This was a reasonable class, and I am confident that anyone who puts in the effort and uses their resources will do well. The homework assignments can be challenging and time consuming, but oftentimes the TAs work though similar problems in lab/discussion and go through the pseudocode. The homework was not graded harshly, so as long as the code runs, and it seems like you put effort in your report you should receive nearly full credit. The final project was extremely tedious but utilizing TAs and other students as resources helped. Overall this class was a lot of work, but the grading seemed generous.

This class is easily doable without attending discussion or lecture, since the homework assignments introduce you to the concepts of MATLAB as you need them. I had no coding background going into this class, and had no issue solving the homework problems without outside help. None of the code required convoluted processes, and were all generally pretty straightforward if you approached each problem trying to create a step by step process to solve it. The reports that go along with the homework are simply you explaining each segment of your code, and then trying to interpret the results that you found. They take about an hour or two of focused work. The homework problems all related to different parts of engineering and math, some of which you will not have done before, but it's all pretty intuitive and every algorithm they introduce to you can simply be googled to get a better understanding of it. The only segment of the class that introduced concepts that were way too complicated to be explained within their prompts were in the final project, and at that point I think many more students were required to attend discussion to even grasp what it was asking. Once you at least understood the mathematical concepts, it wasn't very hard to implement, though, and the TAs spoonfed you the answers.

The lectures were not really helpful. The discussion and lab sections were much more helpful, and the TA's explained things better than the professor. Going into this class, I didn't really know what MATLAB was exactly. But basically, think of this class like CS31 with report writing. This is a full blown coding class, just with more mathematical concepts. The reports average around 8 to 10 pages, and are due every week. There are no tests or finals, only reports. The homework consists of 2 to 3 problems (but these are the kinds of problems with a million different parts to them), and they actually get pretty hard, conceptually and mathematically. Speaking about the math, a large part of the problems is on a specific mathematical concept that is only brushed over in lecture, and then taken to level 100 in the homework. They say that you don't have to fully understand all the complex math, which is partially true, but that doesn't make doing the work any less confusing. The final project was pretty much impossible, and I was only able to complete it with much help from my friends who were also taking the class (helped with the concepts, not the exact code). If you do take this class, I highly recommend taking it with people you know. Overall, the lectures are not very useful, but the TA's are helpful and are willing to look at your code sometimes to assist.

I rated this class 5 on almost everything because if you do all your work, you will get a A.

NOTE: There are no exams and there is a final project but no final exam.

There are multiple TAs that you can go to for office hours. They are very helpful in the projects and helped me a lot through the final project. So far, the reports have not been graded too harshly (they only take off about 5 points out of 100).

Would recommend someone to take this class. The workload is very manageable considering no studying time and did not need to attend lectures as they were online. AND NO EXAMS.

I came into this class with coding experience, thinking that MATLAB could not possibly be more difficult than Java. Though the language itself is not, this course made it pretty dreadful. It's probably better taken with a different professor, the TAs really carried the class (bless you Jianwei). It's very clear that the professor knows the content, but he just sounds incredibly uninterested when teaching. The lectures are long and hard to sit through and not incredibly helpful lots of the time. Discussions and labs are where most of the learning gets done, as the homework problems often cannot be solved using just the lecture content. There are many situations where you have to learn the bulk of the content yourself to do the homework, but it's framed as "exploring beyond the teaching". There are seven weekly homework assignments, each with 3-4 problems and a lengthy report. The real hard-hitter is the final project. Throughout the quarter, there would be a few times where the homework problem specs would have to be altered or rewritten due to ambiguity or error, which was manageable. However, a significant part of the instructions for the final project had to be redone WHILE we worked on it, and it was honestly a very unpleasant experience.

TL;DR I wish I had a different professor, this class quite unclear most of the time and A LOT of work for intro to MATLAB.

The problems given during lectures and discussions were very, very helpful in completing the homework assignments and the final project. Similar problems were given, so the solutions were pretty similar. However, if there was a problem that wasn't like ones given in class it was nearly impossible to do. The homework was pretty difficult. The TAs were lifesavers -- if you go to office hours, they will walk you through a problem and help you debug your code.

This has nothing to do with the professor, but I know I only did well because of the class groupchat that is way better at explaining things and they respond faster. But, to be honest, I would take him, but go to the TA Office Hours because they will literally decode your stuff. Often times, you don't need to go to lecture live and just watch it later and you can follow along if the problem he does in class is similar to the homework problems. There's no midterms or finals and that was nice tbh, at least I liked it, there were weekly mini quizzes and homeworks and then one final project. The homework isn't always super clear or easy, but also ask questions in Piazza or again go to TA Office Hours and get clarification. I also had a bit of coding experience prior to taking this class and that helped but if you don't have any, that's ok and I think you'll be fine, MATLAB is a lot more straightforward than other languages.

There is a fair amount of differential equations in the coding, but it's not the worse thing in the world if you don't really understand it. Like TBH I took 33B over the summer and learned nothing and I did great in the class.

Overall, I think I would take the class again with him, but tbh the TA's are the real GOATs.

As you can probably tell by the grade distribution, getting a good grade in this class is fairly easy. If you have taken any coding class before this all of the assignments outside of the final project will be mostly fairly easy. Even if you haven't taken a coding class, learning the information required to complete each assignment (there are no exams) is not at all taxing and is very doable. Attending any of the lectures, discussions, or "labs" is not required to do well (especially if you have coding experience); although TAs in labs/discussions will straight up tell you how to do problems on the homework (or at the very least do examples that are almost copies of the assignment itself, even for the final project). Each assignment requires a written report; this does not require too much effort as you just have to write down the reasoning and conclusion of your code. Overall, you can definitely learn a lot in this class just sticking with the homework assignments (they are well designed), as that is where I learned the most (with discussions/labs being second and lecture coming in last).

This class is not very difficult as long as you start the homework and projects before the due date since some of them take longer than expected and being rushed on time while writing homework reports is not fun. Watching/attending the various class sections is very helpful and whenever I had questions about the class, the professor and TAs were all very helpful and responsive! I appreciate how the grading scheme is fixed from the beginning of the quarter so you always know how well you need to do to get the grade you want. My only warning for people taking this is to always double check your file names when submitting assignments.