Professor
Koffi Enakoutsa
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - (Updated in December) Note: this is a COVID-19 review. Grading: Homework 20%, 2 Midterms 25% each, Final 30%. — I think the fact that the other reviews are pretty mixed is indicative of how I felt about the class; I felt there was a mix of negative and positive aspects. Koffi Enakoutsa is absolutely a kind person, but it was his first quarter here at UCLA after having been at a few CSUs before, so I think he took some time adjusting to the school and the pace of the quarter system. Lectures were ok, not the best nor the worst, and he has a slight accent so it's sometimes difficult to understand him, but not impossible. For the most part, they followed the textbook, though he sometimes posted supplemental videos that built onto the lesson a bit more. He definitely tried his best to be accommodating of online learning. He extended our last few homework deadlines and was tolerant of late work. Lectures were recorded and he didn't require attendance, though he did give us a big scare about potential "live quizzes" to try to boost attendance mid-quarter due to declining numbers (which was a ruse, there didn't end up being any live quizzes). Homework was rather difficult, however. Towards the beginning of the quarter, we only seemed to get about 15 problems per lesson but it slowly ramped up as time went on, and many of the questions were from the "further insight" portion of the textbook's problem pool making them more theoretical, abstract and, in my opinion, difficult. — He later added on multiple choice quizzes which weren’t originally listed in the syllabus. These quizzes ended up accounting for 10% of our exam grades, so in a way they weren’t super high stakes (if you got a 0 then you’d still be able to get up to 90% on exams, and with random guessing you’d probably get greater than a 0). It’s just that some of us were just taken aback by the sudden addition of the quizzes. As stated the quizzes were all multiple choice, but were timed and tended to be very conceptual and abstract, much like the homework questions from the ends of the chapters. Your performance on them really depended on your conceptual understanding of the material. Of course, they were also open book much like everything else in the math department during Covid. — Exams were also tricky. Due to covid, we were given exams with 24-hour completion windows, but it was stated that the exams should've been possible to complete in the typical time frame that we'd usually have without covid. This did not feel entirely true for me personally, as some of the questions felt a bit too conceptual, similar to the homework. The more computational questions ended up being rather long and complex, and I used up quite a lot of space just showing work for them. That said I did ultimately end up getting an A on most of the exams, so I can't say they absolutely horrible. This may have been down to the extra time I had from the 24 hour policy, seeing as I used it to think more about the problem and construct a much more thorough answer than if I were working on the typical time limit. Koffi provides review sessions before several of his exams which are helpful since several of his examples reflect exam questions, so be sure to attend them whenever you can. — I think one reason people might experience varying degrees of difficulty is definitely due to experience with the material. Some people are coming in already knowing most if not all the material because they took AP Calculus BC and are only taking the class due to getting a 3 or 4 on the exam rather than a 5. People who did not take Calc BC but have something of a natural aptitude for math may also find this course not to be too challenging. People who are less of the mathematically thinking type or who only took AP Calculus AB (I fall into the Calc AB category) will be more likely to struggle due to lesser exposure to the more complex aspects of the class such as series. This brings me to another point that relates to my mixed feelings about this class: pacing felt very off - lessons on series were only covered the last 1-2 weeks of class. Personally, I found series to be the hardest topic in calculus, so the fact that we spent so much time on log and trig integration and so little time on series was what made me struggle the most on the final (there were numerous problems on series). — Personally, it's hard for me to say if I'd take math with Koffi Enakoutsa again. He really did try his best to accommodate us and he seems like a genuinely nice person. However, a lot of the assignments felt rather unnecessarily difficult and long. That said, some of that could be chalked up to the subject itself being hard to understand; the professor can't really take all the blame for the difficulty of the work. I do think a few of the homework problems and exam problems could've and possibly should've been changed to be more reflective of what we learned in lectures, but at the same time, I can't say they were impossible seeing as I ultimately figured things out and ended up with an A. I guess my recommendation would be that if you're good at math or are familiar with the material already, feel free to go for his class. If you aren't and there's a more highly rated professor teaching that same quarter, try to go for the other person. If the alternatives all seem to have worse reviews, or if there's a time conflict with the other sections of this class, or whatever situation makes it hard for you to choose another professor, go ahead and take this class and try not to feel too scared or worried. Go to office hours and ask your TA for help and put some time into studying for this class. You may struggle a bit, but I believe you'll be able to grind it out and make it through with enough effort.
