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Arakaki, Dean

Cumulative GPA: 1.98/4.00 with 56 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 2.00
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 1.88

Electrical Engineering Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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EE 405 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 3:42 am, Apr 26, 2013 Report Evaluation		Arakaki? More like Ara-cocky to be exact. We had a better design that gave better results than his "standard model." He was not impressed and insisted our design was flawed. Go figure...

EE 533 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 11:11 pm, Mar 27, 2013 Report Evaluation		If you don't know Arakaki by now then you're better off not taking a course instructed by him. Your returned work will probably be twice the thickness of what you turned in because of all the "corrections" made. The materials for this course was especially tough because it was presented in a manner that Arakaki deemed the "proper way." The Stutzman book was really difficult to follow compared to the Balanis book due to the lack of examples and explanations on how things actually work. The HW problems were revised problems from the Stutzman book, so if you were stuck just find the solutions manual. Arakaki went as far as allowing us to have an "open-book and open-notes" exam, but the average of the exam still ended-up at the mid-50s out of a 100, go figure why. A fair warning about 20% of your total grade: DO NOT take the final design project lightly and begin as soon as he hands out the specs requirements (planar array design of 125MHz on a circular surface). If you do not have any experience with MATLAB on loops/mesh/3D plots then your life will be very very very miserable for the last four weeks of school figuring out why your script doesn't work. In our section, no one was able to present a fully completed demo of the project because of that. PRO-TIP: Buy the Balanis book, it's totally worth the $ and Wikipedia will be your best-friend because it does a way better job on explaining everything than Arakaki can. Good luck, junior!

EE 346 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 3:24 pm, Jan 29, 2013 Report Evaluation		Honestly worst lab professor I've ever been misfortunate enough to encounter. I'm sitting his lab as we speak as he tells us we have to redo our prelabs because his emails didn't get to half the class. Wastes an hour and a half of lab talking about things that don't pertain to the lab. Gives everyone D's and F's on labs because he expects a bunch of stuff in the reports that we don't know about. Waste of life and a GPA killer. Not helpful, expects you to know how to do everything even though the lab manual sounds like its from 1865. Seriously avoid this dude at all costs because this lab sucks enough as it is.

EE 335 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 10:57 am, Jun 11, 2012 Report Evaluation		Dr, Arakaki's lectures were somewhat entertaining. But the material was harsh and I had a feeling he was being nice to us. Overall, I'd take him again.

EE 533 Graduate Student Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 8:45 pm, Apr 9, 2012 Report Evaluation		OK OK OK OK OK OK OK.... this is all you will hear from this guy. He mumbles to himself all the time and acts disgruntled at everything. Every problem in the problem-sets were to derive this from that and prove this and that. Even after taking this course with a B+, I still have no clue what an antenna actually is. I felt I simply retook vector calculus from scratch just to derive everything form Maxwell's EQ.

EE 533 Graduate Student Grade Earned: A Elective 8:29 pm, Jul 28, 2011 Report Evaluation		Quite possibly the worst professor I've had. I took him for a total of four classes but this one was especially brutal. He usually arrives late and spends the first 10 minutes writing the daily agenda on the board. This is somewhat confusing because I can count on one hand the number of times he actually made it through every single item. The red ink on the lab reports would be okay if he had something constructive to say. Instead he marks you down for things like graphs being the "wrong size" or "unprofessional language" (don't say "voltage drop", say "voltage decrease"). These requirements are also inconsistent with every other professor in the department. To make it worse, he won't give a list of things that he wants to see in a lab report; you'll need to figure out what he doesn't want through trial and error. He seems cheerful and approachable at first, but just wait until until he gets angry, whether it's from a lower than usual test average or just some offhand comment. I have NEVER seen a professor treat students so condescendingly. As for EE533, this is tough material regardless of who teaches it. But rather than focusing on understanding he instead beats you down with endless derivations. The problem sets were nothing but derivations either and the only way I was able to grasp the physical meaning of what I was working through was to look to outside sources. I looked over every other negative review and each one of them is very believable. Heed my warning and the warning of others: DO NOT TAKE ARAKAKI

EE 375 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 6:57 pm, Jun 5, 2011 Report Evaluation		Arakaki is one of the best professors in the EE department. His main goal is to prepare students to become professional engineers that represent the EE department at Cal Poly well. All of the lab reports are covered with his red pen ink because he is trying to teach students how to write a professional report. Also, his pre-lab lectures taught me the transmission line material way better than I had learned in 335.



