No recording, pure lecture with few notes, Not recommended

Sara billey is very nice and sweet. However, her lectures are not very friendly to people who are not very good at math. Her handwriting is very messy and I cannot read her lecture notes. They are all over the place. I recommend taking this class if you are good at self learning and have the patience to read the textbook.

I don't recommend taking her class. I couldn't understand a word she said in lectures, and she doesn't record them. She glosses over important concepts. Her handwriting is illegible. Her exams are extremely difficult. Since I started watching Thomas Carr's lectures on YouTube, I haven't attended her class once, and my grades improved significantly.

Extremely hard to follow and never records lecture. Talks quietly and doesn't use the microphone despite teaching in a huge room filled with students, and her explanations are convoluted and do not match the information in the textbook/on the internet. Covers material after homework about such material was already due. Avoid at all costs.

The lectures are difficult to understand, and assignments are submitted before the material has even been covered. The assessment criteria are unclear. Highly not recommended.

Seems like a nice person who understands the topic, but always goes off topic during lectures and has a very poor ability in explaining concepts.

Lectures are not recorded and assignment/exam criteria are not clear. Avoid at all costs

DO NOT TAKE HER AT ALL COSTS. Exams are nothing like previous exams, lectures are unrecorded, homework is extremely difficult and irrelevant to class concepts. Talks in lecture for 20 minutes about things unrelated to class material only to rush through the actual content the remaining 30 minutes. Just a research professor who hates her job.

I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what those who gave it good reviews are thinking. Is Sara Billey the best math teacher they've ever had in their entire life? There are so many better math teachers at UW. Her explanations aren't thorough, and her exam style is inconsistent. If you don't attend class, you won't have access to the learning resources at all.

Do not take this professor. Avoid at all costs!!! She sucks at teaching and doesn't record lectures. Tests are hard and you are given minimal time to solve big problems. If you want to save your gpa don't take her class.

EXTREMELY DIFFICULT EXAMS!!!

Do not take this professor, her handwriting is unreadable, half of her lectures her microphone is off, and her tests are very difficult.

Prof Billey is nice, however she does NOT teach the content well. Her lectures are confusing and her notes are messy. The test content (and even homework content) are barely relevant to the lectures. The people that do well in this class are likely already familiar with the content. I do not recommend taking her if possible.

Take this class if you enjoy skipping lectures and learning on your own!

It is evident that the educational value imparted by this professor is NEGLIGIBLE. Should one wish to compromise one's GPA, this course of action would be THE most effective strategy. The assignments are bizarre, and the exams are not aligned with the lecture. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that her handwriting is illegible.

I always feel confused about how much I need to know for the exams.There's no recording for lectures. Lectures are messy and barely relevant to hw and test. Her handwriting is unreadable, and notes itself are not that useful. It is really hard for people not good at math but need this class for prerequisite.

Absolutely terrible teacher with terrible slides. Refuses to do recordings, mandates that you cannot have your laptop out in class. In the grading system is absolutely awful. Losing 9 points on a 10 point question because you drew a face wrong and refusing students to regrade is horrendous. I think UW policy just makes it hard as well.

The TAs literally teach better than her. Lectures are extremely off topic to the homework and exams, does not teach anything of value. Avoid this professor at all costs!!!!

illegible handwriting, no lectre recordin, practice exmas dont have answer keys, new topics on exams thats NOT ON PAST EAMS?? ta does nto know anything that goes onto exams nor do they know how to access our homework. makes me very sad

she does not know how to teach.

Awful handwriting. Hard exam. TAs teach better than her but know nothing about the class

The decision to enrol in Sara Biley's class has proven to be an unmitigatedly detrimental error in judgement, representing a pivotal moment of profound misjudgement in my academic journey. Were I granted the opportunity to select again, I would unequivocally elect to refrain from enrolling in the aforementioned MATH 208 course with this professor.

Lectures are not recorded, and lecture slides themselves aren't clear, i find myself having to teach myself most of the coursework. Also, expectations for what topics will be on the exam is very unclear, practice material doesn't really correlate with the exam content, and TA's don't know what the professor expects us to know on the exam either.

This professor is very bad. Take this class if u want to be sad :( She makes me sad. One time I heard the guy next to me ask a clarifying question during a midterm and she said "you should have listened in lecture" and walked away. Poor guy, he was probably sad too.

