Robert Friedman

I had Friedman for Intro to Modern Alg I and II. He is a clear but fast lecturer. Sometimes when people ask questions, he doesn't get what they're asking or how to answer. I think for him, the material is very obvious at this point, and it's hard to see it from the perspective of someone learning it for the first time. However, he writes up extremely clear and thorough notes that he provides regularly. Genuinely better than most textbooks I've encountered, and invaluable if you can't take notes as fast as he goes through material or if you ever miss class. Speaking of missing class--when I encountered personal issues, and having spoken with other people who had him as a prof and had this same experience--Friedman is extremely cooperative and understanding in working with you to give you the time you need while also keeping you on track to finish the course. It is the mark of a professor who just genuinely wants his students to learn and succeed. He can seem very intimidating, but he's just a smart math guy. He is very kind when it comes down to it, and I will always be appreciative of the grace he showed me. Also--when math bros in class try to flaunt knowledge/ask irrelevant questions just to flex, he shuts them down. Very refreshing.

Super smart guy and great teacher. Pretty funny too. Operates more like a detail-oriented, hand-holding high-school teacher than the infamous caricature of the disorganized, self-absorbed college professor. He really cares whether you understand or not, encourages you to see him and the TAs anytime, and holds Sunday evening review sessions before every exam. He could be the department's greatest teacher, but he will spend increasing amounts of class time as the semester passes deriving the results, instead of applying them as you have to do on the HW and exams. Interesting but misleading and rather tedious, though the abundance of chemists and physicists in the class seemed to love it. Average kiddos (like yours truly) tend to be quiet, bored, and/or too shy to speak up. I got an A in multi my senior year of high school and I think I'm getting an A- in this class. His exams aren't that hard; it's the homework that screwed me over. He assigns even problems only and the TAs grade mercilessly for accuracy. I didn't discover Slader until the last two assignments of the semester and my earlier homework grades fluctuated between 80%-90%. Lots of my classmates definitely got >95% on every assignment. Just pay more attention in class, care more about your psets, and check your answers with Slader. An A is extremely doable :)

This course was altogether uninspiring. I guess I learned how to represent finite groups. But I did not come away with a clear concept of why. There were no motivations or applications. Lecture is ok. Friedman has horrid handwriting, but it is possible to follow what he is saying. However, he gives out very thorough lecture notes afterwards, so it is much more effective to skip class and read the notes! The homework assignments were long and tedious. There were a ton of computations. The exams repeated a ton of material from the homework and required a great deal of memorization. Overall, the course is simply not worth it. You spend all semester doing computations and memorizing definitions, with no payoff. Not to mention that the course is curved downward, so you have to get practically everything correct to get an A.

I couldn't imagine a more straight forward class. Or a more clear professor. Friedman adheres to Chekhov's Gun Principle in all his lectures. He'll mention some tidbit at the beginning; you won't understand it. An hour will pass. You will have scribbled five pages of notes that seem to have no connection from one line to the next. Then with five minutes left, he fires Chekhov's gun, weaves the lecture right back to the tidbit he dropped in the first five minutes. And your newly-connected synapses will high five each other. You will realize pure math is beautiful. The best part of this course was stepping into deeper levels of abstraction week to week. Take quotient groups for example. You start with (Z/nZ) in an isolated case; you learn some rules for (Z/nZ), learn some proofs, and think that's it. Then three weeks later you learn about cosets and quotient groups and realize (Z/nZ) is just one instance of a quotient group. Sure, he could teach about general quotient groups then give Z/nZ as an example. But it's so much cooler to step back from your one example and have all the theorems make sense a month later. Chekhov's gun, people. He types up a great sheet of notes so about half the class skips lecture. Don't do this. He won the Van Doren teaching award for a reason; spending three hours per week in his class is worth it. I devoted every Sunday to the problem sets. The enti…

Robert Friedman does all you can ask of him. I don't know why he has some stigma of being a terrible professor. Calc IV can be hard at times (I took Multi in high school and still struggled) and some people just want to put it on him. He tries his best to teach you the material so he does challenge you, but at the same time he spends a lot of time trying to make sure you'll do well in the class. It's true the curve it's minimal, but he makes the test easy (but some times tricky) enough for everyone to do well so there really is no statistical reason to add one. I think your final grade may be curved a bit. I had about an 87% and that became an A-. Just take a good amount of time before each exam to really break the course down into Layman's terms and list steps on how to solve the problems and you'll do fine. He does so many things to let you know he actually cares.

Professor Friedman is awesome. Having had absolutely no background in higher math, and a lot less experience than some of the class, I still truly enjoyed both semesters. That said, I'm not one to be demoralized by seemingly impossible problem sets, or less than fantastic grades, and didn't ever find that either of those things interfered with my enjoyment of the class. For those who aren't this way, be wary, but if you are willing to put in the work, you will come out of Friedman's class with a tremendous improvement and a truly deep understanding of what you've learned. Though all of my classmates that I've talked to have varying opinions on the class itself, we all agreed on that. Often Friedman wont answer questions immediately because he carefully plans out the structure of his classes, and likes to stick to this. This never bothered me because his lesson plan is brilliant and incredibly well thought out. I also really liked his teaching style and thought he was very clear, but it may take some getting used to. He wrote our class notes, which totaled a few hundred pages, himself. The problem sets are difficult, and existential-crisis-inducing if you decide to start them 12 hours before they are due. However, they are meant to be done in groups, and they often took my friends and I even longer to finish because they inspired conversations that gave us a deeper understandin…

If you are a (prospective) math major, or just a lover of math, you NEED to take a class with robert friedman. if not, run far, far away! as a fellow number geek, robert friedman rocks my mathematical world. his lectures are engaging and interesting...he goes at a very fast pace, but thoroughly covers the material. he is a fair grader and his exams are straightforward and almost predicatable. if you put a lot of effort into completing and really understanding the homework, you should easily do well on the exams/in the course, since generally the homework is much more difficult than the exams. highly knowledgeable and somewhat quirky, friedman is an excellent prof. although, i would advise any one who is not a math major/who has no interest in mathematics to avoid friedman at all costs.

He's a boring lecturer, I'll give you that. However, he does make an effort to answer questions in his office hours, and after class. His exams are straightforward, and the homework is short and easy. Do the homework, skip the class, study, and you'll probably get an A if you're smart. If you're not math oriented, stay far away from this class.

As most of the other reviewers have already mentioned, Friedman is one of the clearest and most concise math professors I've had at Columbia. Positives: explains things very clearly and to-the-point, proofs are SO clear because he talks about every step and reasons them out instead of spilling math diarrhea onto the board. Negatives: writing can be hard to read, moves quickly on topics in class, has a tendency to stand in front of whatever he's writing, and then when he moves away he's on the next part of whatever he's talking about. Overall seems like a really nice guy, will occasionally throw things in during lecture about algebraic geometry (his research), and makes the material interesting. Would take another class with him.

20% homework (weekly problem sets), can be hard/time-consuming if you don't fully understand the material (oops) 20% each midterm 40% final