[MECE E3311] Heat Transfer

Narayanaswamy is pretty good during class. His boards are fairly well laid out, he mostly stays out of your line-of-sight, and he requires a middling amount of audience participation (which passes the time). His handwriting's size and legibility are generally unimpeachable. For a non-native speaker of English, he is very intelligible. However, during office hours, he is extraordinarily hostile, and obviously wants you to leave him alone, ie. leaves his headphones in, doesn't make eye contact, and gives brief, grunt-like replies to questions. He is also quite a quick mathematical study, and has very little patience with those who need more explanation than he. The tests were pretty soft and were therefore graded with vast harshness in order to create a curve. A small math error would cost you 20% or more on a test. If you grade grub even a little, the TA's will give points back. In practice this means that the average floats upwards in the weeks after a test, which is very unpleasant.

This class starts out with some unfamiliar concepts, so it can seem a bit challenging at first. It is very important that you ask questions and make sure you understand everything for the first midterm, because this is the hardest part of the class. If you understand the new concepts from the first month of the class, the rest of the class will be a breeze.

Arvind is very organized and a very good lecturer. Go to class because if you don't, for every hour of class that you miss, you will spend 5 hours at home trying to make up for it, and because the material can be difficult and confusing, your efforts might be futile. He goes over things slowly and makes sure everyone understands everything before he moves on. Pay attention to the examples he does in class, because he assigns homework that if very similar to those examples, and can sometimes repeat class examples on exams. The first half of the class is the most dynamic, so he can come up with a variety of questions. However, the second half is so complicated that he sticks with a few examples, and doing the problems comes down to identifying the type of problem and then just following the protocol that he assigned in class.

The only problem I had with him was his arrogance. He insisted on going over specific concepts from calculus and diff. eqs. and if we did not remember them, he would be very condescending. Also, although he would encourage questions, if someone asked a "stupid" questions, he would make sure to let us know that it is a "shame" that we still do not understand the given topic.

His tests are fair. Again - if you do the homeworks and look over lecture notes, you should do fine (getting scores in the 90s is normal). If you put in minimum effort, you should be able to beat the mean, as it can get very low. I'm not sure why this is the case, but his tests seem to be either hit or miss, and it seems that a lot of people miss so the mean can get as low as the 50s.