As other students have mentioned, not only does she lack teaching skills, refuse to record lectures, and have illegible handwriting, but she also deliberately makes things difficult for students. During the last midterm exam, some students had their scores canceled simply for bringing blank scratch paper into the exam. What a bad experience.

if you are taking this class to learn linear algebra, you aren't going to learn very much from her. spends a lot of class time rambling about nonsense. realizes she wasted time and tries to recover by scribbling some lecture together. not a single thing is good about her. she doesn't record lectures, writes hard tests, doesn't teach, not kind... :(

She likes to see her students struggle on her tests and brags about it. Doesn't even try to teach effectively, as the TAs are way better than her. I honestly should stop wearing my seatbelt to school because dying wouldn't be as bad as having to see her face in lecture. Oh wait, but I can't do that anyway because she doesn't even record them.

Poor teaching, illegible handwriting, no recorded lectures. Provides midterm topic review doc made by different professor, on the actual exam included topics not listed / not covered in class. Does not respond to general course questions on edstem. If you're unfortunately taking this course rely on Thomas Carr yt videos, TAs, & textbook to learn

Tests are challenging, bad handwriting, lectures are a waste of time. Better off learning from Thomas Carr. No recorded lectures, prepare to self study if you take this class. Content on tests does not come close to reflecting the most important things covered in this course.

What an arrogant person. She doesn't teach properly in class and doesn't answer questions on the online platform. I have no idea how she became a professor. If you visit her personal website, you'll see she charges $3,000 a day for math tutoring! That's probably the reason she doesn't teach at all in class, because you guys don't pay to her!

never did I think I would be so overcome with anger and hatred to leave a negative review here. lectures are poorly formatted with unnecessary rambling about random content. homework is on material we haven't learned, and exam questions are on material that is covered for 10 minutes. lectures aren't recorded either. makes hell look like fun.

Professor Billey is the worst professor I've had and it's not close. In lecture she has completely illegible handwriting and talks very quiet making concepts impossible to grasp. Tests contain some of the most niche examples she goes over in lecture - including one question worth 16% of the test that got 1 slide in 1 lecture.

dont take this class

not good at all

Lectures aren't recorded or helpful. Poor explanation and also goes off topic. Handwriting is nearly illegible. Exams are purposely made longer so it's difficult to finish within the time limit. Must use outside sources to learn material to a sufficient level. Second midterm average was 35/60.

She seems like a nice person, however her class is by far the worst I have taken at the UW. Her lectures are hard to understand and cover content that is much easier than the exams. Midterm problems cover niche topics that were barely mentioned in lecture, if at all. You will be teaching yourself, Avoid if at all possible.

Might be the worst professor on this earth 💀

laughably bad

A whole quarter is almost over and I still have no idea what we're even learning in this class! The exams are harder than climbing Mount Everest! No clue what the course content is supposed to cover, and there's no grading scale to match the GPA. If anyone decides to take this class, I wish them luck.

If you like having a professor that will put you to sleep, not answer anything on ed, and gives midterms that have nothing to do with what she's taught, this is the perfect teacher for you.

literal nightmare class. i got covid and had a fever dream where i was so convinced i could only get my fever down if i solved a 3x3 matrix. since theres no recording the obvious solution to get my fever down shouldve been to go to class w/covid for her to help me solve the matrix. wait no her awful explanations wouldve put me in my literal grave

please don't take

You are LITERALLY better off self studying the entire quarter and skipping every lecture than taking this class with her. She imparts negative value on all students through horrible exams and confusing all students during lecture. Her lectures are so behind that homework due for the current week will be on topics being taught 2 weeks in the future.

I thought people were exaggerating about their horrible professors until I took her class and realized they were understating

It is genuinely impressive how bad she is at teaching...

This is the first professor I genuinely felt the need to warn people about

It should be illegal for her to teach this class

My linear algebra experience is ruined :(

She makes me sad and stressed. This is genuinely one of the biggest mistakes of my life

Please don't take her class

I genuinely chug 3 cans of red bull before lecture hoping my heart would stop instead of being in this class

The Function Führer, the Determinant Dictator, the Subspace Supreme Leader, the Transformation Tyrant, the Matrix Monarch. She goes by many names, but none fully encapsulate the hopeless despair under her rule.