Fall 2020 - (Updated in December) Note: this is a COVID-19 review. Grading: Homework 20%, 2 Midterms 25% each, Final 30%. — I think the fact that the other reviews are pretty mixed is indicative of how I felt about the class; I felt there was a mix of negative and positive aspects. Koffi Enakoutsa is absolutely a kind person, but it was his first quarter here at UCLA after having been at a few CSUs before, so I think he took some time adjusting to the school and the pace of the quarter system. Lectures were ok, not the best nor the worst, and he has a slight accent so it's sometimes difficult to understand him, but not impossible. For the most part, they followed the textbook, though he sometimes posted supplemental videos that built onto the lesson a bit more. He definitely tried his best to be accommodating of online learning. He extended our last few homework deadlines and was tolerant of late work. Lectures were recorded and he didn't require attendance, though he did give us a big scare about potential "live quizzes" to try to boost attendance mid-quarter due to declining numbers (which was a ruse, there didn't end up being any live quizzes). Homework was rather difficult, however. Towards the beginning of the quarter, we only seemed to get about 15 problems per lesson but it slowly ramped up as time went on, and many of the questions were from the "further insight" portion of the textbook's problem pool making them more theoretical, abstract and, in my opinion, difficult. — He later added on multiple choice quizzes which weren’t originally listed in the syllabus. These quizzes ended up accounting for 10% of our exam grades, so in a way they weren’t super high stakes (if you got a 0 then you’d still be able to get up to 90% on exams, and with random guessing you’d probably get greater than a 0). It’s just that some of us were just taken aback by the sudden addition of the quizzes. As stated the quizzes were all multiple choice, but were timed and tended to be very conceptual and abstract, much like the homework questions from the ends of the chapters. Your performance on them really depended on your conceptual understanding of the material. Of course, they were also open book much like everything else in the math department during Covid. — Exams were also tricky. Due to covid, we were given exams with 24-hour completion windows, but it was stated that the exams should've been possible to complete in the typical time frame that we'd usually have without covid. This did not feel entirely true for me personally, as some of the questions felt a bit too conceptual, similar to the homework. The more computational questions ended up being rather long and complex, and I used up quite a lot of space just showing work for them. That said I did ultimately end up getting an A on most of the exams, so I can't say they absolutely horrible. This may have been down to the extra time I had from the 24 hour policy, seeing as I used it to think more about the problem and construct a much more thorough answer than if I were working on the typical time limit. Koffi provides review sessions before several of his exams which are helpful since several of his examples reflect exam questions, so be sure to attend them whenever you can. — I think one reason people might experience varying degrees of difficulty is definitely due to experience with the material. Some people are coming in already knowing most if not all the material because they took AP Calculus BC and are only taking the class due to getting a 3 or 4 on the exam rather than a 5. People who did not take Calc BC but have something of a natural aptitude for math may also find this course not to be too challenging. People who are less of the mathematically thinking type or who only took AP Calculus AB (I fall into the Calc AB category) will be more likely to struggle due to lesser exposure to the more complex aspects of the class such as series. This brings me to another point that relates to my mixed feelings about this class: pacing felt very off - lessons on series were only covered the last 1-2 weeks of class. Personally, I found series to be the hardest topic in calculus, so the fact that we spent so much time on log and trig integration and so little time on series was what made me struggle the most on the final (there were numerous problems on series). — Personally, it's hard for me to say if I'd take math with Koffi Enakoutsa again. He really did try his best to accommodate us and he seems like a genuinely nice person. However, a lot of the assignments felt rather unnecessarily difficult and long. That said, some of that could be chalked up to the subject itself being hard to understand; the professor can't really take all the blame for the difficulty of the work. I do think a few of the homework problems and exam problems could've and possibly should've been changed to be more reflective of what we learned in lectures, but at the same time, I can't say they were impossible seeing as I ultimately figured things out and ended up with an A. I guess my recommendation would be that if you're good at math or are familiar with the material already, feel free to go for his class. If you aren't and there's a more highly rated professor teaching that same quarter, try to go for the other person. If the alternatives all seem to have worse reviews, or if there's a time conflict with the other sections of this class, or whatever situation makes it hard for you to choose another professor, go ahead and take this class and try not to feel too scared or worried. Go to office hours and ask your TA for help and put some time into studying for this class. You may struggle a bit, but I believe you'll be able to grind it out and make it through with enough effort.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - To put it plainly, if you take him you'll have a homework each week (no exception) with on average 25 exercises but it can go as much as 40, which takes on average 7 to 15 hours. It's a heavy workload, especially when you have him in 2 classes (would not recommend at all, I had 60 to 80 exercises a week just with these 2 classes, it was a nightmare). He doesn't drop any grade (not flexible at all on that), but you can give back all homework until the last day of the last week. For the test, it was covid so we had 24 hours, it was honestly not that bad compared to the homework and the course. Everything was doable, but clearly not in 50 minutes as he said, more in 5 to 6 hours. But doable, not impossible.
