This unit deserves 5 stars because of Burkard alone. I found the content for this unit extremely interesting and consider the unit as being the "funnest" one i've taken to date. The homework tasks that you get given are super do-able if you have a small group of people to work on them together with. The major assignment for this unit consisted of writing an essay where you try and "capture the mathematical soul" in something of your own choosing (whether it be about sport, music, whatever - it's really upto you). While the write up is actually not so bad (and dare I say, somewhat fun), I found the marking scheme to be pretty unfair and somewhat harsh. All in all, this unit was super fun and I'd highly recommend it to anyone that's trying to fill up a space in their timetable (the maths portion isn't actually too difficult as this as more of an elective unit!).

Very interesting unit. Burkard is one of the few lecturers at Monash who genuinely loves to teach. However, it was more time consuming than I expected which meant that I spent less time focusing on my core units for my major.

Burkard is what I want to be when I grow up. His passion for maths and teaching is inspiring to me as a budding maths teacher myself, and the content in this unit is incredibly interesting, although can get pretty complicated and take up a fair amount of time when completing the problem sets every week.