18.204
Table of contents
- Course Info
- Realistic Prerequisites
- Subject Matter
- Course Staff
- Lectures
- Problem Sets
- Exams
- Resources
- Grading
- Advice to Future Students
Course Info
| Class Size | 30 |
| Hours/Week | 7.4 (14 responses) |
| Instructors | Souvik Dhara (Lecturer), Julia Gaudio (Lecturer), Malcah Effron (Lecturer/Communication Lecturer) |
| # of Responses to Course 18 Underground Questions | 7/30 |
Realistic Prerequisites
- Mathematical maturity: having experience with proofs was important for reading math papers.
- Linear algebra and combinatorics were important overall, but the knowledge required depended on the topic chosen.
Subject Matter
- Broad range of topics: in total, 16 different topics were studied deeply. Some topics were theoretical, and others were applied.
- Skills in writing math papers and creating presentations gained.
Course Staff
- Approachable and helpful with questions about math or giving feedback.
Lectures
- The lectures were all student presentations, and because the topics differed, sometimes presentations were difficult to follow.
- A lot of the material learned was from creating the presentation and writing the paper.
Problem Sets
- Short psets which were based on lectures.
- The psets were straight forward, and could be done with talk summaries and notes.
Exams
- There were 2 midterms which were multiple choice, consisting of 1 question for each topic written by the students.
- Since there were 16 topics, the midterms were difficult to prepare for, but were a small portion of the grade.
Resources
- Each student got 3 topics to present on.
- Topics had textbooks and research articles as source material.
Grading
- The grading was fair and transparent, but getting an A took effort.
- The largest parts of the grade were the talk and paper.
- Grade cutoffs were around 90/80/70 for A/B/C.
Advice to Future Students
- “Start working on your talks early. Definitely do a practice talk.”
- “Look into the project topics before you rank them so you know what you’re getting yourself into. Also, ask the instructors for feedback and schedule practice talks if you can.”