I know the reviews on school tool didn't have very good ones for this guy, but i was wondering if he's reallly that bad. Anyone taken him before and can give me feedback? Thanks!!

12/9/2005 9:48:04 AM

i haven't taken him, but i have had ito. i'll be taking it again this spring (if my adviser will help me on this one), b/c i slacked off so much.

ito has a strong accent, but it's amusing, and not hard to understand. easy to stay awake in his class

12/9/2005 9:57:21 AM

yeah, i originally signed up for ito's class cause he seemed to be the better out of the rest of the other MA231 teachers... but there is a conflict with my CH101 class (the teachers have just been assigned 2 days ago) and i know i want hendrickson but unfortunately that is the same time as ito's.. not sure what to do.

was just wondering if it would be worth it to just go ahead and take S Tsynkov's class so I could get hendrickson for Chem.

12/9/2005 10:07:27 AM

good news! westbrook is now teaching this section. from what i've heard, she's damn good. i've signed up for this section.

12/13/2005 11:30:27 AM

I had Tsynkov for differential equations (MA 341) and for the most part I had to teach myself the material (like most of the classes I have taken). I would imagine that his teaching style is the same for MA 231. His assignments were very straight forward. We had homework assigned each class, but he didn't grade them; they were odd numbered questions, so the answers were in the back of the book. All the grades came from the tests which were 10 questions, multiple choice. His policy was that if you get 7 questions right on a test, you will get a 100. The extra 3 questions would go towards extra credit on the next test, IE if you got 10/10 on test 1 you would have a 100. If you got a 4/10 on test 2, you would have a 100 on test 2 also. This worked out quite well for me since I got either a 10/10 or a 9/10 on each test, so for the final exam (also multiple choice) I only had to get like 3 questions of 25 to get a 100 on the exam and an A+ for the class. You needed to study for the tests though, you could usually use process of elimination to get the answers down to two different ones, but you needed to know your stuff to get those right. His teaching methods weren't that effective, he moved very quickly and often didn't answer questions properly. His handwriting was also very messy and at times it was a little difficult to understand what he was saying (He had a thick Russian accent... it may have subsided a bit by now). He was a pretty decent guy though, if you are able to learn things from the book you should be ok to get by in his class.

12/13/2005 1:17:35 PM