I would have understood if this was her first time teaching, but her personal page reflects her obviously arrogant personality, not caring about student success as much as her own

she genuinely does not care about her students and brags about making tests difficult and students failing

I have sara-phobia

genuinely the worst professor i've ever had, doesn't record lectures (not that they would be helpful anyways), content in her tests are rarely talked about in class, exams are way too long for the time limit you're given. if possible avoid taking her class. she clearly doesn't care about the success of her students.

From the start of the quarter, I knew we were all cooked. No recorded lectures, homework that you would look at, but never be able to do due to the sheer difficulty of it. Sara doesn't teach you well at all; she gets behind and goes off topic as well. The exam is not even what she teaches us, and it is extremely difficult.

The 5-star review below looks like it was either paid for by Sara or written by her herself. I've taken her 208 classes, and it was a nightmare. I don't know which student besides herself would know she's getting divorced; besides, what does her personal life have to do with her students? Poor teaching is poor teaching, without a doubt.

I had a bad feeling as soon as the first day of class hit. Yelling at people for having their laptops open, no lecture recordings, irrelevant homework, illegible handwriting, mic off, constant rambling and off topic discussions, the list goes on. I wish luck to anyone who has her in the future.

There's literally no point to attend lectures. Just think of your tuition money as wasted and study the class as if it were an online course and show up for the exams.

Let me just say, the hate is completely justified and there is no one "hating for the love of the game" here. There are clear logical reasons listed by everyone in the class that make this professor the worst to take any class with.

Other than a select few performative intellectuals in the class, Sara ignores practically the entire class, not waiting to see if people are catching up and disregarding any other concerns.

Whoever wrote the 5 star review is clearly trying to troll or was paid off by Sara. Do not listen to it.

Last spring, she spent a lecture teaching the optional readings from the textbook (poorly). Someone later asked on ed asked if it was gonna be on the exam, to which Billey said there was a "fair chance" it would (mind you, the textbook said OPTIONAL reading). It wasn't on the exam, but thanks for wasting my time on studying for it anyways Billey!

I HATE HER....

This course doesn't require prerequisites when picking classes; however, unless you already have a lot of math knowledge, take 100-level classes first. There is a lot of homework, and the tests are impossible to finish without a curve.

yo. either try to NOT take this professor or just DROP OUT.

Not even Thomas Carr can save you from her

I really hope a bus hits me on my walk over to the final exam. She genuinely impresses me and I'm sure many others with how bad she is at teaching. Never in my life have I hated a teacher more than this. The course content really could be interesting if she bothered to teach it. Wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

every day that I inch closer to her final exam, a little piece of my soul dies because of the crushing anxiety that professor Billey will throw curveballs and questions she barley spent one slide of lecture on (not very well taught might I add). Each midterm I sit in fear and sweat as I read questions far beyond what other professors are covering.

anyone who takes this class with her is genuinely cooked. i hope she is permanently banned from teaching ever again

the rating after me is some bs she sucks at teaching literally math hitler. don't take her if you want a will to live

You could have a 7 year old teach the class and the results would be the same.

you are seriously gonna take away half my points for an arithmetic error on a single number in a 5x5 matrix? so now I have the same score as someone who genuinely didn't even do the question?? this grading system makes absolutely no sense.

the person who left the 5/5 review is clearly bought by billey, she could not care less about her students and takes pleasure from people in her class suffering and failing

homework and assessments are completely irrelevant from the course materials. extremely tough grader for no reason on arithmetic errors

Sara Billey has single handedly ruined my college experience. You're better off studying by yourself and watching Thomas Carr on youtube than attending lecture. Exams are rarely related to homework and lecture material taught in class, problems on the exam are wayyyyyy too long for the amount of time you're given. Finals are coming up. God help me.

doesn't record lecture for literally no reason, oh wait, they're not even worth watching

If you're gonna take her course, prepare to have a receding hairline and continuous bowel movements by the middle of the quarter. But if that's what you're looking for, feel free to enroll in her courses. I honestly don't know how she even became a professor it's discombobulating. I don't pick up what she puts down or catch her drift whatsoever.

