He says the class is straight scale, but I feel like it's not. He must have a more lenient scale for final grades, because there's no way I could've gotten an A+ without it. He's a good lecturer but has bad handwriting, so definitely ask for clarification. Even though he posts his notes from lectures, it's kind of hard to decipher, so either ask someone who attended lecture or go to class lol. The homeworks are pretty fair, you'll have to use some MATLAB. (tbh i found MATLAB really helpful checking homework) The final project uses Simulink, and there's an extra credit project that combines ECE113 and ECE141 material. Definitely start on the final project early. Even though it's not that bad, the spec isn't very clear so you'll need a lot of clarification throughout the process. I didn't do the extra credit project personally, but many people did and said it wasn't too bad. His exams use wack physics concepts like remembering inductance, moment of inertia, and angular velocity, etc. They're not horrible, definitely do previous exams, the homework, and try to understand the material.

I thought I should have gotten a C+ but wound up with an A+, not quite sure how that happened.
-Do the final EC project
-The material you learn is pretty theoretical but its still an interesting class.

I took this class during Spring 2020, so COVID and stuff. 141 is overall an okay class. There's a bit of Physics 1A that you need to remember for the equations of motion (question on this on both midterm and final). I would consider that everything in this class is challenging, but doable. The final project for us was modelling coronavirus in Simulink (very apt for this quarter), which I thought was pretty doable for a final project. The only thing that saves ur grade for this class is his very generous grading curve. You only need an 87.5% to get an A, a 81.25% for an A-, and a 75% for a B. However, we didn't have the EC project that other classes seemed to have

I found 141 to be an interesting class, especially as we neared the end and a shift in focus to design explained why we chose to study these topics. That said, I wish that shift had come earlier. The pace of the class felt very slow, although that didn't correspond to a solid understanding of what we were doing until I started watching youtube videos (all hail, Brian Douglas).
Tabuada was solid - could be a bit hard to follow, and frequently spoke without writing, but he made sense, he did examples, he didn't move to fast, and his grading was incredibly lenient (at least with this set of TA's). Would recommend.
HW was super helpful for understanding what we were working on in class, and the final project was interesting and relevant to COVID, but also painful in the number of approximations (that made little sense outside the scope of the project) you had to make for it to be manageable.

I took this class because I thought it would be a cool elective with a pretty lenient grading scheme. But I ended up finding the material for this class to be pretty dry and uninteresting. For the most part this class is pretty mathematical and abstract. If you liked stuff like 102 or 113 maybe this class is for you. But if you like classes more grounded in application and less about mathematical theory you're probably gonna be disappointed.

That being said, the grading for this class did end up being pretty lenient. Don't take this to mean the class itself is easy though. The material isn't a cakewalk to understand, and the exams (especially the final) were kinda rough, and easy to mess up on. Be ready to tackle seemingly random physics questions on the exams too. The homeworks also tended to be rather confusing and would take a while.

Lastly, Tabuada as a professor is pretty helpful and very receptive to answering any questions students have. He even does MATLAB demos, which pretty much no other EE professor does. However, his lectures aren't particularly engaging, and they can be pretty hard to follow at times. His handwriting is also kind of confusing and not easy to make sense of, so that doesn't help much. Ultimately, I didn't find lectures sufficient to understand the material, so watching youtube videos and looking over homework solutions is what ended up getting me through it.

Overall, an average class. I didn't really enjoy it, but there are worse classes you could take.

Prof. Tabuada is very nice and funny. He covers up to frequency compensation and a brief introduction to digital control, which I've heard is less than teachers such as Shoarinejad. He explains the material carefully and logically, and takes questions and is pretty funny. His handwriting can be a bit hard to read occasionally, as he write on a tablet. The grading scale is very generous. I dont think his tests were incredibly hard. The frequency compensation stuff was pretty confusing though. Definitely take this class if you are into circuits, since circuit design of feedback amplifiers are very important. Highly reccomend.

This class is not that hard to get an A in, but that does not mean the class is easy. He doesn't have a curve and grades on a straight scale. The performance of your peers does not affect your grade. Tabuada's lectures are not that helpful because he doesn't explain things well. I suggest not even going to class and then watching YouTube videos instead. Often I would go to class and get very confused, then ended up watching YouTube videos. Watching videos from these channels was enough to substitute going to class.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmK1EnKxphikZ4mmCz2NccSnHZb7v1wV-

https://www.youtube.com/user/ControlLectures/videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWPirh4EWFpGpH_Rb6Q4iQ6vGGRA6MORZ

Homeworks okay. There are solutions, but the solutions are often unclear. I got full credit on all homework except the first one where I got marked off a few points. Maybe the grader was hard for that one. The project is okay. I got full credit on that one. There was also an extra credit assignment for people who were also in or already took EC ENGR 113, but it didn't really need EC ENGR 113 since the only EC ENGR 113 part was just using a filter function to take noise out of a wave. I got 5/5 on that and boosted my grade 5%. So if my raw score percentage grade was 85, it would now be 90 after the extra credit. I believe this is the first time he offered extra credit.

Exams are hard, but are predictable for the most part as long as you do his past exams. It often involves modeling a differential equation, which he doesn't cover that well and give much practice on. Just do his past exams and then they grade pretty generously and give lots of partial credit. You only need like an 80% average on the exams (assuming you don't do the extra credit) to get an A as long as you get mostly full credit on everything else.

141 is an interesting class with many cool topics covered. However, Tabuada's lectures can often be confusing and unclear, and it was usually more helpful to read the textbook for the relevant section. If I were to take it again, I would definitely wait to take this class with another professor.