprehension of the topics). Overall this class feels much better than Math 32A, and I would highly recommend this professor for any math class in general.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
MATH 32B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 6, 2021

Math 32B with Forlano was actually pretty good. I came into 32B reading online that this would be one of the worst/ hardest lower div math in the 30 series while also struggling a bit with 32A. Forlano explained things really clearly in my opinion and I often felt like I understood the topics. I never really had to rewatch lectures like I did in 32A and just going to lectures live + reviewing with the textbooks was enough to understand what was going on. His homework structure was pretty nice where he had a list of problems he would give every week but only about 5-6 problems were usually due (usually takes about 2-3 hours depending how well u knew the mateiral). Homework was a combination of textbook problems and his own problems. I never did/ looked at the extra homework problems and did okay in this class lol. I think the problems he gives are enough practice to grasp the topics. Exams wise, they were all very fair. The first midterm was super easy and the second one was definitely harder but still doable. The final was pretty straightforward though kinda long. All the exams related well to lecture material and homework problems so if you do the homework/ followed with lectures you should be fine. Quizzes were a bit more tricky since they were timed (supposed to take 30 min but he gave us 90 min to do+upload our work). He's also pretty chill and understanding. For our last quiz he forgot to put a timer and just let us have 24 hrs to take it. I'm honestly very glad I took 32b with Forlano as I learned the material well and exams were fair. 10/10 would recommend!!!

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1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
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