Fall 2020 - To put it plainly, if you take him you'll have a homework each week (no exception) with on average 25 exercises but it can go as much as 40, which takes on average 7 to 15 hours. It's a heavy workload, especially when you have him in 2 classes (would not recommend at all, I had 60 to 80 exercises a week just with these 2 classes, it was a nightmare). He doesn't drop any grade (not flexible at all on that), but you can give back all homework until the last day of the last week. For the test, it was covid so we had 24 hours, it was honestly not that bad compared to the homework and the course. Everything was doable, but clearly not in 50 minutes as he said, more in 5 to 6 hours. But doable, not impossible.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Enakoutsa...was not good. he genuinely does not know math. Besides spending his lecture purely reading from the textbook and just rewriting all of the information, he is constantly making basic and fundamental mistakes that students must correct him on, other wise he just assumes his answer is right and rolls along. He writes everything out in literal caligraphy and you can only grasp about 30% of what he's actually saying so you are much better off just skipping lectures and reading the frickin book because it will just give you a headache. His homeworks are also PAINFULLY LONG and he consistently assigns the last. problem. of the chapter. Which we ALL know is the hardest and weirdest problem that ends up taking literally an hour. Sorry, ranting, this class is a pain but it has the redeeming quality of having relatively easy tests and finals, probably because he doesn't really know how to form questions on material other than the basics but no complaints on that part.
Winter 2021 - Enakoutsa...was not good. he genuinely does not know math. Besides spending his lecture purely reading from the textbook and just rewriting all of the information, he is constantly making basic and fundamental mistakes that students must correct him on, other wise he just assumes his answer is right and rolls along. He writes everything out in literal caligraphy and you can only grasp about 30% of what he's actually saying so you are much better off just skipping lectures and reading the frickin book because it will just give you a headache. His homeworks are also PAINFULLY LONG and he consistently assigns the last. problem. of the chapter. Which we ALL know is the hardest and weirdest problem that ends up taking literally an hour. Sorry, ranting, this class is a pain but it has the redeeming quality of having relatively easy tests and finals, probably because he doesn't really know how to form questions on material other than the basics but no complaints on that part.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2021 - Koffi is an extremely nice and affable professor, but that doesn't make up for how difficult it is to learn the material in his class. He goes over material extremely fast and skips steps all over the place, which makes understanding him through the live lectures almost impossible(I had to watch youtube videos in order to supplement the topics). The worst part isn't his bad handwriting or his really fast pace (even for a summer class) it's the raw amount of hw he assigns. He assigns 15-30 problems per lecture and they tend to be long, complicated, and harder than the tests problems. DO NOT wait to do these if you take him as he grades them for accuracy and they count for 20% of your grade. Overall I wish he was better at teaching because he is very excited for people to learn and did give a generous extra credit opportunity in the form of a real-world math project, however, this class can be much easier if taken with other professors.
Summer 2021 - Koffi is an extremely nice and affable professor, but that doesn't make up for how difficult it is to learn the material in his class. He goes over material extremely fast and skips steps all over the place, which makes understanding him through the live lectures almost impossible(I had to watch youtube videos in order to supplement the topics). The worst part isn't his bad handwriting or his really fast pace (even for a summer class) it's the raw amount of hw he assigns. He assigns 15-30 problems per lecture and they tend to be long, complicated, and harder than the tests problems. DO NOT wait to do these if you take him as he grades them for accuracy and they count for 20% of your grade. Overall I wish he was better at teaching because he is very excited for people to learn and did give a generous extra credit opportunity in the form of a real-world math project, however, this class can be much easier if taken with other professors.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2023 - Overall I would say that Mr Enakoutsa is a very passionate and sweet professor who wants his students to participate, learn, and be passionate. I think he teaches pretty well — he is not the clearest math professor at UCLA but he makes up for it by being interactive with students during lecture. There were multiple times when he would ask the class a question and no one would know how to answer. From this, he would realise that no one understood him the first time and so he repeated the concept so that we would actually understand. But, I would say that there are a few flaws with the way the quarter panned out, especially in the homework workload. The homework load was reasonable, but the Professor's requirement that everything had to be coded in Latex was not. By week 6-7, we were doing complex integral work that took easily an additional 2-3 hours each week just to code into Latex, which I didn't think the Professor had considered when assigning the homework, and definitely added unneeded stress. Secondly, in week 6-7, the professor had not completed teaching what was required on the homework before it was due. He did extend the deadline, but obviously this is not a preferable situation. Lastly, his midterm weighed 40% which I flunked while studying for 131A the same week LOL. To compensate for this, he made all homeworks after week 7 optional and offered an extra credit option. My point here is that taking Math 42 with Prof. Enakoutsa is probably going to be a little less structured than the regular math class, but overall he is reasonable and sensitive to students' needs, and will accommodate you if you communicate with him. He might make a mistake (we're human and Math 42 is a difficult class to structure), but he is sure to make up for it. But I wouldn't recommend taking this class with other difficult math classes (Math 131A and above) because the unpredictability might cause extra stress given an already large workload. But if Math 42 is the class you are focusing most of your attention on, you'll probably have a great time (the course content is pretty interesting after week 4).
