It's...okay. As a class, pretty easy: homeworks were not especially time-consuming or difficult, and the exams were all very straightforward. That being said, it doesn't feel like we learned much at all? Most of the course felt like essentially different ways to dress-up a partial derivative, maybe plus a cross product if you're feeling spicy. If you handed an above-average 32A student our formula sheet and gave them our final, they would honestly probably pass. No other major downsides, the lectures were okay (lots of examples, some neat drawings), but I do feel somewhat let down by this course as an elective. This class only talks about curves and 2-manifolds, so do keep that in mind.

I loved Professor Varvarezos! Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked 131B a lot more than 131A, cause I feel like even though the concepts become more abstract you actually prove a lot more of them completely so if you follow along, things click into place.

Professor Varvarezos goes materials in a slow-paced but explicit manner. The exams are getting harder as the course proceed, but the examinable contents are consistent with what covered in the class. The workload is relatively light, but be cautionary about the practice test problems as they could be testing in a trickier way.

This review must be nuanced.

I hate how discompassionate the professor is.

His grading is harsh and often awarded generous penalties for simple mistakes; this affected both homework and exam grades. He also doesn't expand enough in solutions for practice and homework questions, so you may feel lost on some problems if you don't make an appearance in his office hours.

That said, he is an extremely good lecturer. He also had a hilarious fight with another professor once. His review questions are solid. Overall, he is not the worst and not the best.

I enjoyed the content of this course, and I thought the course was well-organized and enjoyable overall. Lectures were a bit dry, and the professor seemed unconfident (despite rarely making any actual mistakes). However, they were clear and easy to follow as well. I enjoyed the homework, and thought exams were fair. I would have enjoyed it if the class were a bit less computational and a bit more proof based.

Professor Varvarezos's 120A feels like a lower-division class, in both material learned and also easiness. I did not learn much from this class as I would have wanted about differential geometry besides computations and brushing up on differentiation and picturing three-dimensional spaces, since that was primarily the highest dimension that we studied. He spent much of class getting caught up in the details of differentiating functions, which is beneficial for most of the mathematics of teaching majors but was not the most helpful use of time to me, a pure math major. I would have appreciated more of generalization to higher-dimensional spaces or more topics in the vast field of differential geometry.

The professor teaches clearly and concisely and midterms and finals tested very basic concepts. As this class is a requirement for most majors, I recommend him. Office hours are super helpful and getting a good grade in this class is not tedious.

Professor Varvarezos was a fine professor. His tests were manageable but difficult, and if I had to take this class again I wouldn't mind being in his lecture.

This class was great. He’s a great professor and you should totally take 31A with him if you are able to. The workload was not and at all. All you had to do was study to do good on midterms and final.

Best professor ever! The midterms and final are exactly like the midterm and final study guides, kinda even easier, the homework was sometimes even harder than the tests. He is very good at giving examples during class and always makes sure to ask if anyone has any questions when going over topics. If you took AB Calc in high school this is an easy A for sure.