MATH 4040

The first thing to know about Professor Abramenko is that he cares a lot about organization and little details. He will give every definition, theorem, and lemma a precise number identifier, which is really helpful for keeping up and organizing your thoughts while listening to lecture. And he will leave no stone unturned in writing everything as precisely as possible. I am also someone who appreciates little details and thoroughness so I really appreciated this, but "big idea" learners may enjoy Abramenko's teaching style less. The exams were a bit on the harder side; I believe the average on the first two was around 70%, maybe a bit higher. We had problem sets of six exercises due every week, which were scored by a grader who I feel was fairly lenient. As for the content, this might be the least applicable math class I've taken at UVA (not that most of them are very applicable), but I enjoyed the material more than I have for the majority of my other math classes. For most of the semester, a lot of the homework exercises felt like riddles, many of which were fun to think through.