Overall, 32B with Professor Varvarezos was certainly an interesting experience to say the least - as I probably should have expected considering he's a brand new instructor.

All said and done, Professor Varvarezos as a person generally did an adequate job - for a first-time lecturer at least. He definitely could have been a lot worse, though I will say that he without a doubt has a great amount of room to improve. In terms of clarity, some of his explanations of the concepts in class were just bizarre and incoherent, which led me to attend office hours frequently, where he usually was fairly responsive and able to articulate himself a bit better. Continuing on the topic of accessibility, he also set up a Piazza chat for the class to ask him questions online, though his responsiveness on that platform was questionable to say the least.

My biggest gripe with Varvarezos definitely related to his structuring of some assignments. He openly admitted on at least one occasion that he just straight up didn't even read through the weekly homework questions all the way before assigning them, which led to a lot of needless confusion when certain assigned prompts covered topics we hadn't mentioned in class. Needless to say, this was a completely unacceptable oversight that he might just get a pass on only because he's a brand new teacher. I hope he rectifies this mistake quickly.

In terms of the other aspects of the class, both of the midterms were quite straightforward with generous time limits given to complete them in (two hours instead of the usual fifty minutes), but the final was significantly elevated in difficulty (likely because the class instructing team realized the average grade was a bit too inflated). Discussion sections were generally pretty uneventful.

To be totally honest, I just really disliked the actual material that the course focused on, so this class became more of a slog as the quarter went on. Varvarezos has much work to do in order to become a solid teacher, but I feel like he definitely has the potential to grow into the role with time.

highkey top g, nice af, really good lecturer and recorded, tests are literal cake, absolute dub of a class and u actually learn stuff

Konstantinos is amazing. I actually looked forward to going to his lectures because he is just an adorable human being - genuinely wholesome and kind. He answers questions very well without just restating what he's already stated, and his lectures are clear. Both midterms were very easy and the final was much more difficult, but still graded fairly. Overall, he was a very good teacher and I would definitely take him again if I had the opportunity. Highly recommend!

I feel like this prof is not as bad as the reviews from my quarter make it seem! I didn’t have any experience with the content beforehand but got 98, 99, 97.5 on the midterms and final (which was definitely harder). The other reviews are right in that his lecture examples are way easier than the homework and exams, but the homework questions and the practice exams are about the same level of difficulty as the actual exams for the midterms. If you paid attention in class, really understood the homework, textbook questions, practice tests without taking shortcuts, and thought carefully about the true/false questions, the tests were really very straightforward. For the true/false, even if I didn’t know the answer, I could still come up with examples to test to make a good guess. His grading scheme is 45% final at the minimum which kind of sucked but that’s kind of how the math dept is. The only weird thing was recording lectures. He said he couldn’t get the video to work so there was only audio, but I took a class in the same room in the winter and there was no issue. Hopefully that gets fixed next time. I found 32B pretty interesting, but the content itself is not easy and there’s nothing he can do to change that. Overall, he explains the concepts simply but tests with harder examples similar to practice tests. I would definitely take him again, especially compared to things I’ve heard about the other 32B profs!

Honestly... if you are going to teach a class, at least put some effort into it. If the students are bombing the midterms and final on a lower div class, then it is really the teacher's problem, rather than the material being too hard or the students being too dumb. If you only teach the most basic examples and expect us to build a rocket to Mars from that, then you must be chronically insane. Midterm averages to 60s and he "curves" it to 80, final averages around 70. NGL, this is atrocious for a lower div class and if you expect a bunch of college students who just want to pass the class to put some effort into it, at least make it honors so I can avoid you.

It is definitely possible to get a good grade in this class but it's absolutely not easy. The old reviews from 2023 aren't accurate anymore; Professor Varvarezos no longer records or has easy exams. Expect to spend some time outside of lecture going over content because the homework is harder than the examples he goes over in class. There were 4 CONCEPTUAL T/F questions on each midterm, and each T/F was worth 5% of the midterm total which is... bruh idek what to say. So try to get an understanding instead of memorizing the formulas. Also the final was lowkey atrocious and there is NO EXTRA CREDIT!!! T_T

It wasn't all bad though. Overall the content was really interesting! As a life science major, this class is making me consider a math minor. The midterms were fair and matched the difficulty level of the practice exams he provided. He lets you drop a midterm score and allows cheat sheets on exams. He was also very helpful when I asked him questions after class or during office hours, so make sure you take advantage of that!

Professor Varvarizos is a nice guy who knows what he’s talking about but doesn’t know how to balance the class at all. The material is difficult, and the concepts are covered in a timely manner, but they’re always to such a degree such that you have to go online or read the textbook in order to put together how to do the homework. The most annoying part was that there weren’t any notes posted, so if you miss something there’s little way to recover it.

The tests were generally fair but difficult. He allows a 3x5 note card for the midterms, and a fully 8.5x11 paper for the final. While this may seem helpful at first, a big portion of each of these tests was true false, which were around 20% of the grade. The true false essentially came down to whether you remembered to write down the correct thing on your cheat sheet, or remembered to study one specific topic that was covered.

Overall, the class was manageable until the final, which was ludicrously difficult. While I am not the best at multivariable calculus, even my peers who were more math savvy found it unreasonably difficult, and I’m sure the ta’s would as well, as they mentioned topics they wouldn’t believe would be covered, but just so happened to be on the final exam.

Overall I feel as though professor Varvarizos kept his notes the same but tuned up the difficulty of the exams. This made the class relatively miserable for an already known difficult class. I wouldn’t recommend this class personally as the balance is all over the place.