Federico Scavia
Department of Mathematics
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3.1
Overall Rating
Based on 20 Users
Easiness 2.8 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.9 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.9 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

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GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
33.5%
27.9%
22.3%
16.8%
11.2%
5.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

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Reviews (16)

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Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: C+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 5, 2023

I was bummed that I struggled so hard in this class, this was the first C I'd ever gotten in a class. My issues with Scavia were the following :

-taught to the whiteboard, not to the class
-was never accessible one-on-one, unless you talked to him right after class, where he would be kind of rude or give short answers. Although he was very responsive over email which I appreciated.
-did nothing about filling in the knowledge gap due to the TA strike/no discussions
-curved the final (60% average, but took up 45% of our grade) by 4%
-didn't drop the lowest test score or offer alternate exam times

I wish him the best (and understand that some of it was from me adjusting to a new school,) but the Math department could've done way better.

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Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A-
Dec. 19, 2022

Scavia was a reasonable professor. Keep in mind that nearly all of the students who took his F2022 section are first year, first quarter students, myself included, so some of the difficulty associated with the class could be adjustment-related.
On workload:
The problem sets were fine. They usually took me about an hour to an hour and a half depending how many tricky problems there were. It usually was 3-4 basic problems and 1-2 challenging problems per chapter, totaling about 15 questions per homework. It's easy to break up throughout the week and generally pertinent to lectures and exams. The grader graded like 2 problems per set and could be harsh at times, but with the lowest two grades dropped it wasn't an issue. He goes over many of the problems in office hours so if you ask about a specific problem or just hang in the back you can get over half of the solutions just by showing up and paying attention. Honestly, the bulk of the workload of this class is just individual time that you choose to study (which I certainly feel is necessary; the homework questions alone are not enough to prepare for the average student)
On lectures:
Scavia is a good lecturer. He writes things out clearly and is typically pretty good at breaking down the topics. He's not exceedingly engaging and doesn't always pause for people to ask questions, but if you can keep up with his pace, I think he's very clear. Sometimes, I felt like he had a little trouble going off script when people would ask questions, but he did always make an earnest effort to explain if someone asked a question, and was always patient with some, frankly, incredibly stupid questions. I showed up to every lecture except one, so I don't know if this is a class that you could get away with skipping, but personally, I felt like it was valuable and saved me many hours of studying. Classes are also not recorded.
On exams:
For essentially all of the questions, I felt that I knew where to start. Still, his questions can be very algebraically complicated. It's important to have a very good, detailed grasp on algebraic concepts and basic precalc things (limits, completing the square, factoring). The detail-oriented performed the best on his exams. Still, I performed dead-average on both of the midterm exams, and his curve was very generous. In both exams, I scored a 70% that was curved up to a 90%, or essentially a 8% grade boost to my final grade. I ended up with exactly a 90% for my final grade. You can make algebraic mistakes on your exam and still fare well with your final grade. They're challenging but definitely not impossible; there were a few 100% on each test. He's also a really fast grader. I got some grades back within 6 hours of the exam.
On office hours:
I only went twice because my lectures overlapped with it. It's super helpful for homework questions that you would ordinarily get stuck on. Sometimes I found that he would solve problems in ways that weren't really in the scope of what we had learned or in a more "intuitive" way than a formulaic way, which could bother me because this class is honestly pretty bound to rules, theorems, and formulas. Still, office hours were generally positive and I wish I could have gone more.
Final thoughts: I'd taken AP Calc BC two years before taking this class and I thought it would save me some studying. I did no outside studying besides 3-4 hours the night before each exam, but this class was a huge nailbiter for me, and I barely pulled an A-. I would really recommend at least 2-3 hours of outside studying per week to keep you at the level of confidence with algebra and complicated applications of topics that will show up on your exams. I'm also a math major, so I am probably a bit quicker with concepts than other students, so studying is a must. Scavia is nice, reasonable, and you definitely can do well in this class granted the curve and some studying.

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0 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 18, 2022

I would say that the curves Scavia offered was definitely great, which is mentioned by many other reviews. However, be PREPARED to study on your own in order to fully understand the materials. I spend hours reading the textbook before each homework and exam. His lessons are great, as he offers a lot of examples. However, I personally wasn’t able to follow his pace. He went quite fast on each topic in my personal opinion, but it wasn’t completely his fault as we have the quarter system.

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Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 13, 2022

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.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 13, 2022

This was one of the most enriching classes I took this quarter. Professor Scavia is extremely systematic, organized and helpful. One interesting thing to note is that he grades his midterms and finals at breakneck pace; never have I had a professor who graded tests as fast as him.
I found his grading to be fair and reflective of the difficulty of the problems that we went over in class. He ended up scaling up the midterms and finals to reflect the performance of the class. His homework problems were selected from the textbook and were well chosen to touch upon all the concepts that we had covered in class.
I had covered approximately the first half of this course in high school, but the second half was completely new to me. So, speaking from experience with having and not having prior knowledge, I can say that this class was challenging due to its pace. But the professor's extensive office hours, resources and additional help provided during the TA & grad student strike was integral to my success in this class.

I would highly recommend this Professor for Math 31B due to his systematic approach, subtle humor and accommodating nature and I look forward to taking more of his classes myself in the upcoming quarters!

