Jonathan Gross

Professor Gross has retired and probably won't be teaching again. CULPA wants me to write more. Let me say simply that he taught this class for ~30 years, and it shows in ways both good and bad. His lectures were polished, sometimes a little too polished and he was more focused on the small talk and jokes than the materials. However with his lecture slides, and the fairly good textbook, it mostly went well. His exams are what you expect, and since they're open book they are much lower stress than you might otherwise think.

Professor Gross's graph theory class is accurately described (by Professor Gross) as "drinking through a fire hose." You plow through almost every one of the 16 chapters in his doorstop of a textbook and it's a LOT of material. How good this class is for you largely depends on what you bring to it. If you do the reading ahead of time as Professor Gross recommends (and which I did for the first 7 or 8 weeks), lecture is a good review of the reading plus a few new examples Gross works through and alternative problem-solving strategies he suggests. If you don't do the reading ahead of time (me for the rest of the semester) lecture is a waste of time. It's absolutely impossible to keep up in lecture because there are so many definitions, propositions, theorems and lemmas that if you're seeing the stuff for the first time you'll get completely lost. As I said, it's what you bring to it. It's worth noting that this class is basically a math class, not a CS class, and the tests and homeworks are designed accordingly. They emphasize mathematical intuition and spacial skills more than regurgitating examples from the book in condensed form. Attacking some problems by brute force alone is basically impossible*, but if you can manipulate the graphs in your mind's eye just right you'll see the solution. In the final third of the semester this became somewhat less true because the final cha…

An interesting class. Covers proofs for lots of very interesting combinatorial methods but only tests their applications, so the class is totally doable for someone without crazy math chops. Gross tells you that he'll teach you to Amaze your Friends with your combinatorial abilities, and he speaks the truth: A lot of the pattern finding and summing is very clever, especially to the ~math illiterate that I am, because, especially towards the end of the class, some of the methods seemed like voodoo. Lectures are useful for the tone of Gross's voice, but generally come straight out of the lecture notes. The fact that he wrote the book means that lectures really don't provide a different perspective on the material, and the pace of the class requires students to have read-ahead to keep up. I attended lecture but, to be honest, it was only because I think gross's side-note anecdotes were amusing. For the most part, the class requires a lot of self-teaching (in my experience).

Although he is adorable, brilliant and very nice, he is not very good at articulating or teaching. I can pretty honestly say that I didn't learn anything from him that I didn't read from the textbook after he already lectured on it, because he is that unclear and confusing. His notes for the class (which he uploads on his website, and you should most definitely print out and bring to class) are wonderful. They are sometimes confusing, but you can always use the textbook to supplement your understanding of the material. The grading of the homework is ridiculous, and the tests are so much easier than the homework. In addition, when taking the tests, definitely read the textbook because chances are, by the first midterm, you won't know what's going on from the class and you will feel like an idiot.

Quick note: This class is most definitely a mathematics course. There are basically no concrete applications of the material covered and certainly no programming involved. Prof. Gross is arguably the most idiosyncratic professor you'll ever meet. And that's definitely a good thing. His lifelong love for topology and graph theory (and their intersection) is clearly evident in his lectures, in which he wanders off into reminiscing about his early mathematical career and some tidbits from math history and algebraic topology. This "sidetalk," as he calls it, makes the class more interesting and is, as a result, an integral part of the course. Integral. Gross's lecturing differs from other practitioners of the overhead-projector style because the projector doubles as a slideshow of ever-evolving course notes and a whiteboard in which he goes through examples with the class. This is probably because he has walking problems (he comes into class wearing sneakers and holding a cane) and the fact that Graph Theory is a CVN course. I wasn't really able to appreciate his usage of the projector in Discrete Math because it didn't seem necessary (small examples, mostly numerical manipulation), but once we hit graph enumeration, it became clear why Gross preferred the projector: it's basically impossible to fully draw examples otherwise. The course is by no means an easy course like the pre-r…

Prof. Gross teaches 3 sequential courses - Discrete Math, Graph Theory, and Combinatorial Theory - and teaches them all in the same fashion. It helps to go to class, but since a complete lecture notes booklet is available and covers everything from the beginning to the end of the semester, you could potentially learn the material yourself. His tests are open book, but are by no means easy - they are often referred to as "the learning experience." Overall, he's a great teacher, and makes the courses bearable even for a math-illiterate like myself.

I am a math major and I needed some upper level courses. Discrete Math had amazing reviews and I thought it would be easy as a class of numbers for a math major amongst computer science majors, right? Wrong. Yes, the material itself is easy (basic probability, number theory, graphs), and you don't actually ever have to learn it because all the tests are open book/notes. However, all the exams are REALLY HARD and getting harder by the year (he gave us past exams for practice). A LOT of proofs, hard graphs on the final, stuff you've never seen before so you can apply random stuff from your notes, AND DID I MENTION PROOFS? So overall, this class requires virtually no work or studying and there's really nothing you can do to prepare for the exams because they are open notes, but the exams are really difficult. I got a B in this course as a math major.

Jonathon Gross is a funny guy... he has random moments that will make you laugh, at least the first time he tells the joke (he will point out that he retells jokes... he will even tell you multiple times that he always retells jokes... this man is brilliant but his memory is not what it used to be). If you're paying attention and you get what's going on, you'll be fine. If you're a math major, you'll be fine. However, if you don't, you'll fall back quickly. He goes through the first few chapters quickly, since most everyone has seen that kind of stuff. And then he goes at a slower pace for everything else... but it's still very fast. And if you stop paying attention for a little bit, you'll find yourself wondering what he's talking about, why he's saying that point x cannot be mapped onto point y and what the hell a cellular imbedding is. But, he teaches straight out of the book, which is good and bad (bad cause it's boring, but good cause you never have to take notes). Final note: this class doesn't get into any algorithms, i.e. you won't be able to write any sort of computer program using graphs after taking this class. It lays the groundworks for you to learn this kind of stuff on your own, but that's it.

check the homepage for more up-to-date workload (http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~cs4205/) 6 problem sets and 3 non-cumulative (except when self-referential) exams in ~decreasing difficulty.

I cannot believe this guy has a silver nugget... Perhaps Prof. Gross has just become more puzzling as he gets older, because the class described by other reviewers is completely unlike the one I experienced. This guy can barely finish a sentence. He is actually pretty funny sometimes, but the material is unbearably boring and he does a poor job of actually teaching us anything. It is clear that he is an expert on the subject and probably a genius, but he's one of those professors that can't actually teach very well. My biggest issue with the class is that the terrible lectures have almost no relation to the homework assignments, and the homework assignments have almost no relation to the exams. It doesn't help that the TA's are complete sticklers about answers on the homework. They will take points off for almost anything they can. You will most likely heavily rely on solutions found on the internet. Luckily, Prof. Gross provides decent notes on the subject and posts the solutions from previous quizzes and exams. The exams are all open book. Unfortunately, Prof. Gross flies through the material. I only took the class because it is required for all computer science majors. I really wish it wasn't required.