professor
John Morgan

deriving so much takes little integration some such clear lectures I took a horrendous AP Calculus BC class when I was still in high school, and I was terrified that my professor at Columbia would be equally incompetent, going off only examples from the book and leaving little concepts for clarification. However, my experience with this class was very much the opposite. Professor Cautis is indeed soft-spoken, but I sat in the back of the classroom for most of the semester and was able to hear him clearly. He does only go off examples, but I found his explanations of the thought processes behind calculus before delving into those lent me a much stronger understanding of the material than I had previously been taught. Some of the examples are obviously developed to lengthen the class time, as we often would get out ten or even twenty minutes late, but this is more of a testament of Cautis's ability to get to the point of each lecture rather than ramble on. As a new professor, he obviously has flaws in being stuck in that distant didactic lecture style, but he showed an obvious passion for mathematics and often showed it through the way he talked about the concepts. Also, his style was very appropriate for calculus, though still in the rough, especially at the beginning of the semester, when his lectures seemed more muddled, but he improved over the semester. The two midterms were relatively easy. The final, however, was a bit harder, and I'm guessing it was extraordinarily curved from the difference between my semester grade and what I got on it. I went to lectures usually to listen to the first twenty or thirty minutes before they got too dry, then after that I would do something else and then pay attention again to copy down his very clear notes. It is also of note that some of his examples were also on midterms and the final.

While at first it may seem as though Morgan is a bit boring, as the semester goes on I came to appreciate his teaching. He goes over many examples with the class and is always willing for in-class discussion and explains well questions that people have. He's approachable and friendly outside of class. The material gets progressively harder throughout the semester (on a grander scale than most classes), such that the first third may seem easy, the second moderate, and the last, pretty impossible. But the whole class works that way, so the curve is good...although the class is curved around a C

Actually speaks english, easy to follow, assigns the odds for homework so you could just copy the answers, tests aren't too difficult even though he distributes 4 different, color-coded exams throughout the room, has a surprising affinity for testicle jokes once a week. Definitely recommended.