Reviews for Kasso A. Okoudjou
Average Rating:| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: December 23, 2011, 9:58 am | I came in to this class with zero high school calculus experience, and it was not at all easy. Being successful in this class requires a previous understanding of calculus because even when he does examples, he shows you what to do with an individual problem, rather than how to do all problems that are like it. The man is ridiculously intelligent, but I think that makes it harder for him to empathize with those who are having trouble with his course. Good luck if you're taking his 140 class, and hope for a good TA. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: A October 11, 2011, 4:46 pm | Yeah, yeah, yeah his accent takes a little getting used to and his handwriting isn't always the best but he's always happy to clarify for you. Point of the matter is, he's a good teacher. He's not too abstract, and I thought he hit a good balance between computation and concepts. And he cares -- he remembers names and faces and tries to help you out. If you actually do the WebAssigns and not just WolframAlpha everything, your computational skills will be good enough for the quizzes. And make sure you utilize the Kirwan TA's throuhgout the year because sometimes he glosses over parts that the Gulick's go over. And guess who writes the finals? The Gulicks, good guess :) His exams are rough though. Sometimes he'll throw in a conceptual curveball but if you do the worksheets in discussion you should be pretty well rehearsed in these kind of problems. And yes, that means you have to go to discussion. All in all, if you can take Denny Gulick, take him but Okoudjou is good too. Much of a lesser evil than Frances Gulick IMO. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: B February 5, 2011, 12:48 pm | Professor Okoudjou is a great professor who cares that his students understand the concepts presented. His accent may prove hard the first day of classes, and his handwriting may prove hard the first week. But nothing he can't clarify if you ask him during lecture. Even though Okoudjou is a reasonably good teacher who knows his mathemagic, since most of the students who enter MATH140 are entering freshmen from high-school, his rapid style may prove detrimental in their understanding of Calculus. So, I ask a student not to take Calculus1 under him, unless they have already taken calculus once before, and they've felt comfortable with it. He tended to dwell more on proofs and theoretical justifications, rather than applications. I didn't expect it to turn quite that way, since this is a Calculus course for Scientists and Engineers. Adam Ross is one of the best teaching assistants in the department. Discussions may prove crucial if one is experiencing difficulty in lecture. He is willing to take time off to ensure that what you miss in lecture, will not be done so again in discussion. Even if the concept is too rudimentary to be explained in Calc 1, Adam will go over them. I recommend either/or both of them. |
| MusickVideo Course: MATH401 Grade Expected: A December 19, 2010, 1:35 pm | I don't know why there are any negative reviews for this professor. Okoudjou teaches you the basics and goes through a sufficient amount of examples for you to get what's going on. His exams are beyond simple as they test the easiest aspects of material. Grades consist of 3 midterm exams, a cumulative final, weekly homeworks, and online quizzes. The material covered in the course is easily accessible for anyone with a basic understanding of linear algebra. There are a few obscure concepts here and there, but he never tests you on them. Probably the easiest A I have ever gotten in a 400-level Math course. Highly recommended. |
| jcp5383 Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: A December 18, 2010, 9:50 am | Unfortunately, I did not need to take this class because I APed out of Calc. However, I thought that I wanted to be an engineer so I took this class. He is the hardest of all Calc teachers. I advise you to take Denny Gulick. He is the best math teacher I have seen. Okoudjou is a definitely the man. He is very smart. His biography states that he is a Georgia Tech graduate. Sometimes, I felt that he was too smart to teach us. His pace is very fast. There is also this stupid assignment online that screw up your grade because it is so hard. I got a B, D, D, C, and C on the exams respectively. I ended up with a B. You make the decision. Engineering is the hardest major out there at UMD. If you're business major, consider yourself lucky because you won't have to take this class. You would be stupid to take this class and screw up your GPA. |
| hc_frog Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: B December 15, 2010, 9:31 pm | Kasso is hard to understand. I would have been completely lost if I had not taken Calc AB in high school. If you have had experience with calculus, this class may be easier, but if you haven't I would recommend Dr. Denny Gulick. |
| vnsach Course: MATH141 Grade Expected: A November 1, 2010, 11:13 pm | Very hard class to get an A but very easy to get a B. His teaching style is pretty bad. Rambles on in a heavily accented drone but his tests are very easy if you look at the practice tests. I would probably recommend him because this class is hard regardless of the teacher who teaches it and his tests seemed to be the easiest compared to the teachers's. |
| vaalbara Course: MATH141 Grade Expected: B+ May 19, 2010, 4:24 pm | Had him for both 140/141. Cool dude, good teacher. People rag on him for his accent & handwriting, but they're honestly not that bad. He'll gladly read and rewrite any word that you don't understand, and his accent just sounds like he's cheerful all the time - even if we aren't. A little bit of a secret: his exams are usually (all but one of the eight he gave) very, very similar to the practice exams he gives, and they are, for the most part, relatively easier than the other exams. Put in some effort - go to reviews, do the practice exams, go to office hours - and you'll do just fine. |
