MATH 3100

Ahh Axel...a classic case of the professor who's an absolute genius but has a hard time teaching the information to his students. Luckily he doesn't have a strong accent so that's not as much of a barrier as just keeping the class engaged and knowing when we don't understand something. Luckily he gives major partial credit on exams, so if you have some idea of what to do, you'll get some partial credit, which is nice. Tough material though -- if you have to take probability, take it with Axel and try to not get behind.

Axel is a really funny professor and makes this difficult material bearable. That being said, he is extremely smart and it can sometimes be difficult to follow his lectures. His lectures generally explain where concepts come from while the homework and tests require that you apply those concepts. The material in this course, as I said before, is extremely difficult. Axel makes the class very doable in a couple of ways, however. The quizzes are essentially completion, the homework and quizzes count for a good chunk of the grade (homeworks are not particularly long) and the exams are graded with a lot of partial credit. I came out of the first exam feeling terrible about it and ended up being very happy with my grade. Finally, one more tip for doing well in the class: if you do/understand every single problem he assigns for homework, rather than just the minimum 4 problems required for each homework, you will be well prepared for the tests as much of the exam material is very similar to homework problems. Overall, I really liked Axel, enjoyed this class, and came out with a grade I was happy with despite the challenging material.

Where to start. Well, first off, Axel is a great guy. He's extremely smart, but also chill if you need to ask him a question or approach him after class to reinforce a topic. He was available during office hours and really helped you if you were struggling. However, lectures were kind of bizarre. He kind of had this matra that formulas were complicated/ useless and tried to make us understand probability from a proof/ intuitive sort of manor. Sometimes we would do a proof for a simple formula for half the class, which just really confused most of us. The textbook also wasn't very illuminating (it seemed to make the "intuitive" concepts Axel would introduce increasingly complex). Homework was very hard, however, easier than exams so I guess I see the intuition behind that (also them being 30% of your grade is a lifesaver). However, the most redeeming quality about Axel is his partial credit policy on exams. As a first year, taking this class was certainly extremely intimidating and challenging (I had flown through calc 3 quite easily and this class really confused me). But, even though exams were tough, Axel gave so much partial credit. LIke if you just tried to write a formula down and had some sort of answer, you would get 7/10 points even if you were completely wrong. For the final I came out of it basically crying (hardest exam I think I've ever taken and he let us bring in a cheat sheet) and ended up with a 91% (definitely due to his partial credit lol). From what I've gathered, probability is just a hard class period. Axel was a pretty good professor (he's quite young though so I can't really blame him), and he tried to make hard concepts make sense and released practice midterms and finals which were helpful. I would recommend using the book to get the big picture before lecture, and focusing on what he emphasizes. There was always one proof question on the exams, but you just had to memorize all the ones he would write down during class. Don't take this class if you don't have to (unless you just really have a passion for probability) but if you do, from what I've heard, Axel is your best bet.