Mu-Tao Wang

My expectation was to cover both Calc III and Calc IV at an accelerated pace. Instead, the course skips some topics. The professor is very prepared and thorough in class. His lectures are very clear. He does a very good job. The one knock I have is that there is generally a trick or twist on the exams that is not directly related to the course material. You can lose points for missing something that should not be tested.

DO NOT TAKE: I honestly don't understand how he's a silver nugget Mu-Tao Wang teaches this entire course reading off of slides that are copy-paste from the textbook (some were just screenshots). He doesn't actually teach the class, and maybe half of us gave up attending lectures. He posts the slides on CourseWorks after each class, but there's really no point considering you already have the textbook from LibGen or something. Then, reading the textbook and doing its practice problems barely help with the exams. He loves proof-related questions, and the exams were extremely difficult. The curve was poor, but the fact that the class was under 30 people played into it. Really, the only people in this class are those who are required to finish the Calculus sequence. This is a nitpick, but he likes to pace around the room during the exams (yes, he proctors them himself), and - unlucky me who sat in the aisle - I found it unnerving that he would walk by and glance down at my work several times throughout the exam. If you have the option, take a different Calc IV.

This is absolutely a worthwhile course to take if you have the necessary prerequisites and are thinking of becoming a math or sciences major. Don't be put off by NSOP's awkward avoidance of the Honors sequence -- if you're interested in proof-based math and up for a bit of a challenge, try it on for size. Like several students in Honors Math, I took both linear algebra and multivariable calculus in high school, so I very much appreciated a differently-motivated and more rigorous perspective. And this course will prepare you for upper-echelon math courses like no other. For example, Mu-Tao starts the first semester defining fields and finite-dimensional vector spaces, definitions traditionally seen first in abstract algebra, and often uses functional notation rather than matrix notation for linear transformations. In the second semester, Prof. Wang introduces you to analysis with the completeness of the real number system, and throws quite a few bones to topology along the way. As a previous reviewer noted, Mu-Tao is an excellent, excellent lecturer. He structures and organizes effortlessly, he tries to develop intuition (especially geometrically; as a analytic geometer he's also an accomplished sketch artist), he proves almost everything he states in a way that's easy to understand -- and he responds well to questions. He's also very friendly and helpful in office hours. Homew…

This was a painless, if quite dull, class and a good section. Mu-Tao was a nice professor who tried to make the tedium of regular singular point series solutions at least bearable. He had his work cut out for him, and sometimes I'd catch myself falling asleep. His accent was not terrible after a few classes, once you got used to it. The material is very applications heavy, as you'd expect from an "engineering" ODEs class. You'd learn how to recognize many different types of ODEs and how to solve them, rather than spending time learning why the methods you choose work. I'd say take that into account while picking classes, but since this class is a requirement for many majors, I'm not sure there's much of a point in doing that (although there is the 3027 ODEs class). I honestly don't feel like I learned that much after the class, but I'm not sure if that's a function of the professor or of the class. I suspect the class, and so I'd recommend Mu-Tao as a good professor with whom to finish this requirement.

Nice guy and energetic in class but if you don't understand the textbook chances are you won't understand all the multivariable stuff he's writing on the board. he write copious notes, theorems and proofs, but it's mostly by the book. class size is usually large (90!) so there's not much time to address individual questions. if you don't understand something, better go to the TAs or his office hours. NO LATE HWS (weekly!) and Weekly quizzes but no sweat everyone does poorly. Exams are difficult even if you study, unless you remember the theorems and happen to be really REALLY good at math. So, don't take this class unless you have to.

I want to agree with everything else that is said and add to it a little bit. Professor Wang is an excellent math teacher. The only bad part about this class is the homework. It takes about 4-5 hours to do a week (sometimes even longer) but the midterms seem to be a step below what is asked on the homework so if you do fine on the homework you will do well on the tests. I definately reccommend him as a teacher and would take any class in the future that he is teaching.

I think Prof. Wang's English was just fine. I heard nothing that was hard to understand and never needed him to repeat anything in class. He is generally aware of the class and will stop and go over something if he senses that people aren't keeping up. He seemed like a very nice Prof., though I never went to see him after hours (I did talk to him a few times after class). Having heard the horrors from a couple of friends taking Calc1a at the same time as me, both with difference professors, I would highly recommend Prof. Wang. Fair, nice, easy to understand. Need I say more?

DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH MU-TAO. I don't know if it was the TA or Mu-Tao, but the midterms and quizzes (which there were 6-7 of) were so unbelievably harder than the homework assignments, examples in class, and practice midterms. the practice tests he provided were so much easier and not at all comparable to the actual exams. The TA was willing to help during office hours, but he made a lot of questions over-complicated. I would not take this class if you aren't hella smart. If you're average, do not take it. Do not take this class please. There is a homework after every class - if you are not using chatgpt, then its going to take so unbelievably long to finish the homeworks set over the weekend. If you still want to take this class, good luck - you need it.

Overall, I walked away pretty happy with this course. Based on reviews of previous iterations of the course, it sounds like this one wasn't nearly difficult was the killer courses with Savin and Friedman. It follows the second volume of Apostol's textbook very closely, and served as coverage of linear algebra and multivariable calculus, and basic proofs. Since multivariable calculus is covered in two separate courses, calculus 3 and calculus 4, taking this class is a good idea if you want get the material out of the way in a single semester. Professor Wang was an excellent lecturer who covered material very thoroughly in class. He moved quickly, but he was very thorough and wrote down everything that was important on the blackboard. He did tend to focus on long proofs that were never to be seen again, but he also did a great job conveying the intuition behind the material. Homework was assigned twice a week every week, and the length of the homework varied a bit, but it usually didn't take too long. The assignments were almost always out of the book, and this was probably the biggest weakness of the course, because the problems in the book were generally not all that great. During the first semester, when we did linear algebra, they were generally decent. During the second semester, when we covered multivariable calculus, some of the problems required excessive tedious algebra…

Alright, here's the deal guys. Mu Tao Wang is an awesome professor. Just too hard. If you are not a proof based guy, get the hell out of this class. If you like proofs, Wang will be fun and challenging. There are a lot of other professors that teach the same course and people get easy A+. Unless you're brilliant, chances of getting higher than a B+ are very slim.