| jamgord Course: MATH141 Grade Expected: B May 4, 2010, 5:14 pm | I personally liked Okoudjou way better than D. Gulick, who I had for MATH140. I don't know if it was because class was at 12pm instead of 8am or if there was that much of a difference between professors, but I absorbed so much more information in 141 than I did in 140. The tests were ok, and the webassign sometimes took forever, but if you have a good TA (or excellent one like Joe Altman, who actually won TA of the year during my semester) that can explain the material more thoroughly in discussion, then you should be fine. I recommend going to every single review session before tests, from both D. Gulick and the TA's (usually Brad Sanders, also a great TA). They really help because all you need to do is keep doing practice problems and tests so that you can get out all of our little mistakes on those problems and know exactly what to do or not do on the actual exam. Overall, I think Okoudjou is a really good professor who explains the material well and if you don't get it, he won't give up until you do. Also, his accent is the cutest ever, and the way he writes his letter "f" is so beautiful. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: January 7, 2010, 12:01 am | Gives good notes - very precise and clear - but there's a major discrepancy between what we go over in class and what's on the homework and tests. A lot of his tests don't follow the homework OR the examples he covers in class, and he also doesn't curve the class very much. Really hard to get an A unless you ace all four midterms and do fairly well on the final. If you've taken calc before and understood it thoroughly, then he's not a bad prof to take. If you're looking to learn calc for the very first time, I recommend taking Prof. D. Gulick. Much better, and much more patient and thorough with the information, plus his tests are actually on the material gone over in class. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: December 22, 2009, 8:01 pm | if you havent taken calculus before, i strongly suggest you do not get him. He is extremely hard to follow in lecture, and since he does example problems from the book, going isnt a necessity. Although he does occasionally have pop quizzes. His accent makes him kind of hard to understand, but discussion is very helpful. I took AP calc in high school and got a B. If youre looking for an A i strongly suggest you try and get D. Gulick. |
| tallboyt Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: B May 20, 2009, 11:21 am | He is a pretty good teacher; he always tries to get the class to understand, accepts any question in lec and is in general a nice guy. He posts prac test with answer keys (unlike other prof) and these are pretty close to the actual tests, which are fairly easy. 1 quiz/2 weeks, which actually help towards exams. Lectures aren't thrilling however. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: B May 18, 2009, 11:39 pm | He doesn't grade homeworks, and like the previous review said, he drops the lowest 3 quiz scores and exam. He let us use a page of notes for each of our exams except the first one, not that anyone needed one. I liked his accent, and his lectures were pretty straight foward. He gives practice exams a week or so before the actual exam and they are pretty similar. If you spend the time to do the homeworks, you should pass his pop quizzes with ease. He is a pretty average professor, but I would say he is one of the better ones. He was always willing to answer questions (except when he was short on time) and seemed like he actually wanted the students to understand. I always found it funny when he asked us if he should finish doing a computation, like Calc 1 integrals. He almost always got no response from the class, then he would walk away from the problem, then walk back and finish it anyway, or get halfway through it and just write "do it". |
| kthandler Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: B April 23, 2009, 8:18 pm | After having a professor who wanted his students to cry for Calc141, Okoudjou was a reminder that some professors actually want you to learn. His hand writing is hard to read at first, but you get better at reading it pretty soon. He also gives reasonable tests (and allowed us to have an equation sheet!) and was very willing to stop and answer questions during lecture. He also drops one test grade and 3 quiz grades and offered 20 points in extra credit with MatLab assignments. Also, I LOVED his accent; it's so bouncy and it just makes me happy to listen to him talk. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: B December 19, 2008, 10:33 am | His lectures consist of writing theorems on the board and proving the theorem. He never actually used the theorem to do an actual example problem, which made homework impossible. If you take his class you better just pray that your TA is good. |
| mmeyers Course: MATH140 Grade Expected: December 2, 2007, 9:39 pm | Worst professor ever. He will present the theorem on the board, without adequately explaining the concept or the application, which, ya know, is pretty essential to doing well on the tests. There was a big disconnect between what was covered in class, what was on the classwork, and what was on the tests. He's really not good at explaining things. You may do well in this class if you have previous experience in calculus. If you haven't, then you're screwed. Don't expect to learn a thing from this professor. He moves extremely fast in lectures, and he doesn't stop to explain his mathematical process. I don't get the sense he cares about his students at all. Compared to the other teachers of this class, his tests are much harder. If you want to learn anything about calculus, stay far away from his lecture. |