Fred Gittes

Great curve! The exams are very different from the homework and are impossible to study for. The homework is set up well, as is the grading scale. Gittes is entertaining, but his exams are not written well.

I had Gittes his first year at WSU, we had a text that he hadn't reviewed because it was left over from the previous prof. Unlike a prior review which stated that notes were worthless, I found them very valuable. I never used the text to do homework. All homework was on "Webassign" and the text was worthless because it didn't follow the lectures. I really enjoyed his class and learned a lot. The only negative was that since he used "Webassign" for homework but wrote his own tests, the problems were not parallel causing low test scores over the whole class, but they were also heavily curved so it was basically a wash.

Spends more time drawing the little picture for an example than actually going over the problem. Tests are nothing like the homework or lectures. You'd think he'd get the hint when you can get a 16% on a test and not fail (curve). The only good thing about his teaching is the experiments he does.

Saturday night with Gittes. I had with him an 8 am class, I have never missed his classes cuz its just SATURDAY NIGHT. Never seen such a funny professor as Fred.

Gittes is one of the most loony, off-the-wall, physics-loving professors you'll probably ever meet. However, he cannot teach. He just can't. His lectures, although chock-full of demonstrations and funny drawings, are erratic, unorganized, and often unrelated to the homework. His quizzes (which are sloppily handwritten) and tests are nothing like the homework, meaning that they're difficult to prepare for. You might think he's the coolest prof ever during those first couple of weeks, but when you start to get into the more complex stuff you'll realize that he's worthless.