Contrary to popular opinion, I found Mr. Kriete's ability to explain the material less than satisfactory, my time at office hours pointless do too Mr. Kriete's unwillingness to help with homework, and even though I learned in the course, I found the midterms difficult.
Grade Distribution
12 Reviews
The class was tough. The professor forgot my name after I went to 5 of his office hours. I ended up doing alright, but this class almost made me want to drop my math major.
This class is not easy as everyone here makes it out to be. Furthermore, although Kriete is a "good" professor, he is not great. As mentioned below, the text used for this course is a book he and his wife are trying to get published. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact a lot of answers to practice problems are missing from the back of the book and the type of problems provided for learning the material aren't really geared towards helping you learn the material. Instead, the practice problems exist for providing challenges to those who already know the material. Lectures from are normally straight from the text book, example by example and sometimes even word by word. This is great for seeing how the book examples work out, but this ultimately prevents you from seeing other types of problems workt. This creates a huge issue with the homework. Homeworks are time consuming, ask questions on the material you aren't normally prepared to handle and are often tricky. The homeworks can take upwards of 8 hours some weeks. This is pretty awful considering there are about 5-10 problems due a week. Go see the TA if you are struggling, they will help you through the the homework. (Scott was a great TA and I recommend him for any classes he teaches). For as awful as the homeworks were, the tests were very fair and manageable excluding the final. The final was something out of left field in my opinion, very foreign in terms of difficulty and the questions asked. Overall this class is good, but not great. Despite all the negativity i have voiced towards this class, this is probably your best option for getting through differential equations. An A in this class is very possible if one is willing to put in the time and effort.
(To give this review validity and not just make it seem like I'm blowing steam, I did get an A)
This is great course. The material is very interesting and practical and Kriete is a great professor. He is very clear and concise. All the tests are fair and straightforward.
do the hw and just do practice problems for the exam
Goes over everything you need in detail. Pay attention in class and you will never need to open the book.
Nice man. Patient, kind. And the midterms and finals are easy.
Kriete was the best Math teacher I've had thus far at UVA. We used his in-publishing textbook and his lectures really supplemented it well. The homework wasn't too daunting and the midterms and final were very reasonable. Highly recommended!
He is the best professor ever!!! take it with Kriete if he is teaching it! he was very fair with the grading and made the class as interesting as possible. There was a lot of hw.. but all prof. assign a lot since is a 4 credit class.. but Kriete is veryyyy helpful during office hours and for everything!
Excellent course for applied mathematicians. This was the first time I felt like the sequence and series stuff (which I considered pretty abstract at the time) from calculus 2 had a use. Prof Kriete explained the material excellently, and I only needed to go to the book for exercises. His class is excellent.