APMA 3080

I had heard that Linear Algebra was not that hard of an APMA, and while I wouldn't say it was overwhelmingly difficult, it certainly surprised me. You are expected to memorize so much information and understand how to connect it all together. However, one thing that makes this course not so bad is the fact that so many concepts are intertwined (especially with the "Unifying theorem").

When it came to Prof Li, she was super sweet and accommodating to her students. I would often come late to class or miss class and come to the later section, and she would still give me attendance credit. Speaking of attendance, mid-semester she introduced an attendance policy, where you would get 3% extra credit if your attendance was roughly 80%. She also awarded bonus points for answering questions and completing certain assignments.

However, her lecturing felt sometimes rushed. There would be a worksheet after every class that was due the next day at 11:59pm. These worksheets were always much more intensive and complicated compared to what we learn in the lectures or see in the notes, making them often a chore to complete with lots of Googling required. The webworks were also ridiculous at times, with confusing/difficult questions with 3 attempts, no partial credit, and no indication of what you got wrong. The projects, which there were 5 of, were honestly pretty cool, and they showed you the interesting applications for linear algebra.

The midterms were not too awful, but they were very tricky and long, and they required you to have a very thorough understanding of the material. It was necessary to do as much practice as you can and review the notes and make sure you were understanding every single thing you learned. The final exam, on the other hand, was awful. It felt way too long and the questions were very convoluted. Also, it was weighted way too heavily being 33% of our final grade.

Overall, Li is a sweet professor and you will learn the content well, but the course assignments and structure can make it a little annoying sometimes.

#tCFS24

I would not recommend taking the class with Li. The content is fine, although it feels a little to much like a "bag of tricks" type class: it never really gets tied together.

Li's teaching style is erratic and confusing. For example, she uses the word "any" to mean both "for all" and "there exists", after telling us we should figure it out based on "context" . She also changed how the class was run in the middle of the semester, instituting a poorly explained system of attendance and extra credit problems.

Grading for the class is based on in class worksheets, weekly webwork, 2 tests, a final, and matlab projects (which seemed tacked on and unrelated to the rest of the course).

TLDR: take the class, but not with Li.

Li was a very kind and understanding professor, but was not a great instructor. I basically had to reteach myself every topic by watching Khan Academy. The other professors for this class are way worse though, so I would honestly take it with her because at least she's accommodating. She just doesn't really explain things that well. I found it helpful to look at the material before learning it in class. This really helped cement the concepts. She barely gives you any work outside of class so you need to do a lot of independent work to understand the concepts because it's very very abstract and you will not understand it thoroughly without practice.

Professor Li is very sweet and funny. She also cares about her students, and provides detailed lecture notes that are extremely useful for doing the coursework and studying.
Here's how the grading was for this semester:
Worksheets (15%): These are meant to be done in-class after she's done lecturing, but her lectures often leave only 5-10 minutes to work on the worksheet, which is never enough time. They're not due until the next worksheet is released (typically before the first section of the next class date), but in order to avoid having extra homework, I worked on the worksheets while she was lecturing, which I recommend. Be careful, though, since she loves to randomly choose people to answer questions, so also pay attention to lecture if you choose this route. You're assigned to a group of 3-4 that will change halfway through the semester to work on these with.
Homeworks (10%): These were released and due weekly via WebWork, with about 8-15 problems per set. Most of the problems were straight out of the lecture notes with different numbers. There were several problems, however, that were incredibly frustrating, even though I knew the concepts well, since there were about a million math computations, so one small math error would result in the whole problem falling apart. This part should be an easy A. I recommend just using MatLab for some of the longer problems, even though we're technically supposed to do them by hand.
Projects (15%): Five in total, these were released once every three weeks, and were due right before the next one was released. Similar to the homeworks, although a higher percentage of the problems were frustrating math computations, and there were only four problems per project.
Midterms (30%): Two of them, weighted equally. The first one is pretty simple, since we didn't cover the tough material yet. The second one was made much easier than it could've been. Since all of the content builds off of the previous content, the second midterm should be thought of as cumulative.
Final (30%): Basically a longer midterm. She could've made it much more difficult, but didn't, which is much appreciated.

Overall, I recommend Linear Algebra with Professor Li.

#tCFfall2022

This was the best math course I've taken at UVA by far. Professor Li is the nicest person and spent the time to learn every students name and make it feel like she actually cared about our success. The lectures are scheduled so that no lecture is ever too much information, and she gives group work at the end of every class to practice on what we just learned. She also is very generous on giving bonus points and pushing back deadlines if you talk to her.

Workload was a webwork each week that took anywhere from 30-90 minutes, and a MATLAB project due every ~3 weeks that would take like 2-3 hours of work, but again we only had 5 scheduled. There is also an in class worksheet due after each class but half the time you'll finish in lecture and the other half it will just be a question or two left over.

I don't have enough good things to say about this course and have to recommend taking it.

Prof Li is the kindest professor I have ever had. She cares so much about her students and gives bonus points just for coming to class and improving on exams. APMA 3080 is an easy APMA elective and Li teaches it really well. I would definitely recommend taking the class in general and taking it with her specifically. She teaches everything in class and gives time for groupwork, so the workload is light but you actually retain information. The webwork is not as challenging as it is in other APMA classes either #tCFfall2022

I think Professor Li cares a lot about her students success. However, at times it felt overbearing - she would repeatedly tell us to come to class. Every lecture involved her lecturing us on why it was extremely important to understand rather than memorize. The class overall was pretty straight forwards and as long as you paid attention to lecture and did all the assigned homeworks, labs, and projects, getting a A-B in the midterms wasn't hard at all.

Course is very straightforward and provides lots of opportunities to bring up your grade, which will inevitably lower with the slightly challenging exams. Prof Li is very caring about her students and you can always approach her during office hours with questions. Slight warning, there's often a communication barrier but changing how you are wording things usually fixes that. The only real place you could trip up is if you forget a concept from earlier (take meticulous notes) or make a calculation error (just be careful).