Somebody says the professor is OK and apprearantly they are WRONG. I was sitting in the classroom, learning NOTHING, and my first midterm is cooked. Then I started to watch Thomas curr's online lecture, and my grade signaficantly improved for the second midterm. Just don't attend her lecture and do self study Read GT Linear Algebra if you like read

Don't bother with lectures you won't learn absolutely anything, so be prepared to self teach everything. The first exam she didn't even have all the tests out before class started so you had maybe 45 minutes instead of 50 on an exam that is already way to hard for 50 minutes. Please avoid at all cost.

Not sure how this class is a 4 credit math course....

Bro, Math Hitler is too true! Only like two people actually know what's going on, and they are the most insufferable know-it-alls on this side of the Mississippi. She's seriously the worst professor I've had. I legitimately think she's a witch, how I've watched her hex everybody's GPA. Good luck, chat. XO XO Gossip Girl

Genuinely insufferable

This is a self-study course. You will stop going to lecture and start watching Thomas Carr on YouTube just to understand what is happening. The TAs try their best, but even they often don't know what will be on the exams. Unless you are already a linear algebra wizard, expect to fight for every point and teach yourself the entire curriculum.

Lectures are unrecorded, her handwriting is nearly illegible, and she often spends time rambling on niche theory or 'optional' readings only to test on them heavily. The exams are arithmetic minefields, you can lose half the points on a massive problem for a single calculation error, with no partial credit for knowing the process.

I'm reading these 5-star reviews for Professor Billey, and I have to ask: Are we even attending the same university? These reviews are so clearly detached from the reality of the average student experience that they essentially qualify as creative fiction.

Major disconnect between lecture and exams. She spends 50 mins on abstract proofs irrelevant to most people, then the midterm is 100% computational applications we never touched. You leave class feeling smart but fail the homework because she never taught the mechanics. Frustrating.

IGNORE THE POSITIVE REVIEWS. Reality: Midterm 2 average was 58%. Instead of admitting the test was too long/untaught, she blamed us for "studying wrong." It's demoralizing. When a whole class of smart UW students fails, it's the teacher, not the students. Don't let her tank your GPA.

In math, legibility matters. Her handwriting is indecipherable. She writes small, erases instantly, and uses notation inconsistent with the text. If you can't read the notes, you can't learn. Avoid.

Brilliant mathematician, terrible teacher. She can't read the room. She asks "Does everyone understand?" and when nobody answers out of confusion, she moves on. She gets stuck on her own examples, wasting 15 mins debugging matrix math while we watch. Painful and inefficient lectures.

Math 208 has a common final, and Billey sets you up to fail it. We fell so far behind we had to cram multiple of the hardest topics into the last lecture. I went into every midterm feeling totally unprepared compared to other sections.

The TAs deserve her salary. They actually teach the content while Billey rambles about abstract theory.

Engineering/CS hopefuls: AVOID. This is a weed-out class taught by someone who doesn't understand the stakes. A 2.8 here because she forgot to teach a topic can ruin your placement. The "easy A" reviews are traps set by trolls. Protect your transcript and take literally anyone else.

Grading is brutal and arbitrary. You can get the logic 100% right but drop a minus sign and get 0/10. No partial credit on "conceptual" problems that were never defined in class. She grades like we are PhD candidates, not sophomores learning matrices for the first time.

In 2025, how do we not have working Panopto? Why do you not record lectures? You miss one class, you miss everything because her notes are gibberish. Zero accessibility for students who get sick or fall behind.

Went to office hours for help, left more confused. She answers questions with more questions or goes off on tangents about math history. I just wanted to know how to do Row reduction. She is incapable of giving a straight answer. Don't expect support outside of class; you are on your own.

She explicitly told us to ignore parts of the textbook, then tested us on them. The disconnect is unreal. You never know what is "fair game" for exams because the study guides are vague. It feels like she is improvising the syllabus week by week. Organization is non-existent.

People complain she doesn't record lectures, but honestly? You aren't missing anything. Recording her rambling, disorganized mess would just be a waste of server space. You can't rewind a explanation that made zero sense in the first place. The lack of recordings just saves you time, time better spent watching Thomas Carr.

This B has no idea what she is doing at all.