EE 440 Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 12:00 am, May 19, 2011 Report Evaluation		Completely unaware of what topics are important to emphasize in class, midterms are not representative of what is emphasized in course lectures. Very unprepared, presents material needed for the midterm and homework either the day before or a few hours before it is due.

EE 405 Senior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 4:01 pm, Jan 14, 2011 Report Evaluation		(???)

EE 405 Senior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Support) 1:14 am, Dec 5, 2010 Report Evaluation		seriously, this guy is a dick. He has a terribly condescending attitude towards his students and works them like they have 40 hours a week to devote to his class. Lectures are useless because he\'s always late and unprepared. Totally unprofessional but demands the exact opposite. Stay away. Far away.

EE 405 Senior Grade Earned: N/A Elective 12:51 am, Dec 5, 2010 Report Evaluation		A fucking asshole ever since he\'s gotten tenure.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 5:39 pm, Nov 19, 2010 Report Evaluation		Dean Arakaki is an alpha-male. A renaissance man. A modern day Leonardo da Vinci, or \"Neo-Vinci,\" if you will. His expertise span every subject that ever existed. The only downfall to this juggernaut of a human being is that he is just too smart. He spends sleepless nights tossing and turning in bed while his brain can\'t help but derive multiple equations simultaneously. He reaches out to peers only to be shut down by there ignorance and lack of knowledge. He struggles to understand other people around him because he just can\'t relate... Students portray him as a beast. A heartless monster. Assignment after assignment due for every class. Midterm and presentations due on consecutive days. But all he can do is look around and stare in awe over a classroom full of pupils that just don\'t understand. \"Who said life was fair?\"

EE 402 Senior Grade Earned: A Elective 10:25 pm, Oct 8, 2010 Report Evaluation		Arakaki has unrealistic expectations for students when it comes to the amount of homework or the level of math EE students have been exposed to. Rushes through lecture, frequently going off topic and without writing down important points. Makes lots of mistakes and forgets to provide important information. Tests average around 30% and 50% or higher should get you an A. He doesn\'t give much partial credit, even for minor math errors. Also has the habit of adding additional problems to the homework the day before it\'s due. He seems like a nice guy, but I really can\'t figure whether he is oblivious to the amount of suffering he causes or if he relishes in it. Avoid this man.



EE 440 Senior Grade Earned: N/A Elective 10:09 am, Jan 18, 2010 Report Evaluation		TAKE ARAKAKI!! He is awesome at explaining details and preparing you for the real world. I am glad that I took him for 402, 440, and 533. If you plan on going into RF you should definitely take Arakaki.

EE 401 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 11:23 am, Aug 18, 2009 Report Evaluation		Arakaki is a very smart professor. If you pay attention and do the homework you can learn a lot from this guy. I had him the 1st quarter he taught and he pretty much wrote his own book for the classwork. We didn't even use the $100 book from El Corral just his printouts. Arakaki has won a lot of grant money for CalPoly so this guy is seriously smart. Take him, just watch out because sometimes the class averages can dip into the 50% to 30% range. Study that SMITH CHART BOYS AND GIRLS! He does assume that you know your shit so you may have to study up on some prereq classes. Homework is KEY. Do your homework and if you don't understand get in a studygroup or track Araraki down. He's very willing to help his students since he just loves those electrons and transmission lines. His classes are very calculus intensive so you have to derive and integrate better than frat boys can play beer pong. STUDY 20-30 HOURS PER WEEK SUCKAS!!!

