MATH 3000

This class to me felt odd and kind of confusing, as the curriculum didn't really know what it was doing. We started with some number theory and then went to relations and functions, which is the meat of the class, and then to cardinality to round it out. The majority of the time was spent on functions, such as establishing bijections and knowing what that means, and I still feel like more time could have been spent on it, especially for how crucial being comfortable with functions and bijections is. For being touted as a great class for learning how to proof, we did not have any actual explicit lessons on proofing besides learning what Proof by Induction was (which did give me a leg up in Survey of Algebra), we just mostly learned by seeing the examples in class and doing his homeworks, which were an utter pain. He would assign 8 homework questions a week, most of which took a decent amount of time, and would only have half of them graded. He himself is the most organized lecturer I have ever had (numbering every theorem, lemma, postulate, and example that he did), which is extremely nice and helpful when referring to notes. He is also, however, one of the driest lecturers I have ever had in my life, which doesn't add to the enjoyablility of the class. Taking this class helped get me familiar with what tools were needed to succeed in higher level proofing classes, but not how to effectively USE said tools, if that makes sense. I took it, I am glad I took it to get me prepared for Survey and Real (and the fact that it counts as a Math Major elective), but I did not enjoy the class one bit.

Reviews for Abramenko under other courses claim he's a robot; they couldn't be any truer. He stands back to the class and meticulously goes through the entire curriculum, numbering every little theorem, lemma, and example he gives. As a result, it's incredibly easy to follow along and studying is super easy, because he posts his tidy notes online if your notes are a mess, as mine were. However, class lecture was incredibly boring. Abramenko would occasionally turn around and ask "any questions?", but that was about the extent of his engagement with us during class. When answering questions, he was helpful, but if he didn't like a question, he would make it known that it was a stupid question. The class material was very interesting and was a very good basis for studying further mathematics, but Abramenko's lecture style really detracts from the learning experience. Discussion and TA office hours are where most of the learning actually happens, and our TA Darien was very helpful, and eager to help with the weekly problem sets, which were challenging and time-consuming. Even though the homework was rather difficult, the exams were written very fairly (far less difficult than problem sets) and Abramenko made it possible to get an A. Would recommend this class if you're fine listening to a robot for a semester.

Don't take this course unless you need it for an elective or want to learn how to write proofs. The course material is extremely boring but it is a good introduction to the material that is taught in Survey of Algebra and Basic Real Analysis. This course itself is structured in a way that it is difficult to get an A. Exams are 60% of your grade, homework 25% and quizzes 10% with a 5% buffer that will be added to your highest exam. Essentially you need to do well on the exams to get an A. The exams itself are not terribly hard, but if you mess up a small thing, you can lose a lot of points. The quizzes are actually pretty hard. They start easy but as you work your way through the semester, the difficulty rises a lot. The homeworks are decent in my opinion. They take a lot of time, but you should average a 95+ on them. Lastly, Professor Abramenko is a robot. Try and take it with another professor if you can. His notes are very precise, almost a copy from the textbook. However, he is not the best at teaching. He just writes exactly from his notes and that's it. Overall, I did not enjoy this course, but it will help me when I take higher math courses, hence the name, Transition to Higher Mathematics.