Professor
Matthias Wink
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Okay I have a lot of thoughts about Prof. Wink. I had him for Math 3A the first time that he taught. I took calc AB in hs and I did very poorly, and I was super worried coming into this class. The material is difficult, and even people who were wizards in AB and BC struggled because of the way he taught it. He loved using proofs and being conceptual instead of plugging in numbers and showing examples. His tests are difficult but there isn't anything that catches you off guard. The only problem is that for the midterms, he doesn't give us enough time so I felt really rushed and I was never really confident with my answers. However, on the final, we had wayyy more time so I performed a lot better. The final wasn't easier than the midterm, we just had more time. You definitely have to be a fast test taker. He is a very sweet guy, and I definitely would take the class with him again if I had to. He is not very forgiving but he's reasonable and I personally liked him. Tiny guy too, looks like a student when he walks in. I get why people give him low ratings, but I liked the way he taught. By teaching with pure proofs, he was making sure that we actually understood the material rather than just plugged and chugged. I got a B- (like super borderline C+) in calc AB and I did well in this class.
Fall 2018 - Okay I have a lot of thoughts about Prof. Wink. I had him for Math 3A the first time that he taught. I took calc AB in hs and I did very poorly, and I was super worried coming into this class. The material is difficult, and even people who were wizards in AB and BC struggled because of the way he taught it. He loved using proofs and being conceptual instead of plugging in numbers and showing examples. His tests are difficult but there isn't anything that catches you off guard. The only problem is that for the midterms, he doesn't give us enough time so I felt really rushed and I was never really confident with my answers. However, on the final, we had wayyy more time so I performed a lot better. The final wasn't easier than the midterm, we just had more time. You definitely have to be a fast test taker. He is a very sweet guy, and I definitely would take the class with him again if I had to. He is not very forgiving but he's reasonable and I personally liked him. Tiny guy too, looks like a student when he walks in. I get why people give him low ratings, but I liked the way he taught. By teaching with pure proofs, he was making sure that we actually understood the material rather than just plugged and chugged. I got a B- (like super borderline C+) in calc AB and I did well in this class.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Taking Math 31B with Professor Wink was an amazing experience. I would agree on the part that he is one of the hardest professors for Math 31B, but he is one of the best ones as well. Grading He had two grading schemes and would use the one which yielded a better score for each individual student out of the two. Scheme 1 Homework: 10% Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2: 20% Final exam: 50% Scheme 2 Homework: 10% Higher of midterm 1 or 2: 30% Final exam: 60% Homework He assigned weekly problems from the exercises in the textbooks which had to be turned in during the lecture on Friday every week. The difficulty level of the problems ranged between easy, moderately difficult, and hard. Though they offered good practice, in order to perform well on his midterms and finals, just the homework problems definitely wouldn't suffice and extra practice of the examples and other problems from the exercises are important. In addition to that, I'd strongly advise to solve his practice midterms and final, and also the problem sheets assigned by the TA (if your TA does)- they're extremely helpful and a great source of practice. Also, he drops your two lowest homework scores and a score of 75% and above on the homeworks is considered as a 100%, so that even if you make some error, you can learn from it and avoid it later on without putting your grade at risk. Midterms and Finals His midterms and finals were hard- no kidding. The averages on the first and second midterms were a 50% and 61% respectively, and that on the final was a 63%. But that doesn't mean they were completely impossible to handle. The exams being hard just meant that he really made you work if you wanted to secure a good score. The one drawback with his midterms that I would say is that they were just worth 26 points. So if you made even a small error, that would drop your score in terms of percentages a lot. If you're consistent with practice and don't put off the syllabus for just before the midterms and final, then I don't think you'd have any major problems in performing decently on his tests. The material in Math 31B is much, and a lot of it is in interconnected with each other (for example, you can't move ahead with infinite series or Taylor polynomials without having your concepts of all the convergence and divergence tests crystal clear). That is why it is important that you follow through with the practice and material as it progresses in the class so that you allow yourself to get familiar with it at a comfortable pace, which is really crucial to ensure in this class if you wanna perform well. Also, Professor Wink gave two points of extra credit for filling out the instructor evaluations at the end of the quarter. Curve He said that he wouldn't curve any exams (midterms or finals) individually, but would scale the overall scores after all the exams. The class was scaled down to quite an extent, with the cutoffs for letter grades in comparison to the overall scores being as follows- 100% or above: A+ >=85%: A >=82%: A- >=79%: B+ >=72%: B >=69%: B- >=64%: C+ >=53%: C >=43%: C- >=33%: D In all, I'd definitely recommend someone who loves to learn more about the intricacies of Math to take Wink's class because although it is hard, you learn a lot and get used to taking difficult tests. He does a great job of preparing you well for harder classes to come along.