EE 241 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:40 pm, Mar 31, 2009 Report Evaluation		If your pride gets hurt easily, stay far away from Arakaki. This guy would seem spectacular for an upper division course. But for something like 241, he's simply way too tough on his students. Get comfortable with seeing red ink all over your lab reports, with way too many points marked off for dumb things like saying "can't" instead of "cannot". Prelabs and quizzes are graded way too hard as well; quiz grade averages are horrible and the class average hovered around 60% all year, so don't freak out about your grade too much. I must admit, once this class is all said and done, you will learn something (mostly because you'll work your ass off to just to keep up with the curve). So while Arakaki may be on to something with his ridiculous grading inspiring students to work harder, it's just WAY too stressful for a one unit lab (and only the second EE lab we have taken so far as well).

EE 251 Junior Grade Earned: C Required (Support) 11:48 pm, Dec 10, 2008 Report Evaluation		This guy is ridiculous. I think he just assumes we know too much. Quiz averages were usually less than 50%, and lab averages less than 70%. For a 1 unit class, I think he expected too much. I would NOT recommend this professor. However I must add, that he is probably one of the nicest profs aside from his outrageous grading.

EE 201 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 8:27 am, Mar 20, 2008 Report Evaluation		A bit unreasonable in his requests for what you should know for a 200 level class. Within the first couple weeks he said "You should know this from Controls," unfortunately, 201 is a pre-req for controls. It almost seemed like he didn't know how to teach a lower level class. Both midterms weren't unreasonable, the final was pretty hard. Averages were around the %50 range. No homework, but weekly quizzes (usually on Fridays at the end of class). Quizzes weren't that bad if you were in class and paying attention somewhat. He NEVER made it through a whole lecture, he always got about 3/4 of the way through it because he'd get so sidetracked or caught up on one problem (once on one we didn't even need to know how to do). He did allow you to have a bunch of note sheets for tests, and I'm hoping he curves or else a lot of people are failing. Overall, a not so great teacher for 201.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:38 pm, Jan 17, 2008 Report Evaluation		I dont hate very many people, but Arakaki is one of them. Basically become good friends with everybody around you and help each other out in the labs because Arakaki basically just stands there and criticizes your work and makes you feel dumb. There's a huge curve at the end though, i had a 70% which turned into an A-



EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 12:03 pm, Dec 12, 2007 Report Evaluation		Arakaki is smarter than you and he wants you to know it. He criticized me for not knowing MatLab. How the hell is a first quarter freshman supposed to know MatLab? He's very condescending and seems dumbfounded and just scratches his head when you dont understand something. I dont think anyone told him its a freshman course. But like all EE labs theres a huge curve because, as I said, theres no way you know anything about what you're doing. I had like a 67% going into the final and I think I got about a C on that and a B in the class, so don't worry to much about your grade. Hes probably OK for upper level courses, but hes a dick for 151. Labs are due every week (they take forever), quiz on the upcoming lab every week and a final at the end.

EE 375 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 9:45 pm, Dec 11, 2007 Report Evaluation		This guy knows how to teach, even in lab. He was able to clearly present the material and really helped when we got stuck on parts of the lab. The only thing is that his grading style is unpredictable. He'll give and take points where you would never expect it. If you want to learn about electromagnetism, take Arakaki!

