MATH 3354

The professor is miserable. Absolutely boring and nearly impossible to sit through lectures, since he is so dull. He is clearly very knowledgeable about the subject, but it is painful to listen to him teach. The course is dull and I found the material uninteresting.

Logistically: you must attend lecture. His exams (two midterms and a final) include material that is NOT in the book but only mentioned during lecture. Therefore, you need to go and take notes, because only studying the book will not help you for the exams. Weekly problem sets come out of the book. The exams often reference obscure examples that are mentioned briefly in class. Study everything he says in lecture. I thought some of the examples he gave were not actually relevant only for them to later show up, even though he did not mention them during the review sessions.

Miserable class. Hard only because the professor is a dreadful teacher, and the exams are tricky. Material itself is not that hard. Would not recommend, unless you have to take it.

I really liked taking this course from Parshall; he's an engaging lecturer and is helpful/approachable in office hours. One thing I really liked in the lectures was that he would occasionally mention something that wasn't exactly necessary for solving a problem, but it was indicative of a larger issue or provided helpful background (e.g. biographical information on famous mathematicians, examples of really large groups like the Monster, or stories of how a certain fact was useful in solving some historically significant problem).

There's weekly graded homework that must be either computer-printed or written one-sided in pen. Needless to say, knowledge of LaTeX is helpful. :-) He's really good about getting these returned every week. (He only changed his routine of collecting and returning homework around Thanksgiving.)

There are two (non-cumulative) tests and a cumulative final which are hard but fair. A helpful tip is to pay special attention to the topics or formulas he presents in class that aren't in the book, and he does expect you to know stuff in the book that isn't covered in class. He uploads a "practice test" to Collab before each test; it's a great tool for review, but don't expect the style of questions on the real test to be the same as the practice test. To illustrate, the practice test could have a bunch of "prove ____" type questions, while the test could have a bunch of "state ___ theorem" questions (or vice-versa). As with the homework, he gets the tests returned amazingly fast (I think there was one test that he got back within 2 days).

Overall, I highly recommend this professor (and course).