How did someone like this become a tenured professor? Her lectures offer absolutely no help whatsoever. Recording her classes is nothing but a waste of Panopto server space. The university should fire her. Students need this course to advance in their major, yet all she does is ruin their GPAs. Stop wasting students' time.

genuinely i've never had a worse professor! wow! hashtag no lecture recordings, hashtag illegible handwriting, hashtag impossible exams, hashtag doesn't answer ed board. unfortunately, sara, we are not all math visionaries who can understand random conceptual questions on the spot after you taught us actually nothing in lecture!!

I've never left a review before but she's so bad that I NEED to warn everyone else. Haven't had a worse teacher my entire time at UW. She is so out of touch, completely unresponsive, does not understand her students concerns, and does NOT know how to teach. Worst mistake of my life, ruined my entire quarter and mental state. LITERALLY EVIL.

she is literally the worst ever so out of touch and told students to just read the textbook to study instead of practicing problems but then throws crazy curveballs on every exam. never feel like any actual important content is being tested just random niche conceptual questions she comes up with. i hope she seriously gets her teaching investigated

Completely out of touch, shows absolutely no ounce of teaching ability.

Meanwhile, the hand written notes written in class were extremely illegible, but the messy, smudged paper made efficient use of the paper area, reduced paper waste, and made an outstanding contribution to environmental protection.

Sara Billey is very environmentally friendly, and in order to promote the goal of carbon neutrality and environmental protection, she does not record lectures or create PowerPoint presentation slides, saving a lot of electricity consumed by cameras, network transmission, and server storage.

If I could give negative stars, I would. She deletes your will to live. Missed a minus sign? ZERO POINTS. Didn't memorize a niche theorem she whispered once? FAIL. She blames us when the class average is 35%. I have never felt more gaslit by an educator. This class is a GPA death sentence.

SARA BILLEY IS THE REASON I HAVE TRUST ISSUES. She refuses to record lectures, her handwriting looks like seismograph readings during an earthquake, and she ghosts the Ed board. You are entirely alone. You will teach yourself linear algebra while she watches you drown. DROP IMMEDIATELY.

The disconnect between lecture and exams is criminal. She talks about abstract clouds for 50 mins, then hands out a computational nightmare for the midterm. It's like being taught to bake cookies and being tested on disarming a nuclear bomb. I am physically ill from the stress of this class.

I genuinely think she enjoys watching us fail. The disconnect between the lectures and the exams is criminal. It's like she teaches us how to bake cookies and then tests us on how to disarm a nuclear bomb. I'm exasperated. I have learned nothing except how to handle rejection. 0/5 stars.

Listen to the reviews. DO NOT BE A HERO. This class is a GPA nuke. She is completely out of touch with reality. I'm writing this with tears in my eyes because I know I'm going to fail despite studying for 20 hours. She ghosted the Ed board too. You are alone. Save yourself.

I loathe her, if possible, I'll give her -10000000000000

Hitler can teach better than her

guys i'm telling you now, save yourself and DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. I REPEAT DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. SHE IS THE WORST PROFESSOR I HAVE HAD IN THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSITY AND i cannot stress enough how horrible her lectures were. she taught us exactly nothing and asked us to do insane work on the exams like it didn't even make any sense.

I was originally against being so harsh against her like everyone else was, but when she said: "You don't seem to know what you're talking about so go back and think about it" about a question I had for one of her recent tests, that lit me on fire. I'm like. YEAH, YOU'D BE RIGHT IM ASKING YOU FOR HELP TO UNDERSTAND. ----____-----

Sara Billey's lectures are disorganized. Her assignments are unreasonably long, taking hours to do just one problem. They don't prepare you for the exams, which test the most difficult parts of the textbook. She shouldn't be allowed to teach students. I love math but this class made me cry multiple times.

NO. SAVE URSELF.

The single worst professor I have ever taken. Marginally helpful in office hours, but generally her lectures are unhelpful and off-topic. Passionate about math, but has a big ego and doesn't care about the success of her students. Linear algebra is a fun topic, just not with her.

Run! Just run!

Most unbelievably heinous, wicked teacher I've ever had in my 19 years of existence.

if your life too good, strongly recommend this class. everything everyone said is true. not helpful, irresponsible prof that doesn't want students to succeed and is proud about that

if you have the option please don't take this professor. the material isn't difficult she is just bad at teaching and the exam questions don't reflect the main topics. first day of class she said average was a 3.0 so be prepared for that.