University of Washington / F / Dan Fox

This had to be THE most difficult math class I had ever taken. The material covered in the first midterm was fairly easy, and I nearly aced it. However, the material covered in the 2nd midterm (double and triple integrals) nearly killed me. The material covered after the 2nd midterm and prior to the final was even worse. I mean, who (outside of the math dept) really gets Green's Theorem? Yet in the end, I received the best grade I've ever gotten in any class at UW.

Again, this class is taught by a grad student (see my review for Math 308) and is the last class he will probably ever teach at UW, as he is leaving UW in June 2003. Unfortunately, I felt that his quality of teaching had gone down from the time when I had him for Math 307 (Dan, if you're reading this, I am so sorry!). However, that might have been due to the nature of the material.

Please note that this evaluation is for a Teaching Assistant, not a Professor. Dan is a grad student who received his bachelors degree from Harvard. When I had took his class, this was his very first time teaching. But he proved to be an excellent instructor. He tends to go off on tangents and theory at times (which I don't care about), but he shows very systematic and structured ways of solving problems, which suits my learning style. He sincerely cares about how his students are learning. I think this is great because Math 307 is one of the more difficult engineering math courses. I would definitely recommend that students try to register for a section that Dan teaches.

Words of caution: (1) Dan can only teach Math 307, 308, and 309, (2) he only teaches 8:30 or 9:30 classes (he's a morning person, but most students aren't), and (3) he's only a TA, so he's not going to be around for too long. He told me that he's been in grad school for 6 years already and soon it'll be time for him to move on.

By the way, I was the only female student in his class.