I expect these reviews will be overly negative. Scavia wasn't the best, but he was fine as a professor. His lectures were hit or miss for me, sometimes I felt like I understood his explanations and sometimes I felt like I should've slept in. If you took the homework seriously and tried to understand the topics you probably weren't too lost at any point. The one time I did skip this class for two lectures in a row I had no idea how to do anything on the homework and to be honest still haven't fully grasped those concepts(which at least proves that his lectures provided some value). The complaint that a lot of people had for this class is the fact that the tests were very difficult. He would always say that if you do the homework you would be just fine for the midterms and the final, but that's not really the case, the problems in the tests resemble only the hardest homework problems which always use some funky trick/shortcut. For the midterms the averages were around ~68% and the final averages were ~60%, frankly I still don't fully understand how he scaled everything but I believe he ended up curving your overall grade by 13% (4% per each test and 1% for evaluation) and generously curving. Scavia definitely made this class harder than it should've been but did not do anything unreasonable. Overall a meh class.

Prof. Scavia was brand new the quarter I took this class. I was not fond of him as a lecturer. I found them confusing and in some cases unorganized. Additionally, he wasn't an engaging lecturer. I found the tests to be vastly different from the practice tests provided and the homework load was not the best either. His notes were often times confusing so lecture was crucial, but, he wasn't the best at being able to use the mic so it was often hard to understand lecture

Even though I received a good grade in this class, I would not say this class or professor was easy. The homework was manageable and not too much; however, the grader was quite harsh, so you definitely needed to double check your work if you wanted full points.
Although the homework wasn’t too much, unless you are naturally gifted at math, studying will take up a lot of your time if you want to get a good grade. Scavia goes quite fast, shows a lot of theory, does not necessarily show his steps in between unless asked, which makes new concepts confusing, and even told us the wrong equation or practice problem in lectures, further adding to the class’s general confusion. His office hours did not help as much either as his explanations made me walk out of the office hours more confused than I started.
One plus about him though is his flexibility. His exams are quite difficult because, even though he pulls the root of the problem from homework and lecture problems, he always adds an extra layer to them to make them more difficult and, in some cases, confusing. However, though he initially stated in his syllabus he would only do one curve at the end, he curved each midterm and final in response to the class’s grade distribution and average, so that helped a lot and, in my opinion, evened out some of the difficulty.
Overall, if there is another professor that is easier, I would highly recommend going with the other professor. While Scavia’s class is doable if you put hours into studying and practicing all of the textbook’s end of chapter practice problems, he is a difficult professor to learn from. I came into this class having only taken Calc AB and relied a lot on YouTube videos to explain new concepts and the textbook problems to get practice. Beware, even if you have taken Calc BC, this can still be a very difficult class.

Avoid this professor at all cost. Seriously. Nothing against Professor Scavia personally at all. It's just that he's not a good professor and can't teach mathematical concepts to students properly and clearly. Lectures were mundane and fast—you will see a lot of Professor Scavia's back as he scrawls numbers and greek letters on the white board. He doesn't record lectures at all, which is a huge red flag in my opinion. He uploads very, very messy lecture notes that don't even entirely correlate with what was covered. There was practically no way for struggling students to review or self-learn (if you happen to miss a lecture) effectively. The other professor who taught Math 31B during the same term had ALL lecture recordings AND notes that are very clear and structured (like very, very) uploaded to his students. I ended up using that professor's notes to study instead because Professor Scavia does not provide you with any study materials besides the textbook. No reason to pick Professor Scavia over other available professors.

when i took this class, scavia had scaled up the midterm grades by like 20% and the final by 10% which was reassuring cuz i did horribly in the midterms but aced the final and ended up with an a. scavia never recorded his 8am lectures which was fair but also meant that there was a lot of self studying to do.

exams are hard but he scaled a lot