EE 375 Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 10:34 am, Dec 11, 2007 Report Evaluation		I am going to try my best not to curse...but it will be hard. At first glance he seems like a really nice guy...but don't let this fool you. He's a dick. One time during his mini lecture before lab he totally singled me out in class for not paying attention. I in fact was it was the other turds in class that weren't. I really didn't appreciate that. Let me just say this: If Breitenbach and Arakaki were both teaching the same lab, I would choose Breitenbach IMMEDIATELY. That' saying a lot. Arakaki has some VERY strange expectations in his lab class. After 3+ years of EE labs I thought I knew how to write a decent report but Arakaki says I don't. (im not the only one who felt this way). He cannot grade consistently and really cannot tell you what he wants because I don't think he knows what he wants from his students. This is an important lab too since he brings together a LOT of concepts from 335 and 402. If I were you, I'd take someone else like Ahlgren or Jinn if you want a more pleasant experience. The only good thing to say is that if you hang in there and put a lot of work on the labs and do decent on the final, you'll be ok. His saving grace is his huge curve. He has to curve a lot since he fails everyone on every lab... Try to avoid him if you can.

EE 375 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 12:42 am, Nov 27, 2007 Report Evaluation		HARD AS HELL!!!!! Put in the time, do the work, attend office hours, and he will back you up all of the way. Do not do these things, fail miserably, miss graduation, and take him again so that you learn the material. Getting a C in the class truely means your understand the material. TAKE HIM!!! HE IS THE NICEST PROF IN THE EE DEPARTMENT!!!! JON F.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:59 am, Oct 5, 2007 Report Evaluation		This class was cake. He took attendance every time, so you had to show up. I think we had to run to the library a few times too, although I just used the internets to get around that. The final was bad, nobody did that good on it because the lectures were so boring and nobody actually studied anything. He curved insanely at the end though, so I guess that's how I got an A. The guy reminds me of a goldfish.

EE 111 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:31 am, Aug 22, 2007 Report Evaluation		For a introduction lecture for the EE major, one hour per week, this isn't a bad class, but I find it rather useless. Arakaki goes through the weekly power points and honestly tries to engage the class in discussion and get people interested. The only problem, most of the time, it's not very interesting. He takes the class pretty seriously for such a basic class. My biggest problem with how he ran this class is the final: he was really vague on what it was going to be on, and it was almost impossible to effectively study for it, which furthermore makes it difficult to earn a good grade on the final. But don't worry about that too much. Take this class with Arakaki, and you won't be either pleased or disappointed.



EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:39 pm, Aug 21, 2007 Report Evaluation		The man is far too serious for an introduction class. If you don't do the assignment EXACTLY the way he wants it, you get screwed on your grade, regardless of justification. Take for example an assignment question (paraphrasing, of course): do you think downloading music online is right? why or why not? I answered that I did think it was right because music is like commercial time for the artists and that makes consumers go out and buy their products (apparel and whatnot). I got an F on the assignment. Anyway, it wasn't that it was a single instance. The things he delves into during the lectures are really not that important to EE and are just more of topics that would entice "yeah ok so what" kind of thoughts to run through an already tired engineering student's mind.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 11:35 am, Feb 20, 2007 Report Evaluation		He's not the greatest professor and he tries to cram everything into that 1 hour a week. As long as you do the assignments and go over them before the final you'll get an A easily. effff his powerpoints....

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 7:21 pm, Jan 8, 2007 Report Evaluation		Arakaki knows a lot about EE. The only thing is that he is horrible at the teaching aspect of being a professor! In lab you start with a quiz, which is fairly easy as long as you read the lad write up. After this, he lectures about the lab for about an hour. This is where he talks for non stop at high speed. You cant follow anything he says within this hour! Then you are stuck not knowing what to do once you actually have the chance to start the lab. If you're lucky you'll have a good partner and a good class. I was lucky enough to be in a great class where we all helped each other because we all felt the same. We were all failing! Luckily he grades a a huge curve because he has too!

