professor
Sucharit Sarkar

Sucharit is a likable and approachable professor, since he's young and very casual (he has special flip-flops that he wears year-round in the Math building). His one downfall, however, is probably that he speaks at the speed of light. This isn't really too much of a problem if you're paying attention, because his accent is clear and understandable. Also, since his speech is so rapid, he usually ends up repeating the same basic concept in a couple of different ways. I usually found myself a little bored towards the end of the class, but I never really missed anything vital in the last 20 minutes of class anyway. That being said, he does always keep the class until the very last minute (and sometimes a few minutes later.) As for exams, the midterm sort of took me by surprise. It was only four questions which meant that you had to be very careful not to make stupid slip-ups that could end up being very costly. He said that he tried to make the first problem slightly easier than the average question on a problem set, two similar to problem set questions, and the last one a bit more difficult, which was pretty accurate. The final was eight questions with a bonus on complex functions, and fairly manageable. My best advice would just be make sure that you complete every problem set and know what you're doing, as with any other math class. Overall Sucharit is an enjoyable professor. He doesn't make you feel stupid when you ask questions, and offers many times during class to ask questions, giving the class an interactive feel that other calc classes don't always offer.

Professor Sarkar is an excellent teacher. He doesn’t rely on notes, even for his examples, which shows he really knows Calc IV, and he is able to explain everything thoroughly with lots of examples. He also doesn’t just give the easy examples, but rather he varies the difficulty so that they start easy and get harder so that we know how to deal with all different problems. This made the problem sets are very fair. This is the same theory he uses for his tests. On our midterm there were 4 questions, the first was easy and the last one was doable in retrospect, but was “AHH” on the test. But everyone seemed to feel that way and the curve reflected that. Speaking of curves, Professor Sarkar is willing to vary the percentages on the midterm, homeworks, and final, for each person (within limitations) so that everyone gets the better score. One of my favorite things about professor Sarkar is that he lets you ask questions in class. I feel that questions are an integral part of learning. And he openly accepts them. Also he asks us questions. So when he does an example he prompts us to tell him the next steps. This active participation really allowed me to learn the material. So if you have the option, definitely take Professor Sarkar.