Winter 2019 - Taking Math 31B with Professor Wink was an amazing experience. I would agree on the part that he is one of the hardest professors for Math 31B, but he is one of the best ones as well. Grading He had two grading schemes and would use the one which yielded a better score for each individual student out of the two. Scheme 1 Homework: 10% Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2: 20% Final exam: 50% Scheme 2 Homework: 10% Higher of midterm 1 or 2: 30% Final exam: 60% Homework He assigned weekly problems from the exercises in the textbooks which had to be turned in during the lecture on Friday every week. The difficulty level of the problems ranged between easy, moderately difficult, and hard. Though they offered good practice, in order to perform well on his midterms and finals, just the homework problems definitely wouldn't suffice and extra practice of the examples and other problems from the exercises are important. In addition to that, I'd strongly advise to solve his practice midterms and final, and also the problem sheets assigned by the TA (if your TA does)- they're extremely helpful and a great source of practice. Also, he drops your two lowest homework scores and a score of 75% and above on the homeworks is considered as a 100%, so that even if you make some error, you can learn from it and avoid it later on without putting your grade at risk. Midterms and Finals His midterms and finals were hard- no kidding. The averages on the first and second midterms were a 50% and 61% respectively, and that on the final was a 63%. But that doesn't mean they were completely impossible to handle. The exams being hard just meant that he really made you work if you wanted to secure a good score. The one drawback with his midterms that I would say is that they were just worth 26 points. So if you made even a small error, that would drop your score in terms of percentages a lot. If you're consistent with practice and don't put off the syllabus for just before the midterms and final, then I don't think you'd have any major problems in performing decently on his tests. The material in Math 31B is much, and a lot of it is in interconnected with each other (for example, you can't move ahead with infinite series or Taylor polynomials without having your concepts of all the convergence and divergence tests crystal clear). That is why it is important that you follow through with the practice and material as it progresses in the class so that you allow yourself to get familiar with it at a comfortable pace, which is really crucial to ensure in this class if you wanna perform well. Also, Professor Wink gave two points of extra credit for filling out the instructor evaluations at the end of the quarter. Curve He said that he wouldn't curve any exams (midterms or finals) individually, but would scale the overall scores after all the exams. The class was scaled down to quite an extent, with the cutoffs for letter grades in comparison to the overall scores being as follows- 100% or above: A+ >=85%: A >=82%: A- >=79%: B+ >=72%: B >=69%: B- >=64%: C+ >=53%: C >=43%: C- >=33%: D In all, I'd definitely recommend someone who loves to learn more about the intricacies of Math to take Wink's class because although it is hard, you learn a lot and get used to taking difficult tests. He does a great job of preparing you well for harder classes to come along.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - 115A was my first upper div Math class at UCLA, and I felt very lucky taking it with Dr. Wink. He gives detailed explanations to the proofs and really tries to make students understand the content. Sometimes he goes over the materials a little bit fast, but he is very helpful after class/ during office hours and would explain a long proof all over again until you feel okay about it. Quizzes are easy and you get full points for the homework/ quiz section as long as you get 75%+ in homework and quizzes combined. Homework problems are short (compared to 115A with other professors). Midterms and the final are pretty straightforward and similar to the practice problems (he has a very generous curve (A for 85+). One suggestion would be to take good use of his office hours and really try to understand the concepts and proofs.