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 1:12 pm, Dec 20, 2006 Report Evaluation		He should not be an intro teacher. He knows what he's talking about, but can't put it in terms that we can understand. He wastes a huge amount of time in class and then when something actually confuses the class he rushes through it. For example the first two of ten classes were spent learning the other peoples names and where they're from. Then when he starts teaching us math that we'll need for the next four years of our academic lives, he talkes about 20 minutes. He also goes out of his way to make his students feel like nothing for any mistake, and everyone else sits there watching him be a dick. It's an easy class and my advise is show up, do the work, take notes on the math, and agree with him. with that you'll get a good grade. After one quarter, I never want to have this man as my teacher again, and it was one of the easiest classes I had. One quick assignment a week and a final that was a bit harder then expected it's an easy class, but the only reason you show up is because it's 75% of your grade. I left learning nothing and I hate wasting my time like that.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:20 pm, Mar 27, 2006 Report Evaluation		For the labs, Arakaki didn't really explain what to do...He just came to the bench and did the lab for us, more or less. None of us really knew what to do for the homework, since we didn't understand the labs. This class made me want to drop out of EE, more or less.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 2:27 pm, Jan 10, 2006 Report Evaluation		He loves what he's teaching. Which is nice. However, he seems to forget he's teaching EE 111 and the difficulty of the class is ridiculous. He grades the assignments closely and marks everything. It's not hard to get a good grade; go to class and do the homework. The final is mostly short answer, so be prepared. Read through his slides on blackboard.



EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 4:10 pm, Dec 15, 2005 Report Evaluation		Arakaki was an overall nice guy and easily approachable however his negative qualities in this course far surpassed these positive ones. He seems to know the material that he teaches well, but has difficulty teaching lower level students. I think that he would probably be a good professor for higher level courses. He also seemed rather unprepared and frazzled at the beginning of every class. He would rush in in a hurry and start setting up his computer. He took this course a little to seriously as well, getting mad at students if they were looking another way. It is simply an intro class and I don't think we covered the history of EE enough to have to know on the final that Jack Kilby invented the intergrated circuit. Overall he was a nice guy, but a space case. I don't think he always understood questions. If you do take this class with him be careful of his ethics lecture. He says he wants your opinion on downloading mp3s, but in reality he wants to yell at you and use the class as his soapbox. Also be prepared to hear about his amazing Anechoic chamber every time your in his class.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: F Required (Major) 5:18 pm, Dec 13, 2005 Report Evaluation		he's one sided especially with the ethics section. he makes the classes harder than it is and he asks stupid questions on the final like what does IEEE stand for. WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH EE111?!?!!

EE 402 Graduate Student Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 5:53 am, Nov 21, 2005 Report Evaluation		If you wanna get a job right after graduation then listen to this guy and learn Antennas/Microwave/Electromagnetic engineering. Trust me the jobs will be falling from the sky. Its a very lucrative specialty that is often overlooked.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 1:26 pm, Oct 27, 2005 Report Evaluation		Simply put, the best teacher ever!

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Support) 2:50 am, Apr 4, 2005 Report Evaluation		motherfucking bitch

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 9:19 am, Mar 4, 2005 Report Evaluation		PROFESSOR ARAKAKI MAKES EE 111 MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT HAS TO BE. HE PRESENTS MATERIAL FAST AND CONFUSINGLY. I WAS ORIGINALLY FAILING THE CLASS, BUT THEN I STARTED GOING TO HIS OFFICE HOURS AND EMAILING HIM QUESTIONS AND ENDED UP GETTING THE BEST GRADE IN THE CLASS... HE IS A VERY NICE GUY AND IS WILLING TO HELP STUDENTS AT ANY COST...



EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:52 pm, Feb 28, 2005 Report Evaluation		Mr. A is an awesome professor. The material was not that easy, especially for those of us who had no electrical background, but he was very good during lab times to help us out, and even better in his office hours. He knows his stuff and he goes out of his way to help us understand it. He also gives excellent curves.

EE 401 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 5:31 pm, Mar 24, 2004 Report Evaluation		Having EE 401 with Dr. Arakaki is time consuming. If you are not interested in this subject, take the class with another professor and save yourself from the pain. My study group spent an average of 12 hours a week on the homework, NOT including the Matlab assignments. The Matlab assignments added on even more hours each week. Also, his grading on the midterms is pretty brutal. There are no quizzes. Unless you are good at this subject, you will experience much stress. However, if you love electromagnetic fields, or antennas, take him. He knows what he is talking about.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 9:19 pm, Mar 16, 2004 Report Evaluation		Dr. Arakaki is a very nice man and an awesome teacher. He may not present the material using simplistic concepts, but he clarifies the material well when you see him outside of class.