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0 3 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 12, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: C+
Jan. 5, 2023

I was bummed that I struggled so hard in this class, this was the first C I'd ever gotten in a class. My issues with Scavia were the following :

-taught to the whiteboard, not to the class
-was never accessible one-on-one, unless you talked to him right after class, where he would be kind of rude or give short answers. Although he was very responsive over email which I appreciated.
-did nothing about filling in the knowledge gap due to the TA strike/no discussions
-curved the final (60% average, but took up 45% of our grade) by 4%
-didn't drop the lowest test score or offer alternate exam times

I wish him the best (and understand that some of it was from me adjusting to a new school,) but the Math department could've done way better.

Helpful?

0 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A-
Dec. 19, 2022

Scavia was a reasonable professor. Keep in mind that nearly all of the students who took his F2022 section are first year, first quarter students, myself included, so some of the difficulty associated with the class could be adjustment-related.
On workload:
The problem sets were fine. They usually took me about an hour to an hour and a half depending how many tricky problems there were. It usually was 3-4 basic problems and 1-2 challenging problems per chapter, totaling about 15 questions per homework. It's easy to break up throughout the week and generally pertinent to lectures and exams. The grader graded like 2 problems per set and could be harsh at times, but with the lowest two grades dropped it wasn't an issue. He goes over many of the problems in office hours so if you ask about a specific problem or just hang in the back you can get over half of the solutions just by showing up and paying attention. Honestly, the bulk of the workload of this class is just individual time that you choose to study (which I certainly feel is necessary; the homework questions alone are not enough to prepare for the average student)
On lectures:
Scavia is a good lecturer. He writes things out clearly and is typically pretty good at breaking down the topics. He's not exceedingly engaging and doesn't always pause for people to ask questions, but if you can keep up with his pace, I think he's very clear. Sometimes, I felt like he had a little trouble going off script when people would ask questions, but he did always make an earnest effort to explain if someone asked a question, and was always patient with some, frankly, incredibly stupid questions. I showed up to every lecture except one, so I don't know if this is a class that you could get away with skipping, but personally, I felt like it was valuable and saved me many hours of studying. Classes are also not recorded.
On exams:
For essentially all of the questions, I felt that I knew where to start. Still, his questions can be very algebraically complicated. It's important to have a very good, detailed grasp on algebraic concepts and basic precalc things (limits, completing the square, factoring). The detail-oriented performed the best on his exams. Still, I performed dead-average on both of the midterm exams, and his curve was very generous. In both exams, I scored a 70% that was curved up to a 90%, or essentially a 8% grade boost to my final grade. I ended up with exactly a 90% for my final grade. You can make algebraic mistakes on your exam and still fare well with your final grade. They're challenging but definitely not impossible; there were a few 100% on each test. He's also a really fast grader. I got some grades back within 6 hours of the exam.
On office hours:
I only went twice because my lectures overlapped with it. It's super helpful for homework questions that you would ordinarily get stuck on. Sometimes I found that he would solve problems in ways that weren't really in the scope of what we had learned or in a more "intuitive" way than a formulaic way, which could bother me because this class is honestly pretty bound to rules, theorems, and formulas. Still, office hours were generally positive and I wish I could have gone more.
Final thoughts: I'd taken AP Calc BC two years before taking this class and I thought it would save me some studying. I did no outside studying besides 3-4 hours the night before each exam, but this class was a huge nailbiter for me, and I barely pulled an A-. I would really recommend at least 2-3 hours of outside studying per week to keep you at the level of confidence with algebra and complicated applications of topics that will show up on your exams. I'm also a math major, so I am probably a bit quicker with concepts than other students, so studying is a must. Scavia is nice, reasonable, and you definitely can do well in this class granted the curve and some studying.

Helpful?

0 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 18, 2022

I would say that the curves Scavia offered was definitely great, which is mentioned by many other reviews. However, be PREPARED to study on your own in order to fully understand the materials. I spend hours reading the textbook before each homework and exam. His lessons are great, as he offers a lot of examples. However, I personally wasn’t able to follow his pace. He went quite fast on each topic in my personal opinion, but it wasn’t completely his fault as we have the quarter system.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 13, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A+
Dec. 13, 2022

This was one of the most enriching classes I took this quarter. Professor Scavia is extremely systematic, organized and helpful. One interesting thing to note is that he grades his midterms and finals at breakneck pace; never have I had a professor who graded tests as fast as him.
I found his grading to be fair and reflective of the difficulty of the problems that we went over in class. He ended up scaling up the midterms and finals to reflect the performance of the class. His homework problems were selected from the textbook and were well chosen to touch upon all the concepts that we had covered in class.
I had covered approximately the first half of this course in high school, but the second half was completely new to me. So, speaking from experience with having and not having prior knowledge, I can say that this class was challenging due to its pace. But the professor's extensive office hours, resources and additional help provided during the TA & grad student strike was integral to my success in this class.

I would highly recommend this Professor for Math 31B due to his systematic approach, subtle humor and accommodating nature and I look forward to taking more of his classes myself in the upcoming quarters!

Helpful?

0 3 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2022
Grade: A
Dec. 12, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 2 Please log in to provide feedback.
2 of 2
3.1
Overall Rating
Based on 20 Users
Easiness 2.8 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.9 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.9 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

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