Peter Horn

no matter how good he is able to articulate concepts. Peter Horn is surely NOT a good instructor. Truly good instructors really inspire you to explore more on your own and inspire your love in the subject. But Peter Horn does the complete OPPOSITE. he makes you HATE math not because it is hard but because you hate him. if you look at h ow mixed his reviews are, you will know how he treats his students. For students he doesn't like or isn't familiar with, he is extremely harsh and mean and doesn't even bother to answer your questions. If you don't happen to be the first in every exam, you'd better ingratiate yourself towards him. Otherwise..... in a word, his good articulation of materials is rendered meaningless by his favoritsm. Take him if you are a zillion percent confident that you can win his favor. And DON'T ever expect him to instill in you a love for the subject. Just focus on the math and try to forget how objectionable he is.

comparatively long but not hard 12 problem sets from the textbook (all count, 30%) ; 2 midterms (20% each); final (30%); class average is around 65% for the exams.

One homework assignment per week, takes about 3 hours for me, graded pretty generously. Two midterms and a final, which were all hard for me.

Professor Horn is mediocre as a lecturer and extremely apathetic as a teacher. The reason why he earns a silver nugget is maybe because that the mathematics department lacks professors who are American to teach 1000 level class. As a result, he stands out among all the foreign professors who are either not very proficient in oral English or unfamiliar with American classroom culture. Having those reasons in mind, it is not hard to understand why he becomes the one to go for. It is nonetheless the tragedy of Columbia undergraduate mathematics department. But essentially, he is not any more sophisticated in terms of actual teaching and even less passionate about the class than a lot of other professors. He goes by a credibly rigid style which follows exactly the textbook and even uses the exact examples on the textbook. This is very unsatisfactory if you actually like mathematics. By the way, a lot of times, you will find textbook is written with more nuances and passion than he is. You can safely escape almost of the lectures, but still do perfectly fine for homework and exams. Of course, it could be a good thing depends on your purpose of taking calculus. He would give practice exams before exams, but those are all by other professors and he will reject to offer solutions because they are not by him. Excellent logic, huh? However, what really motivated me to write a review abo…

He seems like a nice guy and he actually cares about his class. Also, from what I've heard from my friends, he seems to be one of the few Calc teachers that speaks native and unaccented English, which is nice. That said, his explanations never helped me that much and his lectures often strayed into unrelated (mathematical) topics. He'll spent 30 minutes proving a theorem we are learning and then not have time to talk much about the uses of the theorem. In other words, he loves the math a little too much to teach it well, in my opinion. Lectures are worth going to, but expect to be doing some reading and searching for explanations from the book also if you're not normally that great with math.

Not bad. Weekly homework sets come right from the book, and they never took too long. The graders choose a few problems to actually grade, so if you don't understand a problem or two it won't hurt you too much, and those might not count at all. 2 midterms a final are all pretty much the same format, with mostly non-tricky problems and one or two thinkers.

Here's the thing: Dr. Horn is fine as a teacher, but nothing more. Like the reviewers have said below, he explains the concepts fine, his homework is fine, and tests are fine. But I guess with a silver nugget, I expected more from him. I went to all the lectures (probably because it was an afternoon class, so I couldn't justify sleeping through it to myself), and am not sure I learned anything in the class that I couldn't from the book alone. His lecture and assignment material follow so closely to the book that he seems completely unable to justify anything beyond the cursory explanations they have in the textbook (Whenever a question starts with "Why..." he'll stumble over his words for 30 seconds and inevitably end up saying "Well, that's just the way it is.") The nice thing about this religious devotion to the book is that if you can do the weekly homework problems, midterms and the final are pretty easy, except for a few more thought-requiring questions. As someone who really likes math, but is a science major, I decided to go the Calc III-IV route instead of Honors Math, and I'm not sure whether that was the best idea or not. The thing that makes me saddest about this class is there was nothing about it that made me interested in the subject at all. All through single-variable calculus, there were tons of little moments where the coolness (some more brave people would sa…

weekly ps 2 midterms final GRADING IS EXTREMELY UNFORGIVING AND PARTIAL CREDIT IS RARE

This review is for students who struggle with math. Although Prof. Horn is a humble and kind man, he is an extremely unforgiving grader and lacks empathy for those who struggle in his classes. Don't get me wrong, it is easy to see why math oriented students love him because he does has have a very methodical and unintimidating lecturing style. As an example of what I'm talking about, myself and the student that sat next to me would not have passed his first midterm even if you combined our scores. I went in and spoke with him about it to see if anything could be done and he politely told me that the best grade I could possibly finish with would be a C and he suggested that I drop the class. I decided to stick it out and work my ass of for a P at least, but after Dr. Horn returned a flawless problem set to me with a full letter grade marked off because I didn't write my name on the BACK (that punishment was never mentioned in class or the syllabus), I decided to cut my losses and swallow a W before having to deal with a D or F. All problem sets as well as midterms were graded with little to zero partial credit, unlike all other math profs I have had at Columbia, which is the only thing that gets you through the semester if you are a math struggler. All in all: If you like math and don't struggle with it, enjoy Prof. Horn! Opposite? I HIGHLY suggest you find someone else.