Reviews for Von Tobias Petersdorff
Average Rating:| zhangsta Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: A+ January 6, 2012, 1:49 pm | Good lecturer, fair exams. However, he gets an anxiety attack anytime something goes even slightly wrong like writing the wrong thing on the board. He will erase and rewrite the whole thing multiple times. The exams weren't hard if you did the homework. The MATLAB assignments he gives out can get really ugly and painful if you don't know MATLAB. Overall, the class wasn't too bad. |
| Anonymous Course: AMSC460 Grade Expected: May 4, 2011, 3:26 pm | Despite the fact that AMSC460 supposed to be an application course, we hardly learned any applications. Lectures were good, but we were barely given any HW assignment (4 assignments were given to us instead of expected 6). Because we did not have any text to rely on; lack of HW assignments was especially hurting. The few homework assignments, that we did get from instructor were very short, and given to us on last minute notices (to be fair, they did contained interesting problems). Pros: 1)Online notes that he did provide to us (which is materials covering first quarter of the course) were very organised and extremely helpful. 2)Lectures in class were also good. 3)He is a fare grader when it comes to checking exams. Cons: 1)Through later part of the course he almost stopped providing updates on his website and virtually gave us no HW so we had to rely only on the notes we made in class to prepare for the second midterm. 2)Exams were not always related to HW 3)He is very sensitive about due dates. 4)He is difficult to talk to when he is tired or stressed out. |
| xenonscreams Course: MATH246 Grade Expected: A May 20, 2010, 11:18 am | He's an excellent professor who really understands the material and is pretty good at teaching it. His exams are extremely fair, and if you study you should do well, although it is easy to make stupid mistakes and lose a lot of credit. Matlab assignments were relatively long, but were graded very kindly and generally helped with everyone's grades. He does have panic attacks, as other people have mentioned. Sometimes they interfere with class or getting an exam passed out on time. He seems to be working on controlling them, as sometimes he will come close to having a panic attack but will breathe deeply and control himself. It seems to help to give him all the answers he asks for and ensure him that everything is OK and readable when he starts to frantically erase. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH246H Grade Expected: A May 16, 2010, 7:38 pm | His exams are very straightforward, and he goes over the material on the review days before the exam. He's a very good professor and always tells you whats relevant. If you go to class you probably wont even have to study for the exams. He will also drop and exam if you need it |
| aloo1111 Course: MATH246 Grade Expected: May 11, 2010, 5:09 pm | He's a good professor. Study well and earn your grade with him |
| Anonymous Course: MATH246 Grade Expected: April 27, 2010, 5:59 pm | The instructor covered the material very well and explained how to do each type of problem however it was distracting to watch the professor have panic attacks in class in middle of a problem. It is unnecessary to erase the whole board because of a small algebra error such as a missed sign. His matlab assignments are very long and since he forgets to post them up I had less than a week to do the matlab and no time to do them over the weekend. I would suggest Von Petersdorff as a math professor since he covers the material well and because his tests are fairly straight forward on material covered in class. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH221 Grade Expected: January 4, 2010, 11:55 am | I have no idea what happened to me in this class. Math used to be my favorite, and best subject. But for some reason I got to this class and was just clueless. From what I heard, my classmates all found the class very easy and were doing very well on his exams. Me? I ended up with a C in the class because I failed the final miserably. The lectures left me lost and confused. On a side note, he was always very helpful during office hours. I don't quite know how to review him. Everyone around me found his exams easy. For me, I was just lost and confused. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: B May 22, 2009, 2:31 pm | von Petersdorff is a good professor in my opinion. If you go to class and take good notes, you'll have a good idea of what's going on even if you don't pay attention. However, his exams are in no way easy. If you want to do well, you'll have to do the homework even though it doesn't count towards your grade. As with all math courses here, having a good TA can make a HUGE difference in how you do. |
| Anonymous Course: MATH241 Grade Expected: B May 14, 2009, 1:59 pm | Dr. von Petersdorff conducts his class in a manner that is suited for math majors only, and fails to realize that the majority of people in the class do not necessarily have the same aptitude for math that he does. He fails to explain concepts that he deems simple, instead spending most of his lecture time on proving equations instead of actually teaching the class why those equations are useful. Few examples are shown, and those do not at all cover the breadth of problems that students are expected to answer. He is very disorganized, hard to contact (when I e-mailed him from my school address he never responded), and is overall a poor teacher for large introductory classes. On the other hand, if you have a really good TA or spend a lot of time learning the material yourself, his tests are generally pretty easy. Unfortunately, most of the class does not understand the material, and the median for our last two tests was in the mid-sixties. He's not curving the class. If you have other options and want a good math teacher for lower-level classes, don't pick him. |
| gundamwing4132 Course: MATH246 Grade Expected: A May 1, 2008, 1:33 pm | Fair exams, good lectures. |