What might be good about his 31B class: Professor Brizolis is helpful and cares about his students. He holds office hours on every lecture day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) for most of the weeks. Although I didn't visit him in office hours, I heard from my classmate that his office hours are effective and are worth going to. He constantly communicate with us through e-mail especially during exam weeks and generally respond to my e-mails pretty quickly. He did mention the style of exam questions as he explaines some examples during lectures, and his practice mid-terms are valuable resources for studying both mid-terms as the real ones are very similar in format to these samples. By mastering the practice mid-terms and knowing what's basically going on in this course, one (with a fairly solid high school calc background) can probably secure a very decent grade before the final as long as no fatal mistakes occur. Although I don't know whether or not & to what extent he really considers improvement, Professor Brizolis do claim that we shall not be discouraged by a single bad grade and if you improve a lot in later exams, he will give you a decent grade that you deserve. For me, I think the best way to learn math is by solving problems, so I found his homework after every lecture useful. I got Tim Smits as my TA and he is very effective in his discussion sessions and very resourceful for exam-preparations. He covers questions or topics that does not go in depth in lectures in a very efficient manner, and he provides tons of practice questions and is always there to help during exam weeks.

What might not be good about his 31B class: Although Professor Brizolis claims that he takes improvement into account, he is generally a very strict evaluator. There is no curve (I guess unless the whole class perform extremely poorly), no extra credit, no weighting options (some other maths courses can replace a bad mid-term with a increasing weight on the final, but Brizolis made the weighted percentage for every exam unchangable) and thus very limited space for mistakes throughout the quarter. Getting an A or above means both lots of hard work, and perfect performance during exams. I personally think one or two really tiny mistakes lowered my A to A- . For the hw assignment after every lecture, although it could be useful, it is not a light burden since they are collected in the next lecture and are graded strictly (as you might feel necessary to make sure hw grades are as high as possible). The mid-terms are doable and simlilar to the samples, but the final is harder and very strained in time. Professor Brizolis goes throughly into proof for every lecture, but the process simply takes unnecessarily long time because he goes into too many details which also increased the chance for him to make mistakes. I don't mind taking 5 to 10 minutes every lecture to learn about proof, but spending more than half of the time on such stuff that is never tested is not reasonable for me. Although he managed to cover almost everything in syllabus, some of the topics are just rushed through and are taught very roughly, including certain topics that are tested heavily on the final. I really think Professor Brizolis could find another way of teaching proof that enables him to teach more exam related stuff during lectures.

This was my favorite math class from the 31-33 series, and the professor was a large contributor to that.
I relied more on taking notes during his lecture than using the textbook and that mostly sufficed. Discussions and office hours were crucial to my understanding as well (s/o to Joseph Breen!).
The midterms, homework, information were great but ---the final was very difficult---
I recommend using all the resources, making the time for this class, studying extra hard for the final, and practicing solving while timing yourself.
Enjoy the class it's fun with Brizolis

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I'm not gonna lie, this is a tough class. But, I feel like I should give the other perspective on this class as well. For one, while the exams especially the final was tough, it was wholly within the syllabus and there were no curve ball problems on it. Hence, with enough preparation, you can ace it. However, I have to agree Brizolis is often not the clearest in his lectures, and I depended heavily on more TA Joseph Breen (bless him and his study guides) to guide me through the class. If you are not fortunate enough to have Jo as your TA, go to the Student Math Center for some help. They are very helpful.

Overall, Professor Brizolis was a decent professor. He's quite knowledgeable and obviously knows the course material fairly well. However, his lecturing skills aren't the greatest. He will often make mistakes on the board and will continue unless students correct him. Additionally, his teaching style is very much so proof-based, which can be boring at times. The upside of this is that you can often space out for a bit while he's explaining the nitty-gritty parts as long as you can refocus when he gets back to the essential formulas and such.

Homework is assigned at the end of every lecture, with anywhere from 3-14 problems assigned. Compared to other math classes, the homework load is fairly heavy. He doesn't post homework pdfs on CCLE, so getting a copy of the current textbook would probably be a good idea, unless your TA posts the pdfs.

Exams were difficult but doable. He posts practice midterms before each exam, and they are basically copies of the exam with some small changes, so preparing for those is easy. The final, however, was much more difficult.

Overall, I would recommend Professor Brizolis for this class if you don't mind boring lectures and lots of homework. Otherwise, if there are better alternatives, choose them.

1) GRADING: midterm 1 (25%) midterm 2 (25%) hw/quizzes (10%) final (40%) HE DOES NOT CURVE!!!!!

2) MIDTERMS: first one was pretty difficult unless you're awesome at integrals... second one was easier by a lot. however, each exam only has 4 questions so there is very little room for error

3) FINAL: i feel like his final covered obscure concepts that weren't really covered in class; half of the final had this one concept that was only covered in ONE homework assignment. I did pretty poorly but I could've also studied more...

4) HOMEWORK: 10 problems due every lecture(3x a week); for the first half of the quarter, hw took a LOOONG time due to gross integrals, got a little better for the second half of the quarter though (series)

5) LECTURES: centered around proofs, hardly any example problems

6) TAs: if you get Joe Breen you have been blessed. that is all.

Let me try to be as fair as possible.

Brizolis is an overall nice person and is always willing to help. I mean the dude held office hours 3 times a week. He does his best to explain the concepts and at times can be very helpful and clear.

His midterms are similar to the practice midterms so if you study those and master the material in the book then I honestly think you can get an A. I simply studied the wrong way and is why I did so poorly.

Now let me get into what I did not like about his class. He spends 90% of the class discussing proofs that he tells you won’t be tested. Now I do understand that a small % of students want to learn these proofs but most people are there to pass a prereq and would rather be taught examples for hw. It’s hard to cram this material in 10 weeks and due to the amount of time spent on proofs I feel as if the last portion of the class was much more difficult than it could have been. (Taylor polynomials in one week is way to little, even the TA’s said this).

The final was much more difficult than his practice final. Some questions were on things that were rarely seen in the book + the TA’s never covered specific examples like those so it made it harder than it had to be.

HE DOES NOT CURVE. He states that he cares about improvement so take that as you will. HW is collected. One quiz was given at the beginning of the quarter.

If you’ve taken BC in high school then this class might be fine for you but if you want to learn the material clearly then I’d suggest taking it with someone who has more experience in this field.