[mk90]

Course Breakdown:
3 Midterms (50%)
3 Problem Sessions (Bonus 10%)
1 Exam (50%)
2 Lectures per week (1 1h & 1 2h)

This is the ONLY course I have ever dropped in the history of my undergraduate career.
Hopefully it will be the last. Against my better judgment, I disregarded all the horrible reviews about McCabe on rateyourprof.com, and my arrogance has really bit me in the ass.

The main problem with this course is the fact that McCabe cannot teach, or answer questions.
So basically, McCabe is possibly the worst prof I have ever encountered while I was here.

In the lecture, McCabe will do this dumb thing where he repeats the crap out of really simple things, like his initial explanation of the Nash Equilibrium. Then suddenly he will write complicated notations to represent these things, but you won't receive any explanation when you ask about it because he doesn't know how to answer questions. He says some random stuff that is irrelevant to your original question, and since he took 20 minutes to say what he wanted to say, you will have forgotten the original question, and be perplexed at whether or not he did answer it. You will put your hand down and give up, because he cannot answer questions. You will realize this immediately.

There is a textbook for this course, which I recommend you definitely get if you are taking this course. Don't get me wrong; it's a horrible textbook with convoluted and complicated wording, containing examples with no answers (where the problem sessions come from) and a lot of stuff that is directly irrelevant to what you will be learning. It's only slightly better than McCabe that you will need it. Because he will put stuff on the midterm that is directly from the textbook, but never mentioned in class. Did I mention that he puts stuff from the book directly from the book but not the lectures? I wanted to make that clear.
He also assigns entire chapters of the book (which are very VERY wordy and are contained in numerous pages), and never EVER covers those topics in class, then tells you that you don't need to know it like 5 days before the midterm. Basically, you waste your time reading the book because it might be on the test, but McCabe arbitrarily cuts out material, giving you not enough time to cover the book from the point that he says that only certain chapters are covered. In the end, you will waste your time reading the book all the time.

EVALUATIONS:
3 Midterms (50%)

The midterms are horribly written. The questions will be wordy, and complicated. You will likely never have seen any of these things in the lectures. I have been to every SINGLE lecture, taking notes very thoroughly, and I have never EVER seen these things mentioned. Then McCabe says he did mention them, which made me think that he really is losing his marbles, because I basically had a transcript of how the classes went as I wrote a lot of stuff down with my laptop. I did not read the textbook very well until after the first midterm, where I got destroyed because there are some really complicated questions on the midterm that are many, MANY times more difficult than the lecture material.

3 Problem sessions (Bonus 10%)
Then at this point, you might be looking at the mark allocations, and be saying, 'BUT WAIT! There is a bonus. Can't this do something for me so that I can go into the exam with over a 100?'

Let me give you a direct quote from Peter McCabe, mentioned to me in the 5 hour spree that was his office hours, during which he answered 0 of my questions.
'Everybody does horribly on the midterms and exam to the point where I had to invent problem sessions to give them bonus marks to allow them to pass the course.'

That bonus 10% isn't really a bonus; that's just a way that he can keep his damn job because if the failure rate in his course is extremely high, then he would be subject to questioning, rating, and be kicked out of this institution for his inability to teach.

But for those of you who do not heed my warning, and want to know what a problem session is in the first place, here it is: It is a bunch of complicated problems from the textbook without answers for which you receive bonus marks for solving in front of the class.
You can sign up to present your solutions to the class. But here is the trick.
1. You won't have enough time to present the solution in the class, even if you did volunteer.
2. You won't get the bonus mark you are expecting.

Let me break this down for you kiddies. Basically, 5-6 people sign up for the problem session, which is 2 hours in length. Maybe you will get through 1 problem before McCabe decides to interfere with irrelevant information or personal opinions on how the people solved the question, without even EVER answering the original question that was being presented. Everybody gets sidetracked, then don't understand the material that was presented. Next thing you know, an hour has passed, only one problem has been presented, and there is enough time to present maybe 1 or 2 if McCabe doesn't interrupt all the time with irrelevant information. Then the prof puts stuff from the problem session on the midterm, based on WHAT people signed up for, and not what people presented. SURPRISE!

The bonus mark you get is not really the FULL mark that you expect from doing the problem session (as in if you signed up for one and luckily did present it, you won't get 3.3% Bonus mark for presenting it; you will get assigned an arbitrary value that McCabe thinks you deserve, which can be 0 - 3.3% per problem session).




After reading this length review, you might be thinking, 'but wait. How can I trust this faceless yet noble internetmonger's tragic review about the course that HE DROPPED? He could be a yokel out of the most remote parts of Canada, and he might be a crap student in the first place! He has no information on the exam, or anything! Jeez. What a crap review and waste of time. I'm outta here.'

It's up to you to believe me, but here's my personal story of this course. As most of you who signed up for this course did, I was like, 'WOW game theory. that stuff sounds so awesome like.. I watched the Beautiful Mind and I loved that movie. Might not be so bad.'
So I took that course, and regretted it horribly. However, as a person who has NEVER dropped a course before, I decided to tough it out when I realized my mistake too late and it was past the add/drop date. When I screwed up the first midterm (worst mark I had EVER gotten in undergraduate), I went to his office hours and questioned him all the time so I can improve my mark through the second midterm. He was no help. McCabe might be a nice guy, but he might be getting too old for his job. His incompetence and his extremely stubborn nature overshadows anything and everything about him, which makes me so mad that I hate him as a human being. Maybe at SOME point, he might have been a good prof. But not now.

Forgot to write that the interest bar is 7, because I was interested in game theory. Now my interest is 1. I don't care for it anymore, thanks to this course.