Michael Tippett

Weekly homework 20% of your grade, most of the time they are doable in like 3-4 hours, but every once in a while he will throw in a 2 page long problem (this was mostly in the first half) and it takes way longer. On average spent 7-8 hours on the class during non-exam weeks. One midterm and a final, each 40%. The grading on the exams was harsh because there was no partial credit. In addition, he had to take our exams back twice because of grading mistakes on extra credit, had to edit the exam key, and even then it still had mistakes. I studied about 20+ hours for the final and did well, 8 hours for the midterm and did median. The saving grace of this class is Tippett's curve. He curved the midterm/final and reduced the grade cutoffs so that half the class had an A-/A without homework, although he seemed to indicate he was unusually nice this term.

hw, midterm1, midterm2 20% each. Final is 40% Homeworks took me 2-4 hours to complete.

Expected this course to be fairly straightforward, and Tippett himself said so at the beginning of the semester. The lecture notes were phenomenal (very clear, although maybe an occasional mistake) and the content seemed pretty straightforward. In addition, I didn't take ODE but didn't find that a major issue (the first homework tells you the only 4 ODEs you will ever need to solve). However, the average on the first midterm were abysmal, not to mention lots of grading issues. The hardest part of this class is knowing what to study for the 2 exams (80% of the grade). The lectures, especially in the second half, have large sections dedicated to complicated derivations and weird functions, along with a bunch of tangents on linear algebra. The homeworks often have series solutions that take up half the page. However, if you boil it down, there are only 8-10 types of questions he can realistically ask you to solve in an exam timeframe. The long methods can be reduced to a couple of key steps, and the properties you need to memorize are only a sentence or a single expression. Once I spent a large chunk of time going through the notes and homework to abstract the skills Tippett was trying to teach and figure out what to ignore, the class became much easier. DO NOT spend time memorizing Legendre/Bessel, proofs of properties and Fourier transforms, etc. Content wise, the class felt li…

Professor Tippett is very helpful in class and in office hours. In general, he is a great teacher. The class size was huge (In the big room in Havemeyer) and the professor could not be heard well from everywhere. He used good examples in class which clarified my concepts a lot. The homeworks were generally easy, and mainly from the book. The homeworks are graded by different TAs every week to make sure no one student keeps facing a harsh grader. Midterms are often lengthy and include a good mix of easy, medium and hard questions. Midterms are usually out of 130-140 points, so losing a few points affects the percentage less than you would imagine. He also has bonus questions in all exams but they are usually much harder. Partial points are awarded. A solid understanding of the material is required to do well on the course. I disagree with the previous comment regarding the curve. In the beginning of the semester he hands out an info sheet detailing the rough grade boundaries. (90+ A range,80+ B range etc) According to that I expected an A- given my percentage of 92-93% but ended up getting an A. In my opinion, while the original boundaries may not be the friendliest, he tries to stick to the boundaries. I do not think he downcurves at all.

Personally, I found the homework to be somewhat challenging as the textbook often only provides one specific example for a given PDE structure, but the TA was very helpful and Tippett himself is very approachable. Also, the lowest 2 homeworks are dropped which is nice. The exams were also fairly difficult, though we were provided with a practice exam before each of them which was really helpful. They tend to cover basic concepts with a slightly elevated twist, but also heavily focus on a conceptual understanding of a material (e.g. asking about conditions certain approaches/equations require). Even though both the midterm and final are 40%, they are graded really generously and you'll probably get a grade far higher than what you expect.

Weekly pset (20%) (for me, that was about ~4 hrs per pset) 2 Midterms (20% each) Final (40%) He said he put more weight on your final if that was to your benefit.

A solid course overall. Still, compared to Linear Algebra and ODEs, PDEs is a course that's substantially harder to wrap your head around. Basically everything you learn early on is in a physical context (e.g. the heat equation) and even later in the course when it gets a bit more theoretical, it can be a bit hard to follow what's just a derivation as opposed to a general approach you should know. That being said, Tippett does a great job distilling the material. It's one of those courses where everything makes sense when he explains it in lecture but then is hard to grasp when you have to do it on your own. For that reason, I ended up just reading the textbook to do most of the homework, but when it came to studying for exams, his lecture notes were far more helpful in highlighting the important general concepts and what procedures to use for a given PDE. Tippett tries to keep the class engaging by asking for occasional participation, but what I appreciated the most were his frequent tie-ins to linear algebra which help you understand the PDEs from a more familiar lens.

LECTURES: Boring, long, proof based. Hard to follow. Makes lots of mistakes in class but answers questions well. HOMEWORK: Mostly from the textbook. Two problem sets made by the professor--more difficult than textbook problems. Textbook problems not very indicative of exam questions. Each one for me took ~4 hours EXAMS: Two midterms one is ODE, second is Linear Algebra. Generally average is in the ~70% range. Linear Algebra is easier to study for since we had the problems he made for the psets. ODE is harder to study for since we only had overly easy textbook problems. Final is evenly distributed through topics--questions as vague and confusing as preceding quizzes. CURVE: Wow. I wanna make it clear that this is an opinion since I have no idea what other people got. The curve for me was awful. Did average on the quizzes and well on the homeworks and for some reason ended up with a not so hot grade... Also, I know this isn't unheard of but it is quite rare for a professor to fail a student... right? tl;dr: wasn't hell but I suggest you look for a different professor if you could

1) Partial Differential Equations is a difficult class to wrap your head around when you are dealing with infinite series within infinite series that supposedly converge to a viable solution. The concepts are similar to those applied in Linear Algebra and ODEs, however, there is a little blind faith that the things you are doing work. As Tippett suggests, you cannot fully understand all mathematical theory, however, you get used to applying it and understanding what it means and where it fits. 2) Professor Tippett is a wonderful professor. Although he does follow the book (which is not as terrible as suggested previously), Tippett is quite eager to answer any and all of your questions to help you understand the material; all you have to do is ask. It is almost impossible for him to anticipate what level of misunderstanding that everyone is experiencing and how to address each person which means you need to ask for assistance unabashedly. Otherwise, he would still be reviewing some of the most basic concepts in the first few chapters. Professor Tippett makes you feel like the questions you ask are worthwhile and valuable to everyone in the course. In office hours, he will review anything you need him to in order to move forward with your grasp of the material. The homework he provides is worthwhile but can feel like a stretch from the material in class, but you will figure it o…

The workload is not that much. To be honest, I doubt most students can keep up with heavy workload based on what they learned from the class.