Current instructor

Sebastien Roch

/5Adjusted rating
/5RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 2.33/5 from 12 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

What students say

Original student reviews · all captured dates

MATH 535
Quality 4/5Difficulty 3/5
All MATH535 lecture material comes from an online textbook written by Dr. Roch himself. Attendance is measured using TopHat (full credit for attending at least half the classes). He's a pretty good lecturer, focusing on the most important topics and leaving time for questions. If you attend class, scoring well on the exams isn't too hard.
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MATH 535
Quality 5/5Difficulty 2/5
I don't understand these reviews, Sebastien is amazing at teaching. He has a deep understanding of the material, gives easy exams, helpful outside of class.
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MATH 535
Quality 1/5Difficulty 5/5
A great way instructing things and letting student know Math is not the thing. Super "rigorous" and quite confusing, and so could possibly make the topic complicated to a level that is not appropriate for this level of class.
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MATH 535
Quality 3/5Difficulty 2/5
He is not good at teaching but he is very willing to help and his lecture notes are very good for self-learning. So it's okay to take class with him if you are a good self-learner.
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MATH 535
Quality 1/5Difficulty 4/5
I don't know what Prof. Roch is talking about, he can introduce a hundred theorems with little to no explanations, let alone give examples. HW is also challenging, you should take care yourself and learn by yourself.
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Quality 3/5Difficulty 5/5
Math 632 is a hard course as it. Although Roch taught the class clearly he sometimes went fast. The lectures are proof heavy while the homeworks and tests are not. There are no solutions to homeoworks posted except for the quiz questions based on the homeowork. The exams are intended to be very difficult and require you to think beyond homework.
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Personal experiences, not a representative survey. Profile matching and captured coverage are shown in the source details.

Classes with Sebastien Roch

MATH 345 introduces linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and optimization theory with data science applications, implemented in Python.

Offering recorded · Fall 2026

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.12 GPA, 52.9% A/AB (n=17 letter grades).

historical GPA · grades

Spring 2025–Spring 2026 · limited sample

Recorded teaching history

Explore courses taught by this instructor →
Browse recorded courses
TermCourseTitle
Fall 2026MATH 345Linear Algebra and Optimization
Fall 2026MATH 890Pre-dissertator Research
Fall 2026MATH 990Reading and Research

Teaching history may be incomplete. Course pages contain course-specific feedback and citations.

Instructor identity & provenance
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