EAEE E4257

Martin is so unresponsive. Despite sending him 7 emails and getting other professors involved, he refused to respond to me. Despite being a nice guy, he also pays very little attention to his students. I spoke with him several times and he constantly forgot things that I told him, which has been incredibly frustrating.

1 homework every 2 weeks, with the TA being as lost as the students when it come to the correction. 1 midterm and 1 final project corrected by Pr. Lall himself.

Each class has a short lecture (recorded but attendance sheets to be signed are passed around each day) and a lab. Usually, the lab instructions are written pretty clearly like step by step, and it's not turned in for a grade after each class. However, it can still be important to do these labs because there are take home quizzes every two weeks on the topics that are done in the labs and half of the questions on the quiz are directly from the lab. Most of the labs were able to be finished in class time, but there were two labs that took really long towards the end of the semester. Quizzes can take a while but there's not much homework throughout the week, so I think it balances out overall. Aside from quizzes every two weeks, there is also a lab report (draft and final) and a final presentation. These assignments have pretty clear rubrics so you should be able to get a good grade as long as you actually do all the things listed on there.

After hearing so many positive opinions about Pr. Lall (even in the EAEE department), I decided to take his class on environmental data analysis. In short: unbelievably disappointing. But this deserves a longer explanation. In all honestly I actually think this Professor is pleasant to talk to. He is also friendly and seems genuinely concerned about the students. But this is not about friendliness, it's about a class that you payed a likely hefty price for, and about you knowing what you're getting into beforehand. Classes at Columbia should NOT be justified exclusively by the alleged "friendliness" of the professor. After spending one semester following his class, it struck me: Pr. Lall is plainly dreadful at teaching. I am not talking about his research which is well developped and at the edge, from what I heard in the department. But a class is all about teaching and making sure that one's explanations are as clear as possible... Right? Well Pr. Lall just falls incredibly short in this area. He keeps teaching as if he was talking to his seasoned colleagues and seems completely unaware of "difficult" points in the concepts he approaches. This cannot be emphasized enough. What appears as a given in teaching (again: explaining difficult points) is here completely absent. I have never seen this in a class in my entire time in college. Pr. Lall goes through his class in a very s…

If you're going to be taking EDA, I would suggest taking it with Mike instead of Elizabeth. Both are good professors, but I think Mike's energy is a lot more engaging, and he can be more flexible at times. Mike is very chipper and energetic, so it makes paying attention in class a lot easier. I was intimated going into the class because I had zero experience with R and QGIS and then only some experience with Excel from previous lab classes. However, this class did truly teach me a lot of base level skills in these three topics. I will say that Mike is sometimes really busy during his office hours, so it's really helpful if you get a good TA that will be willing to help you.

Martin is very nice and clearly wants to help students. He definitely knows what he's talking about, but often his explanations are lacking. At the beginning of the course, it all seems simple and easy-going but as the semester goes on (at least in martin's half) many of the labs/homeworks and exams cover things that I personally didn't feel comfortable with. It is also IMPOSSIBLE to reach Martin by email so don't bank on that when you're struggling over the assignments.

practical problem sets, a couple of labs to give you practice writing up lab reports, a midterm and then a GIS segment (he doesn't teach this part)

He is a very straight-forward fellow. If you're an unreasonable person with unreasonable expectations, then you'll find him an unreasonable beast. If you behave like an adult and are honest with him, he is quite reasonable and even accomodating. The course doesn't go over very much material as far as the average classes here go, so there's a lot of time for questions and actually understanding the material.