She wrote the textbook! I think she's cool but it was difficult to understand lectures and I felt that they were unorganized. Tests were graded really easily though.

I thought this class was so easy and the lectures were so simple, but the exams were ridiculous. I ended up with a B- even though I spent hours upon hours studying. I did good in 30A, and on all the practice problems we had for this class so I felt like I put in my best effort. I think a part of the problem is that Jane gave out the same midterm and final (at least the same final as Steve's I think, Im not sure about Jukka) as other professors, yet went into less detail during her lectures. I felt way less prepared, and we were expected to know things that I honestly never remember even seeing in the textbook, in our homework, labs, or lecture, so it felt pretty unfair. I might have just had a bad experience last quarter, but I couldn't wait for this class to be over.

Dr. Jane is wonderful! The topics covered in LS30B are a bit more complicated than concepts in LS30A, especially when you get to chaos. Labs aren't too difficult as long as you remember the stuff you learned in LS30A (you can always go back and read your old CoCalc files anyways). The class structure is interesting but I feel like it works; one lecture a week introduces new content and the other lecture is a Q&A session for clarification. Homework isn't too bad, most of the time I completed it the day it was due (do not recommend). The midterm and final exam were both online over a 24-hour period, so there was plenty of time to complete the work. The exams weren't bad at all, I felt like they were fair but challenging. Overall, the class isn't difficult as long as you do the homework. Minimal work is required outside of the homework. Dr. Jane hosts study sessions for the exams that are very helpful, so please go to them if you'd like to do well on the tests!

EDIT: I had this review in drafts for about a year, and didn't realize that I forgot to post it

Overall, I really enjoyed LS30B with Dr. Shevtsov. Let me preface by saying that I did coding in high school. I enjoyed LS30A and B labs quite a bit, any though admittedly, SageMath is a tad annoying, even if you already know Python. I also still sometimes do single digit addition and subtraction by counting with my fingers, so if I could do well in a math class, I wager anyone could.

Grades were, I think, very fairly calculated. We had pretty low stakes midterms and finals with a final project at the very end. We had the chance to make up 50% of the points we lost in the midterm, and there was a decent amount of extra credit to help pad out any points lost. The final project was also very generously graded (my project was absolutely awful, and our groups still managed to do well).

Exams were 24 hour, short answer exams. While I do believe they were decently challenging (especially the final), the questions still felt fair, they were just more challenging than examples we had in class. I personally didn't do spectacular on either exam, but because neither exam made an overwhelming part of your grade, I still managed to pull away with an A. Labs were challenging, but doable since we had a week to solve all the lab questions (I finished most of my labs during lab section itself). Some labs were definitely more irritating than others, but I never had a lab that I felt was impossible.

I really think Shevtsov was a great lecturer. She really took time to throughly explain the hard to understand concepts of LS30B. Because we were assigned videos before lecture that went over the basics of the concepts we'd go over in lecture, Shevtsov had more time to go over harder to understand elements of the course's mathematical concepts. This may be subjective, but the way she explained concepts just made sense to me, she really allowed me to visualize and understand what certain equations and concepts do, along with what implications they may have on a system. She was very quick responding to emails, she agreed to look over my group's final project before we turned it in (which keep in mind was Friday of Final's Week). She definitely gave us the resources necessary to succeed.

Overall, 8.5/10 class, would take again.

Jane is super sweet and funny. She is the only professor that genuinely made an effort to help students get to know each other during covid that I had. The group project was really fun and interesting. The tests were quite easy if you payed attention to what she said.