MATH 4040

Overall Professor Wang was a good teacher and seemed to care about his students and their success. This class was definitely not easy though. As someone who is in the engineering school and not a math major I was out of my comfort zone so if that is you and you don't need to take it I wouldn't put yourself through it. If you do take it my recommendation is to study a lot for the exams and know the formulas/basics/examples in the textbook inside out.

Fun class, interesting content. Professor Wang is an decent lecturer and encourages participation in class.

There is a textbook for the course, we used Introductory Combinatorics by Richard Brualdi, 5th edition. The homeworks can be quite time consuming, but they are engaging and pretty fun. The exams are structured where there are many short answer questions, true or false questions, and 3-4 open ended questions that require you to fully work out a problem or prove a statement. They're closed book, closed note, and you have an hour and 15 minutes to complete it. We weren't given actual study problems, just a study guide highlighting the sections/topics of material that would be covered. I am not a fan of the exam style and think the materials given to prepare are inadequate given the style of the homework problems are very different from the exam question style, except those last few open ended ones.

The grade breakdown was as follows: 25% each for 3 midterms, and 25% homeworks. I didn't ask about this for this class, but in a class I'd taken with this professor before, he did not offer extra credit opportunities. He did drop the lowest homework grade.

Super interesting class! This material is more accessible than material in other 4000-level math classes, and Prof Wang is really helpful in relating things back to real life. Can be boring sometimes, but so can every class. A great class!!