EE 111 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:17 pm, Mar 9, 2004 Report Evaluation		This course wasn't very material intensive, it was basically show up do the assignments and do the final and you get an A, but from what I could tell he wasn't that prepared for class, and he seemed kind of anal. He also didn't really have any clue what students knew...like whether they knew math, or algebra, or anything like that...kind of silly, but he's probably used to teaching upper division courses.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:44 am, Mar 1, 2004 Report Evaluation		Arakaki is not the best at teaching. He often makes things WAY too complicated. He will take a simple concept in an intro course, for instance, and ramble on it for half an hour (eating away at the time we have to do the lab) and confuse you even more than his confusing lab instructions are. The biggest problem lies in the layout of the class (which he designed): not giving EE students an intro to the EE material. Half the material covered requires some sort of previous knowledge of other EE material. If you enjoy learning on your own, Arakaki isn't that bad (besides the fact that he takes half the lab time to explain everything).

EE 151 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 5:37 pm, Feb 8, 2004 Report Evaluation		This class was being offered and taught for the first time, so the professors all had a lot of errors to correct in teaching this lab (some of the labs were WAAYYY too long and some didn't have too much relevance). Arakaki is a fairly good professor, but like what other reviewers say, he assigns a lot of work. In a few of the labs where I heard other lab professor were skipping chunks out of the labs to save time, Arakaki had us do it all. However, he was extremely helpful in lab and all you had to do is ask when you got stuck and he'd help you figure it out. I think for a 1 unit class he made the workload a little too heavy. The final exam was fair, he let us use our notebooks (word of advice, go back and write down EVERYTHING that you did and even questions that you answered from post labs, into your lab book because they will show up on the final). Arakaki is a good lab teacher, and once they get this course figured out in a couple of quarters he should be a great guy to have.



EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:05 am, Jan 16, 2004 Report Evaluation		Cal Poly Must NOT Have!!!!!!!!!!!!

EE 111 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 6:53 pm, Jan 11, 2004 Report Evaluation		First off I'd like to say that this class was being taught for the first time, and Professor Arakaki usually teaches upper division classes which is probably why he had some difficulties that I'm about to list. Arakaki is a real nice guy and easy to approach, but for a 1 unit class he really did assign WAY too much work. I took this class as a sophomore, when it is supposed to be a freshman class, and had it not been for some of the other classes that I had already taken (Physics 131, 133, Math 141-143, and EE 112) this class would have been extremely hard. Arakaki expects a little too much from freshmen, who are the ones mainly taking this course, hopefully he realizes that in the future. One final exam, which was pretty damn hard with NO notes, but I think he curved it a good deal. Bottom line: nice guy, but needs to realize that this is a lower division class.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:31 am, Jan 9, 2004 Report Evaluation		I believe that he is a great teacher. We only had one test, the final exam, and it directly related to the work we had done in the labs. He is also very generous when he curves the class. Although, it was an entry level course and he was not out to fail people. I recommend that you take this teacher.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 2:37 pm, Dec 24, 2003 Report Evaluation		Arakaki has got to be the most boring teacher out there. He never changes his tone which makes it really hard to stay awake. He kind of assumes everyone knows what he's talking about so if you have trouble you're kinda screwed. He also gives useless assignments but that may because it's an intro course. I'd suggest taking someone else.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 4:16 pm, Nov 13, 2003 Report Evaluation		If your a freshman and are new to EE, then this is not the best teacher to start off with. He expect you to know a lot about the material you will be learning. Sometimes he can be rude when you approach him about a question. Gives too way much work for an one unit class. But most of the homework will not require you to do a lot of hard math or physics, just a lot of research and tedious work. If you want the history of electrical engineering, this teacher will give it to you. If you want to start off slow, go find someone else, anyone else. Oh and if you think the lab book in the lab for this class is bad, he worte it.

