Shou-Wu Zhang

Zhang is a very difficult professor to write an accurate review for. His class could accurately be described as hell, but I don't really think it was his fault. He is both very smart and very funny. My issue was with the textbook - the thing was horrible; it didn't explain anything well, and the homework problems were abstruse. To be fair, Zhang also hated the textbook, and said he would change it up for next semester. Given that, I think this class will be a lot more reasonable in following semesters. Still, be wary. Zhang is kind of a wild card when it comes to out of class accessibility; sometimes he's nice, sometimes he makes fun of you. If you have trouble with proofs or are short on time, I'd probably advise against this class.

Professor Zhang is an interesting professor. The first day of class when he opened his mouth, I thought I was totally screwed because of his accent. I thought it was going to be one of those classes you have nightmares about, you know, the ones where you can't understand ANYTHING the professor is saying and the material is SUPER difficult to grasp. Well, anyways, once you get past his accent, he's actually a pretty good teacher. He often let's you out of class early, holds regular office hours and will not show you the answer but guide you through a problem if you had one. To be honest, I failed the first midterm. The second midterm I got a C-. I would have failed the class except... he gave me this ultimatum basically. I never went to class or did homework, but if I turned in all of my homework for the rest of the semester and went to class and got an 85 or above on the final, he would make my overall grade for the class the same as my final exam grade. Needless to say I scraped by BARELY with an 87% and received a B+. How's that for procrastination!

Zhang is one of those professors and every smart kid hopes for. I personally only went to the first class ended up with an A in the class. Ok, so he does have pretty bad English, but he did seem pretty humorous. He assigns weekly problem sets that are optional. There are two midterms and a final. All of which are pretty straight forward. A lot of professors say that "if you can do the problem sets, you will be fine" but Zhang really means it. They are *exactly* like the problem sets but with different numbers. You pretty much just needed to memorize formulas and you'd do fine. I.E. i got a 92 on the first midterm and a 100 on the second.

He's a brilliant mathematician and quite the nice guy. However, this class was a bit of a failure. He admitted to not having looked much through the textbook, having gotten it via a colleague's recommendation, and as a result was taken aback when it turned out to be far denser than he thought. The course's pacing was off; most of the time we went too slowly. I would feel rather dishonest to say that I know even elementary number theory after this course I'm willing to chalk a bit up to the fact that he's a busy mathematician with other commitments and did not take much time to set up this course. I suspect were he to teach again, he'd pick a different textbook that was more user friendly, as well as spending more time designing the curriculum.

Shou-Wu is definitely a character, and his class is very painless. He's superflexible, sometimes funny, and gives very little work. The midterms and final were very straightforward and not too difficult. He also lets you out early every day. It's still calc, so it's not necessarily fun, but he makes it bearable.

I took this course in the Fall of 2004 and did very well. Professor Zhang was pretty funny. The course was definately slack. I would imagine that people who were hardcore about calculus might have been disappointed with the lack of rigor. I mean, the course is not some cakewalk, but it had a nice calm sense to it. I liked how Zhang emphasized fundamentals. It really tied together the different conepts and theorem's well. I think this class was really good. For me it was a nice mix of non-hardcoreness and fundamental concepts.

I admit I kind of lol'ed at the previous reviewer's statement that all the homework problems could be easily "checked by hand using a simple computer program or applet online". What!? Maybe that will make sense to CS people, but certainly not to me. The homework was extremely difficult, and took hours upon hours to do. The tests, however, are more reasonable because Zhang gives in-depth outlines beforehand, so you'll know what's coming.

In the first class he'll tell you how to pronounce his last name. (It rhymes with 'king-kong' not 'gang.' ) Anyway, he does have an accent like most math teachers but it's not that bad and you'll get used to it quickly. For example, he pronounces 'secant-squared-theta' as 'seekene-squayah-seta.' He is a genius and is very nice. He cut the webwork for our class in half because we complained to him that it was too hard. He won't notice if you don't go to class but you have to go to get the homework problems in the textbook which he assigns at the end of class. You can either call somebody or just show up for the last few minutes if you really don't wanna go. Also, he often ends class as early as half an hour before the end of class. He pretty much teaches with examples and finishes when he's done covering the material. If you don't understand something, read the textbook. I actually suggest reading the section that will be covered before class. He is very open to questions. One more thing, don't let him catch you leaving class in the middle. There's not much he can do but he gets very offended and you will sit back down very embarrassed. So if you come to class, plan to stay there till the end.

Professor Zhang is a mathematician, and he teaches like one. Calculus IV might thus seem ridiculous to this man and boring, and as the other reviews said, you are better off studying it on your own. But I think that is the rule for math classes in general. You simply can't expect to learn calc 4 if all you do is have somebody lecture you the material twice a week, especially if you are not intelligent enough to understand people with accents: Columbia has the best scholars from the globe. That said, his teaching is better for moral advice than for getting a clue about the material. He does do mistakes on the board, but if you are clever enough, you can learn a lot more from mistakes than from perfectly prepared lectures. He won't spoon-feed you during class, but do go to his office hours, and he will be very friendly and help you. All in all, a great guy.

Rather easy - Weekly homework assignments that could almost all be checked by hand using a simple computer program or applet online, 2 midterms whose difficulty was on par with homeworks, and the choice of an actual final (weighted accordingly) or a third midterm (we chose the latter).