APM A4204

weekly (absurdly long and unhelpful) problem sets. 1 midterm. 1 final.

4-5 hours/week, reasonable amount and problem sets can be done pretty easily if you attend lectures

Well-Chosen Weekly Problem Sets (10 in total, count for 25% of final grade): Supposedly, the worst one is dropped, but do them all carefully to prep for the tests. These are the "easy" points - show lots of work to prevent loads of pts from being arbitrarily deducted by the picky TAs, who are hard to find outside of office hours. Is responding expediently to emails that hard??? Midterm (25%) - straightforward, except for the last killer question Extremely Challenging Final (50%) - difficult, but partial credit awarded accordingly and fairly Both of these contain a healthy mix of computations and "pseudo"proofs. He also had several other schemes, but WONDERFULLY generous curve in the end!!! Amount of effort put in will actually translate over to a good grade, unlike some other courses.

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH LETOURNEAU. it seems like a really cool subject, and maybe letourneau would have been good at teaching something else, or with a few more years under his belt; but for now, do not take functions of a complex variable with letourneau. i got an A in the class, so i say this without any spite: this was the worst-taught class i have ever taken. before i give my opinion on why the class did not suit me, i can offer 2 concrete reasons why it is a class that you should avoid at all costs: 1. the class does not cover all of the material that you need to learn in the subject, and the topics that were left out were the most important ones in the course (fourier, laplace, and schwarz-christoffel). the bottom line is, you will either need to go learn these topics on your own or take another class in complex analysis if you actually want to use any of the most important applications of the subject. 2. the professor will not match the amount of work you put in (unless, of course, you put in little to no work). letourneau was completely unprepared in lecture. he had very few office hours and frequently cancelled or rescheduled them. there were significant errors on every posted homework assignment, and they often went uncorrected until just 2 or 3 days before the assignment was due. there were frequent errors on the posted solutions. homeworks were not returned un…

Literally would die for this man. I love Kui Ren. He's an amazing professor, and Functions of a Complex Variable was taught really well.

Polvani is a great teacher who made complex variables relatively interesting and bearable during the 2.5 hours of weekly lecture, considering that it's late afternoon, when everybody is mentally and physically drained already. He goes through most of the material very thoroughly, minimizing students' pain, by presenting a healthy mix of derivations and applications (+ occasional tangents). He has a cute, but comprehensible, accent and is generally very receptive to questions/comments/corrections to mistakes. He will actually slow down his pace and reiterate certain things depending on people's requests. Make sure to come to class when he covers CHAPTER 6; otherwise, be prepared to spend a billion hours deciphering the hieroglyphics in the book and still getting confused while doing the long, torturous homework assignment over Thanksgiving break (i went to lecture, but still spent most of the holiday doing the HW and suffering from the messy algebra). Be warned that the exams are not simple at all - you need to really know the stuff cold so that time wouldn't be an issue. STUDY, STUDY, and STUDY hard - practice problems, but keep in mind though that understanding of concepts, rather than the ability to perform robotic-like, mindless calculations, is key (think critically!!!). Also, be heedful of the questions on branch cuts and Mobius transformations -> Lorenzo loves these subj…

10 problem sets (each takes a few hours, some are easier/shorter than others) 1 midterm and final

1 midterm, 1 final, weekly psets. Reweights your grade if you do better on final than midterm

weekly psets, 1 midterm (fair-the average was like a 78), 1 difficult final

I agree with the other reviews that the class was a bit disorganized. However, Professor Letourneau was overall not too bad. His lectures could sometimes be confusing and hard to follow, but I don't think it is his fault that the material he teaches takes time to absorb and understand. He always responded to our questions on Piaza, and was very helpful during office hours. I ended up not doing as well in this class as I hoped, but I wouldn't say it's his fault. If anything, I think the undergrads just get unlucky that the class is filled with graduate students, many of whom have already taken the class.