EE 111 Freshman Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 1:03 pm, Nov 2, 2003 Report Evaluation		Out of all my teachers this year, this teacher had to be worst one I ever had. He talked to us as if we were all 3rd years with background in this major when half of us had never even taken phyics. I think that this example well say it best. One day we were in class and he was talking about binary code, i had never known how it worked and asked him and he was "what you don't know binary code?, I thought they toaght this in 8th grade!" this wasn't the only time this happened the instructer expect much more out of the student then we could give. and when we would ask a question he would explain it the same way.. which obivulsy didn't make no sence the first time and i don't know why it would make more sence the 2nd time, which it didn't. O and for presention materials his labs would always be wrong so if you printed out befor class, when you walked in you would need to print out a new one. My friends had other teachers for this class and they said this class was easy becuase there instructer actully told them how to do things they understood we didn't know anything which i guess this teacher didn't understand becuase even though we told him he never changed his ways.



EE 401 Junior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 8:20 am, Mar 26, 2003 Report Evaluation		Arakaki was a great great great great teacher. He's very helpful in class and in office hours. I don't know what everyone is complaining about, it's not him it's the material itself that's hard. It's almost impossible to get an A in this class. I know it might say A in the corner of my profile thing but I really got an A- and only two people got an A. So basically you need to be a genius to get an A. Good class very fun stuff just a lot of work.

EE 401 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 10:36 pm, Feb 26, 2003 Report Evaluation		As far as lecturing goes... It didn't help one bit. I went to less than half of his lectures. Arakaki's real talent is on paper. Reading his on-line notes and HW solutions is the only way to survive in his class. He's an excellent writer when it comes to the crazy language of magnetic fields propagating in free space.

EE 401 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 8:32 pm, Feb 12, 2003 Report Evaluation		No respect for a teacher with a 30/100 avg.

EE 401 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 12:23 am, Feb 3, 2003 Report Evaluation		first off, ee401 isn't an easy class to begin with, the material is harder than 334. the fact that arakaki teaches this course doesn't help either. he is a very tough professor, his test average is usually between 30 and 40 percent. he isn't the greatest lecturer, but he's a really nice guy and willing to help you in office hours. as far as the matlab code goes, dont bother doing it, it'll take many many hours, its not worth much, and you are not tested on it. i do recommend doing the homework. it's worth 10 percent, but if the class average is 40 or 50 percent, hw makes a big difference.

EE 401 Senior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 5:05 pm, Dec 19, 2002 Report Evaluation		Dr. Arakaki is very difficult. Don't be surprised with MT averages in the 30's. For our first exam, an 11 would de considered about a D (avg = 33 and stddev=22). The homework is helpful, but it is his discussion questions that you really need to focus on. The tests are extremely hard, but he is very approachable. Overall a very nice but difficult prof.

EE 401 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 9:53 am, Dec 16, 2002 Report Evaluation		Professor Arakaki is a very good teacher. He is brilliant in the topic of electomagnetic feilds, antennas, and transmission lines and offers very helpful handouts that he puts on blackboard for help. It is true, his exams are difficult, but if you know what is going on, you can do well on them. I did horrible on the first test, and gradually got better and ended up doing fine in the course. The hardest part of the class is the matlab code he expects you to brilliantly come up with without having any experience in coding in matlab. The best way to avoid this problem is to just not bother doing it. Sure, you lose 15 points on your hw score, but you save a sleepless night and then some. Take Arakaki because you will learn. He is very helpful in office hours and is a very hard-working professor.



EE 401 Senior Grade Earned: F Required (Major) 4:52 pm, Nov 7, 2002 Report Evaluation		This professor was just very difficult. I would say that he is the hardest professor that I ever took in my life. His exams are impossible. Also, he fails many students.

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