<p>I'm taking this next semester and was wondering if anyone has any input on the teachers. (Ratner, Serganova, and Jones are teaching for the Spring semester). Right now, I am thinking of taking Ratner's class.</p>
<p>Ratner is hands down the hardest professor in the mathematics department. It is a well known fact that she expects a ton out of her students and that she ends up failing well over a quarter of the students who take her 1B class every spring. But at the same time she's supposed to be one hell of a teacher. If you're willing to put in the hard work, and really really want to learn the material bulletproof I recommend her.</p>
<p>I had Jones for 53 and while he's not the greatest professor he isn't too bad. Pretty mumbly, I swear he lectured drunk every time. Pretty easy for the math department here.</p>
<p>I don't know much about Serganova, but I've heard okay things.</p>
<p>People have told me that Ratner is extremely strict in her grading and not very forgiving in "stupid" mistakes. I'm completely willing to work my hardest, but what worries me is the fact that mathematics is not my best subject. I want to have a strong understanding of the subject matter, but I don't want to fail.</p>
<p>I think Ratner's difficulty is overblown. Yes, she is probably harder than the rest of the 1b professors, but you will absolutely not be killed in her class unless you let yourself be killed. In other words, I think that most of the people who fail in her class tried to slide (maybe like they did in other math classes) and ended up getting killed. Don't try to slide. The amount of homework she assigns is not unreasonable, but her OWN problems (not out of the book) are, in my opinion, usually quite stupid because they require very eccentric tricks to solve which do not lend much to the learning of the material (even GSIs frequently had trouble seeing solutions).</p>
<p>Good thing is that the problems on her tests are very fair and even generous considering what you'd expect from her homework problems. The main problem is that they are timed, and you are allocated ~10-15 min per problem. Its ridiculous. My GSI said he'd give more like 25 min if he were the instructor. Nevertheless, she even decided to give an optional quiz towards the end of the semester to pad on points to our overall grades.</p>
<p>So yes, Ratner is challenging. But I think the main thing that makes her difficult is that she grades very harshly. For example, I would have had an otherwise 100% perfect first midterm, except for a negative sign somewhere that screwed up my answer. The result? -10, the entire problem is given a 0. So the difference between an A and a B on the surface seems like a big difference (whole letter grade!) but in reality, that difference could be nearly meaningless, depending on what caused the dip in score.</p>
<p>She is a good lecturer though. Sometimes a little bit fast and her writing is sometimes hard to read-- but it doesn't take most people too long to get over her accent and really benefit from her straightforward lecture style.</p>
<p>I personally think Math54 is 10x harder. Grading is far more generous compared to Ratner-- but material is leaps and bounds harder than 1b material. STUDY and you will be absolutely fine in Ratner's class.</p>