Spring 2019 - 115A was my first upper div Math class at UCLA, and I felt very lucky taking it with Dr. Wink. He gives detailed explanations to the proofs and really tries to make students understand the content. Sometimes he goes over the materials a little bit fast, but he is very helpful after class/ during office hours and would explain a long proof all over again until you feel okay about it. Quizzes are easy and you get full points for the homework/ quiz section as long as you get 75%+ in homework and quizzes combined. Homework problems are short (compared to 115A with other professors). Midterms and the final are pretty straightforward and similar to the practice problems (he has a very generous curve (A for 85+). One suggestion would be to take good use of his office hours and really try to understand the concepts and proofs.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Despite all his lower ratings, I think Professor Wink was great. MATH 135 is a very computational class and his lectures talk about the theory behind the equations more so than examples, which is my biggest complaint about Professor Wink. Even worse, the textbook is not the best and there are very few practice problems (especially when talking about Boundary Conditions and Calculus of Variation). I added this course in the end of week 3 so I had to play catch up. However, if you took 33B from a different institution, you might've already learned a good chunk of this course. The first six weeks are about Laplace Transforms, Existence and Uniqueness and Fourier Series, so if your 33B course already discussed this, then you should be set. His homework was a combination of textbook problems and problems he wrote. Professor and our TA, Ryan Wallace who is the GOAT, practically did the homework with us during discussion and office hours. We had four quizzes throughout the quarter which were essentially basic questions from material covered. They were 30 minutes each but could be done in 10-15. The midterms were fairly easy; the first midterm median was a 92% and the second midterm median was a 88%. However, the final was no joke. The Median was a 77% and was a difficult but fair exam. With that being said, the grading is VERY lenient. Their sole grading scheme was 30% Final, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 10% Quizzes (Lowest Dropped), 19% HW (Lowest Dropped), 1% Professor Evaluation. Specifically, for the HW category, after the lowest was dropped, and 85% overall in the category constituted an 100% in that category (no extra credit for above 85% raw). The homework was also fairly easy, if you understand the material. At the beginning with Laplace Transforms it can be a bit tedious with annoying partial fraction decompositions and integration by parts but towards the end, it only took maybe 2 hours a week. Each homework was also maybe 5-10 questions which I feel is pretty standard. PROFESSOR DOES CURVE! I have no idea what the curve is, I had a 92.8% overall by the end of the quarter and got an A so there might've been anywhere from a slight curve to a larger one. Overall, the MATH 135 material is fun and engaging and I would definitely take another class with Professor Wink again.
Fall 2020 - Despite all his lower ratings, I think Professor Wink was great. MATH 135 is a very computational class and his lectures talk about the theory behind the equations more so than examples, which is my biggest complaint about Professor Wink. Even worse, the textbook is not the best and there are very few practice problems (especially when talking about Boundary Conditions and Calculus of Variation). I added this course in the end of week 3 so I had to play catch up. However, if you took 33B from a different institution, you might've already learned a good chunk of this course. The first six weeks are about Laplace Transforms, Existence and Uniqueness and Fourier Series, so if your 33B course already discussed this, then you should be set. His homework was a combination of textbook problems and problems he wrote. Professor and our TA, Ryan Wallace who is the GOAT, practically did the homework with us during discussion and office hours. We had four quizzes throughout the quarter which were essentially basic questions from material covered. They were 30 minutes each but could be done in 10-15. The midterms were fairly easy; the first midterm median was a 92% and the second midterm median was a 88%. However, the final was no joke. The Median was a 77% and was a difficult but fair exam. With that being said, the grading is VERY lenient. Their sole grading scheme was 30% Final, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 10% Quizzes (Lowest Dropped), 19% HW (Lowest Dropped), 1% Professor Evaluation. Specifically, for the HW category, after the lowest was dropped, and 85% overall in the category constituted an 100% in that category (no extra credit for above 85% raw). The homework was also fairly easy, if you understand the material. At the beginning with Laplace Transforms it can be a bit tedious with annoying partial fraction decompositions and integration by parts but towards the end, it only took maybe 2 hours a week. Each homework was also maybe 5-10 questions which I feel is pretty standard. PROFESSOR DOES CURVE! I have no idea what the curve is, I had a 92.8% overall by the end of the quarter and got an A so there might've been anywhere from a slight curve to a larger one. Overall, the MATH 135 material is fun and engaging and I would definitely take another class with Professor Wink again.
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