MATH 32A
Calculus of Several Variables
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: course 31A with grade of C- or better. Introduction to differential calculus of several variables, vector field theory. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Spring 2023 - Class was interesting but this professor simply cannot lecture. At times, I understood more watching 5 minute youtube videos than after sitting through an entire lecture from Demiroglu. She is also not nice at all and good luck trying to get a response from her if you email. Tests were okay I guess... Midterm 1 was pretty fair but midterm 2 was much more difficult. Final was also not easy. Avoid if you can.
Spring 2023 - Class was interesting but this professor simply cannot lecture. At times, I understood more watching 5 minute youtube videos than after sitting through an entire lecture from Demiroglu. She is also not nice at all and good luck trying to get a response from her if you email. Tests were okay I guess... Midterm 1 was pretty fair but midterm 2 was much more difficult. Final was also not easy. Avoid if you can.
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Pretty ineffective professor. Going to lectures was pointless and it's easier to just self-teach from the textbook. He doesn't do anything online so you have to actually go to class to get the homework problems. The class had 1 midterm and 1 final. The midterm was extremely easy, but the final was extremely hard. Your overall grade is curved based on the median of the class. Would not recommend.
Pretty ineffective professor. Going to lectures was pointless and it's easier to just self-teach from the textbook. He doesn't do anything online so you have to actually go to class to get the homework problems. The class had 1 midterm and 1 final. The midterm was extremely easy, but the final was extremely hard. Your overall grade is curved based on the median of the class. Would not recommend.
Most Helpful Review
I liked Professor Duke. He is a great professor for your first quarter of math -- his exams are reasonable (about 65-70 mean), and his grading system is very fair (he allows one of the midterm to be discounted in you score better on the final). He also REALLY cares about the success of his students, often asking us what we thought after exams and lectures and helping us in whatever way he can.
I liked Professor Duke. He is a great professor for your first quarter of math -- his exams are reasonable (about 65-70 mean), and his grading system is very fair (he allows one of the midterm to be discounted in you score better on the final). He also REALLY cares about the success of his students, often asking us what we thought after exams and lectures and helping us in whatever way he can.
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Fall 2020 - To put it plainly, if you take him you'll have a homework each week (no exception) with on average 25 exercises but it can go as much as 40, which takes on average 7 to 15 hours. It's a heavy workload, especially when you have him in 2 classes (would not recommend at all, I had 60 to 80 exercises a week just with these 2 classes, it was a nightmare). He doesn't drop any grade (not flexible at all on that), but you can give back all homework until the last day of the last week. For the test, it was covid so we had 24 hours, it was honestly not that bad compared to the homework and the course. Everything was doable, but clearly not in 50 minutes as he said, more in 5 to 6 hours. But doable, not impossible.
Fall 2020 - To put it plainly, if you take him you'll have a homework each week (no exception) with on average 25 exercises but it can go as much as 40, which takes on average 7 to 15 hours. It's a heavy workload, especially when you have him in 2 classes (would not recommend at all, I had 60 to 80 exercises a week just with these 2 classes, it was a nightmare). He doesn't drop any grade (not flexible at all on that), but you can give back all homework until the last day of the last week. For the test, it was covid so we had 24 hours, it was honestly not that bad compared to the homework and the course. Everything was doable, but clearly not in 50 minutes as he said, more in 5 to 6 hours. But doable, not impossible.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - I just wanted to start out by saying that Sylvester, the god himself, is by far one of the best mathematics professors at UCLA. Despite being a new professor, he handled teaching Math 32A very well, and I'd highly recommend that if he's available, go ahead and take his section! His lectures are okay, and he connects the topics well. Sometimes he might not explain a concept the best, but if you ask questions he takes care to answer them all during lecture with extreme clarity, which is definitely a big bonus. He does have typos (on both online documents and during lecture), but honestly those do not detract from the material that he's teaching. During discussion, people would do groupwork (assisted by LAs) worksheets that quite closely resembled the exam questions, and since discussion is part of the participation grade, I'd highly recommend going. The midterms are straight up easy, but can be time consuming. As long as you paid attention during lecture and worked somewhat on the worksheet/homework problems, you were guaranteed As on the midterms. The final is somewhat a lot more difficult (during final exam review he even stumped himself while trying to solve a question...), but he accommodates by grading extremely leniently (he told us no long computations would be on the test, and when there was a question that was extremely tedious, I believe he ended up giving a lot of people full marks to compensate). His grading scheme is pretty fair; your standard 10-25-25-40 I believe, and he DOES give extra credit, so make sure to utilize those as much as possible (we got 1% for analyzing a map of UCLA and 3% for Piazza participation). Overall, awesome dude. Follow his Instragram too!
Fall 2018 - I just wanted to start out by saying that Sylvester, the god himself, is by far one of the best mathematics professors at UCLA. Despite being a new professor, he handled teaching Math 32A very well, and I'd highly recommend that if he's available, go ahead and take his section! His lectures are okay, and he connects the topics well. Sometimes he might not explain a concept the best, but if you ask questions he takes care to answer them all during lecture with extreme clarity, which is definitely a big bonus. He does have typos (on both online documents and during lecture), but honestly those do not detract from the material that he's teaching. During discussion, people would do groupwork (assisted by LAs) worksheets that quite closely resembled the exam questions, and since discussion is part of the participation grade, I'd highly recommend going. The midterms are straight up easy, but can be time consuming. As long as you paid attention during lecture and worked somewhat on the worksheet/homework problems, you were guaranteed As on the midterms. The final is somewhat a lot more difficult (during final exam review he even stumped himself while trying to solve a question...), but he accommodates by grading extremely leniently (he told us no long computations would be on the test, and when there was a question that was extremely tedious, I believe he ended up giving a lot of people full marks to compensate). His grading scheme is pretty fair; your standard 10-25-25-40 I believe, and he DOES give extra credit, so make sure to utilize those as much as possible (we got 1% for analyzing a map of UCLA and 3% for Piazza participation). Overall, awesome dude. Follow his Instragram too!
Most Helpful Review
So basically he's a nice old guy but if you're can't stay awake in morning classes, this will suck for you. Bring stuff to eat, and if that doesn't work, bring homework. He gives extremely conceptual explanations that do not register at 9:00 am in the morning, and his homework involves a program called Mathematica, so if you procrastinate, chances are you'll be spending Thursday nights in Powell... The worst thing's probably his homework handouts, which are e-mailed to you. A few days later, u'll receive a error corrections email, and a few days after that you'll get a corrections to the corrections e-mail. All together, hard to organize. That said, the plus sides include not always having to go to class as long as you can teach yourself math. I went to class maybe once every two weeks, and never met my TA. The midterm was more like practice final, and final was mostly fair. So basically, Study+ Practice= A
So basically he's a nice old guy but if you're can't stay awake in morning classes, this will suck for you. Bring stuff to eat, and if that doesn't work, bring homework. He gives extremely conceptual explanations that do not register at 9:00 am in the morning, and his homework involves a program called Mathematica, so if you procrastinate, chances are you'll be spending Thursday nights in Powell... The worst thing's probably his homework handouts, which are e-mailed to you. A few days later, u'll receive a error corrections email, and a few days after that you'll get a corrections to the corrections e-mail. All together, hard to organize. That said, the plus sides include not always having to go to class as long as you can teach yourself math. I went to class maybe once every two weeks, and never met my TA. The midterm was more like practice final, and final was mostly fair. So basically, Study+ Practice= A
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