Nakata, Takeshi  

Nakata is new to Cal poly and this was his first quarter teaching year. He is a terrible teacher, the absolute worst teacher I have had at Cal poly, but yet I didn't hate him. He's this little asian guy and is really nice and tries to teach he just can't. His lectures are just slides of the book and he never writes on the board or does any example problems. He isn't smart enough to teach this class and can barely answer your questions. He is a pushover and doesn't give that much homework its just Mastering Physics problems due once a week. You have quizzes every friday but they are on what the homework was that week. His tests are multiple choice and not that bad, you just have to learn EVERYTHING on your own and if you go to his office hours you literally have to PULL information out of him and ask him 20 questions to get one answer. TAKE him for lab because he's super easy and if you show up you're pretty much guaranteed at least a 90% in lab. You finish your lab reports in class and have no lab quizzes or anything. As for a teacher, I'd take him over others but don't go to class its an absolute waste of your time. Once again, he is a terrible teacher.

Nakata isn't a very good teacher. The lecture's will end up being a waste of time because you barely learn anything in them, for he doesn't effectively teach the class. The class will be pretty easy, so easy that because there's a curve, you will likely be curved down 7%. Yeah. That means to get an A in the class, you need at least a 97%. The quizzes and midterms are rather easy, as well. Even though he's extremely lenient and will go out of his way to help you, he's also seems really nervous and like he doesn't understand the material that much. Be in store for a ton of nervous laughter.

Horrible physics professor. Not smart enough to teach the engineering students here and curves down. So basically take your calculated grade and drop an entire letter grade; that will be your grade for the class. Teach yourself and dont go to lecture and pray that you get a 100% in the class so you can get an A after the curve.

I really liked Nakata! Yeah, it's kind of terrible he was so easy that he had to curve down, but his tests are fair. As long as you do the homework, you will not fail since his tests are basically the homework with different numbers. Because the tests are basically the homework, you can just study yourself and not even have to go to class. However, if you are like me and just like physics and really want to know the concepts, I can say that he is super helpful during office hours. A friend and I went every Thursday and he stayed with us to make sure we got the concepts even an hour after his office hours ended. He is also really personable, as he wanted to know about my outside-of-physics class life and he would tell us about his kids and what not. He's also kind of a push over and he knows it, so if the entire class complains about a due date or how many times you can do a problem on mastering physics he will probably change it to how the class feels.

Professor Nakata was the worst professor I've had at Cal Poly so far. Not only is he not able to clearly convey the course material, he doesn't even understand it himself. His lectures are basically a waste of time as he will only make you more confused. And while his tests are pretty easy for the most part (he takes them all from online and I doubt even goes through them himself) he curves down to get the average around 78%, so even if you get a 90 on a test it will probably end up being curved down an extra 3-4%. The only time he didn't curve down was when our second midterm got around a 70% average ONLY THEN did he decide he didn't need to curve it. He has also made several mistakes grading the midterms and made an obvious effort to not fix them even though the entire class got the problem wrong. Nakata is an absolutely terrible teacher and the only way to get an A in his class is to read the book and constantly and never go to the lectures. Overall I would say ,unless you want to not learn anything and get a terrible grade, to AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!

Worst professor ever. He is a nice person but can't teach.

Nakata is AWFUL. And I mean ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. The list is too long for me to write down but I'll give it a shot. I guess I'll start with the fact that he literally takes the problems and solutions from the book and copies them down for his lecture. Basically the school pays him to write down equations from the book on a whiteboard. Asking him questions is usually not a good idea because he will confuse you even more because he doesn't know a lot of the topics himself. Many times, kids in the class would answer questions of their classmates because Nakata could not answer them. The problems that are on the tests have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the examples we did in class. He uses Mastering Physics because he is too lazy to grade himself. How do I know this? Well he lost his grader for the quarter so the poor guy actually had to grade everything himself. We took a test week 3 and ended up getting those tests back in week 7, after we had already taken 2 more tests. A couple of times he messed up his answer key for the test and refused to give us points back, even though we got it right. Oh God. How can i forget his GRADING SCALE???? So he does not curve to help you, but rather to hurt you. The first couple of quarters he taught, his classes were too easy so the physics department told him his class average had to be a maximum of 75%. So, if the class average was an 85% (which will never happen because he doesn't teach anything) everyone gets a 75% because that is what the "department wants," (his excuse for the scale). To sum it up, He is a really nice person, super easy for lab, can't teach to save his life, has a messed up grading scale, too lazy to grade anything, and does not know most of the material we cover himself. How this guy was hired here? I have no idea. Maybe it is just because he has a PhD. by his name. This guy is a DISGRACE to anyone who has a PhD. because he is an absolutely HORRENDOUS TEACHER!!!!!!

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Nakata is the worst teacher I've ever had, hands down. He doesn't know the material. His homework was 50x harder than the problems we'd do in class and demands pre-gained knowledge. He has a hard time communicating English words, nonetheless conceptual Physics ideas. He is terrible at helping and understanding student's struggles. Oh god; DO NOT TAKE THIS TEACHER!! Hopefully he will be fired by the end of the year. I don't know how he even got a degree in physics! Wanted to be a movie-filmer but that was too hard so he became a physics teacher at a leading polytechnic university. Really Nakata?

Not a good teacher. Teachers teach students concepts and help them when they need it. This guys doesn't do that because he isn't qualified to teach Physics. He makes the same mistakes students make when he works problems in class, and has trouble doing homework problems he assigns his own students when they go to office hours for help. Very nice guy, but terrible professor.

Business majors: A degree for the intellectually impaired, HA HA.