Jay Sethuraman

The subject matter in this class is incredibly interesting, however, the execution is quite poor. The course consists of reading an OR research paper for each class. The research topics are pretty cool, like apportionment, OR in homeland security, hospital ER rooms, etc. The class is broken down into groups, and each lecture, one group will teach the whole class by summarizing and explaining the findings of a paper. Students not presenting are supposed to have read the papers ahead of time, but since it's not enforced, typically nobody reads the papers and nobody pays attention to the lecture either. Jay did lecture the first few classes, which were probably the best classes of the semester and people actually paid attention to. I personally was part of the 10% of the class that actually read papers ahead of time and paid attention during lectures so I felt that I got something out of the class. However, the other 90% of people simply were on their phones the entire class (if they even chose to show up). It's quite disheartening to look around and see pretty much no one paying attention in class. I think Jay is restructuring the class soon (hopefully). Overall, very easy class with potential to be very interesting. You get out of it what you put in. Please don't be part of the majority of people who are disrespectful and pay zero attention in class.

Jay’s Game Theory course was intense but very rewarding. Beware of getting comfortable in this class. The first 3 weeks are fairly straightforward, as it takes some time to shift from the traditional OR mindset to a game theory mindset. However, homework quickly got complex and tough. The class is split into two parts. The first ¾ of the class is on game theory (which is split into 4 sections) and the last segment is on auction theory. While game theory is somewhat nuanced and difficult, Jay does a good job of elucidating the important concepts in class, and providing examples. The homework in this part of the class becomes tough because of the jump from the classroom examples to the homework. For example, in the classroom, we would find a Nash Equilibrium when each player has a finite number of options, whereas on homework, we were asked to do this when the players had unaccountably many options. He would give hints on how to do this, but you would really have to make sure you understood the concepts in the classroom example, and then use some different math to account for the jump from discrete to continuous. As usual, Jay is very dedicated in his office hours, as is his TA Irene, and that means there was plenty of help. Jay also records his lectures which is very helpful when tackling homework. It is important to look at the homework as soon as it is released, as you will n…

I honestly don't understand the poor reviews of this professor. Perhaps he was not good at teaching other classes but, as far as the undergraduate version of Math Programming is concerned, he was one of the best teachers I have had. Professor Sethuraman is very good and providing the conceptual/economic explanation for the math that you do in this class, and he goes to great lengths to ensure that you understand this base intuition. This is extremely valuable in a class that would otherwise seem to be a class where one blindly applies algorithms. Jay realizes that computers can do the ugly computations nowadays, and so, rather than spending time on 9x9 matrices, we only do small computation to get an idea for how a specific algorithm works, and then we spend lots of time discussing the underlying methodology of an algorithm, situation in which it might no work, and what certain states of the algorithm can tell us. While Jay is not a ball of energy in the room, he has his own personality that makes class enjoyable, and he does a good job of raising interesting questions about the material that make you think about the nuances or corner cases of the algorithms. Unlike most professors, Jay appears to understand his students. He can tell when his students are confused and is willing to repeat a concept or explain it in a different manner if students don't get it. He also understan…

This is a tricky review to write. The material is interesting no doubt, but I agree that it is made to look harder than it is. Sethuraman is not terrible. He's just ordinary. Monotonic, repetitive, and not very organized. He's a nice chap, no doubt, and is said to be helpful in his office hours, but you take a class for the in-class experience, and at 9:10am, I didn't have a very pleasurable one. He often fumbles while explaining concepts, and averts questions by saying "he'll get back to it later," without ever doing so. The material could have been taught in a much better way, and his TA Tulia did a great job in doing so. Assignments are fairly arduous. And exams are fairly tricky as well. Mean on the final was around 60%, and that on the final was around 50%. The class was not as smart as it should have been though, and so it's not impossible to do well. To sum it up, he's not as bad as other reviews suggest, but definitely could have been clearer.

We basically didn't cover all the material we were supposed to cover because nobody understood the material. After giving the midterm which 90% of the class bombed, he gave a second midterm on the SAME material. I guess that does show that he's concerned with having us actaully learn the material. We lost two weeks and subsequently cut two chapters out of the course, rehashing the material covered in the first midterm. Performance was much improved as the test was less conceptual and more quantitative. We skipped three lectures and never made any of them up on top of the two weeks worth of review for the second midterm. One entire lecture was spent have the class bitch about how difficult the midterms were and how we should approach the final. He just didn't seem to care about the class at all and curved very generously (course was mostly seniors). I walked away with an A.

Yeah this course is pretty awful but because everyone does poorly in it its not too hard to get a decent grade in it, honestly. The course material actually is pretty interesting but the lectures were just too basic and would simply skim the material whereas the homework and tests were VERY VERY HARD and you were lucky to receive any points on the homeworks. It just doesn't make sense that the homework solutions don't even follow the methods in the book or methods given from the lecture. The book is so worthless and the TA could barely do problems from the book. The solutions to these damn problems were solutions that you'd have to have your phd in IEOR to be able to conjure up. But everyone does poorly, honestly even the smart kids, so just go to every lecture and get all you can out of it and get through it.

9 Homeworks. 3-4 hours each, occasionally 5. All fair. (1 equivalent total) 2 Midterms. (1 equivalent each) Final (2 equivalents) The top 4 equivalents constitute your grade. Curve seems to be a high B+, not 100% sure.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS IF YOU CAN. ONE OF THE WORST PROFESSORS YOU WILL EVER ENCOUNTER. Jay is definitely a smart man and a distinguished scholar from MIT. But he lives in his own world and this will drive you insane if you take his class. He thinks everyone has the same aptitude for understanding the subject matter as MIT Phds. He is also socially inept and as such often confuses teaching effectively with trying to quiz and fool the class. He will often leave questions unanswered just so he can test the material. Confusion is part of the syllabus in that there is no consistency in textbook, or notes, or where the homework is assigned from. If you want to feel a little crazy by all means take this class. Jay is very disorganized. BEWARE.

Weekly problem sets which are difficult but solutions are easily found online. There was a project element that we also cut from the class. Final was easy (perhaps because it was abbreviated). There WILL be proofs.

This guy is awful. This course is awful. The book is awful. The TA is horrendous. The tragedy lies in the fact that this is a required course for IEOR majors and so you will most probably be stuck with this guy. I will try my best to describe and justify my opinion of this class but let me just say that nothing compares to the actual experience of being in the class. At the most basic level, this class is incredibly inconsistent. Methods/variables used in lecture rarely match up with those in the text book and the recitation is completely useless (other than the fact that it is where you hand in your hw, but don't worry one of your friends can just drop it off for you), as the TA skips dozens of intermediate steps and is barely comprehensible. Also, the "lectures" page on Sethuraman's website contains little more than a list of the dates class was held and a vague 1 or 2 word "description", so don't let those e-mails about how the "lectures page was updated" fool you. That doesn't mean anything. And now for the book. My god, what a useless resource. Most of the crucial topics have little in the way of examples and unless you are willing to hit up the Mudd library stacks to find some obscure paper written by Goofus and Gumpus (1971), the book will be of very little help. Let this review not deter you. Being in SEAS you should probably be ready for this level of mediocrity and j…