Spring 2023 - Overall I would say that Mr Enakoutsa is a very passionate and sweet professor who wants his students to participate, learn, and be passionate. I think he teaches pretty well — he is not the clearest math professor at UCLA but he makes up for it by being interactive with students during lecture. There were multiple times when he would ask the class a question and no one would know how to answer. From this, he would realise that no one understood him the first time and so he repeated the concept so that we would actually understand. But, I would say that there are a few flaws with the way the quarter panned out, especially in the homework workload. The homework load was reasonable, but the Professor's requirement that everything had to be coded in Latex was not. By week 6-7, we were doing complex integral work that took easily an additional 2-3 hours each week just to code into Latex, which I didn't think the Professor had considered when assigning the homework, and definitely added unneeded stress. Secondly, in week 6-7, the professor had not completed teaching what was required on the homework before it was due. He did extend the deadline, but obviously this is not a preferable situation. Lastly, his midterm weighed 40% which I flunked while studying for 131A the same week LOL. To compensate for this, he made all homeworks after week 7 optional and offered an extra credit option. My point here is that taking Math 42 with Prof. Enakoutsa is probably going to be a little less structured than the regular math class, but overall he is reasonable and sensitive to students' needs, and will accommodate you if you communicate with him. He might make a mistake (we're human and Math 42 is a difficult class to structure), but he is sure to make up for it. But I wouldn't recommend taking this class with other difficult math classes (Math 131A and above) because the unpredictability might cause extra stress given an already large workload. But if Math 42 is the class you are focusing most of your attention on, you'll probably have a great time (the course content is pretty interesting after week 4).
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2021 - Math 61 for the Summer 2021 term was originally taught by Prof. Ozel. When Ozel left in the middle of Summer session A due to issues with his visa, Prof. Enakoutsa came in to substitute. Enakoutsa did a nice job teaching Math 61. Enakoutsa, while not the clearest lecturer (I strongly preferred Ozel's lectures to Enakoutsa's), genuinely cares about his students' learning and provides a lot of office hours for students to ask questions. He encourages students to unmute themselves in lecture to ask clarifying questions. While his answers aren't always the clearest, Enakoutsa is committed to improving his teaching ability. He takes student feedback on his teaching seriously. His tests were rather straightforward and 24 hour open note. During the end of the course, Enakoutsa sent an angry email to everyone about one of his students' evaluations on his teaching (allegedly it said Enakoutsa interrupted students in lecture ...). He could have responded in a calmer, less defensive manner.
Summer 2021 - Math 61 for the Summer 2021 term was originally taught by Prof. Ozel. When Ozel left in the middle of Summer session A due to issues with his visa, Prof. Enakoutsa came in to substitute. Enakoutsa did a nice job teaching Math 61. Enakoutsa, while not the clearest lecturer (I strongly preferred Ozel's lectures to Enakoutsa's), genuinely cares about his students' learning and provides a lot of office hours for students to ask questions. He encourages students to unmute themselves in lecture to ask clarifying questions. While his answers aren't always the clearest, Enakoutsa is committed to improving his teaching ability. He takes student feedback on his teaching seriously. His tests were rather straightforward and 24 hour open note. During the end of the course, Enakoutsa sent an angry email to everyone about one of his students' evaluations on his teaching (allegedly it said Enakoutsa interrupted students in lecture ...). He could have responded in a calmer, less defensive manner.
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