18.330

Table of contents

  1. Course Info
  2. Realistic Prerequisites
  3. Subject Matter
  4. Course Staff
  5. Lectures
  6. Problem Sets
  7. Exams
  8. Resources
  9. Grading
  10. Advice to Future Students
  11. Syllabus

Course Info

Class Size 11
Hours/Week 9.8 (6 responses)
Instructors David Sanders (Lecturer)
# of Responses to Course 18 Underground Questions 6/11

Realistic Prerequisites

  • 18.03 highly recommended, along with coding experience, especially in Julia.
  • More generally, foundations like 18.02, 18.03, and 18.06.

Subject Matter

  • Applied, useful.
  • Broad range of numerical methods.

Course Staff

  • The professor was very caring and approachable, though a bit disorganized in managing the class.
  • Many reported negative experiences with the TA, who was rude and unavailable. For whatever reason, they are not listed on the official subject evaluations.

Lectures

  • Students learned a lot from lectures.
  • The problem sets built on the lectures. There was a Pluto notebook helpful for visualizing and working on problem sets.

Problem Sets

  • Problem sets required lots of creativity.
  • “Very challenging but in a fun way.”
  • Lectures were great preparation for problem sets.
  • Students found it very helpful to work with others in getting unstuck.

Exams

  • No exams.

Resources

  • The only resources available were lecture slides. Some wished for more extensive and accessible resources.
  • There were a few suggested textbooks. Some strongly recommended using one.

Grading

  • Students had no idea what the grade distribution was.
  • The TA graded the problem sets harshly. Some felt that it was random.
  • No rubric was published for problem set grading.

Advice to Future Students

  1. “The professor is really good”
  2. “Don’t take any classes with this TA”

Syllabus

Click here for a PDF of this course’s syllabus.