EE 133A is by far the hardest class the ECE department has to offer. However, this class has a ton to offer and is probably the most useful math class you will ever take if you want to go into machine learning. This class is pretty much an advanced version of Math 33A. If you like linear algebra, then you would enjoy this class.

Professor:
His lectures are some times boring, but I attended every lecture and did not have to read the textbook at all. As long as you understand what's going in the PPT slides, you should be fine.

Homework:
The professor assigns weekly homework assignments. Do go to discussion sections because the TA usually solves half the homework problems. Attend either the TA's or Professor's office hours because they will walk you through how to solve the homework problems. The Professor and the TA know their homework problems are difficult, so they do not expect you to solve the homework quickly.

Exams:
The midterm was doable, the final was beyond impossible. As others said, there are tricks when solving homework problems. The exams will be similar to the homework problems, except you have to think of these tricks on the spot.

Grading:
The median for the midterm and final hovered around a 50%. The Professor curves the median to a B+, so half the class will get at least a B+.

- Very good class
- 8-9 homeworks that take 25-40 hours each depending on how smart you are
- difficult material
- disgustingly hard final that everyone thinks they failed on, only to end up with an B to an A in the class
- if you put genuine effort into the homeworks and at least try to write something for each question on the final you'll get at least a B in the class
- lecturer speaks quietly and monotonously but the explanations make a lot of sense if you can pay attention

Amazing class but make sure you take the prereqs first. Insanely hard.

This class was so challenging, but the material was genuinely so interesting. I was mind-blown by the concept of duality, and Professor Vandenberghe does a great job explaining it in his textbook. I now have a newfound appreciation of mathematics. Despite being super knowledgeable himself, Professor Vandenberghe is super humble and helpful during office hours. He patiently explained every question and never made me feel bad about asking a "dumb" question.

I do wish the final exam wasn't worth 70% of my grade though. It puts a lot of pressure on one exam.

Taking Professor Vandenberghe's ECE 133A and ECE 236B courses have been the highlights of my academic career at UCLA, and I'm so grateful to have him as an instructor.

One of the most useful and applicable courses that I have taken in UCLA. It is pretty much an advanced linear algebra course, but much less theoretical than Math 115A. Professor Vandenberghe is the goat, he is extremely knowledgeable and patient when explaining concepts. Homework questions can be tough and tedious, but are thought-provoking and satisfying once solved. Midterm was manageable, but the final was a genocide. Fortunately, the curve was amazing, so everyone's grades got boosted significantly. Overall, brilliant experience and I would highly recommend (especially for those planning to dive deep into Robotics/AI).

Really good class definitely enjoyed it. Insanely strong curve at the end. Very difficult tests but really interesting material.

Vandenberghe is a good professor and this is a cool class.

This class is so much fucking work lmfaooo. Get ready for a massive info dump

Prof. Vandenberghe's lectures are not the most energetic, and at times it was hard to stay awake. Despite that, he was clear and straightforward, he ran like a well-oiled machine. Going to office hours was a humbling and inspiring experience; I felt smarter just talking to him. EE 133A was in some ways one of the most challenging, yet useful and interesting classes in the EE core curriculum! I also appreciated the fact that Prof. Vandenberghe wrote the textbook but was willing to give us pdf access for free, as well as an accompanying solutions manual. The material was well written.

This was an extremely challenging class. Probably the most challenging among the core upper division EE classes. The class consisted of 7 homework assignments, a midterm, and a final. The homeworks were very tricky and took a lot of time to understand. Most of them took upwards of 6 hours to complete (in my and many others' experiences). Many of the homework questions are just impossible to understand without knowing some trick that you wouldn't think of immediately. Going to TA office hours and discussions are necessary if you want to do well on the homeworks. Course hero was also an extremely great resource because many homework questions are recycled from previous years, so they can be found there.

Vandenberghe's lectures were quite dry. They mainly consisted of him reading off of his prepared lecture slides and writing some annotations on the chalkboard. He is pretty monotone and tends to mumble a bit. However, Vandenberghe is an extremely great guy with a good sense of humor. He is very concerned about the students' success and is very helpful in office hours. I would give him a soft recommendation as a professor for this class.

The material was extremely uninteresting in the beginning. It mainly consisted of a review of concepts from Math 33a (definitions of vectors, matrices, and operations). However, it got much more interesting later on as we talked more about regression and how the concepts we were learning were applied to fields like machine learning, image processing, and more. While the material is quite dry at times, it is beneficial and useful to know if you have any interest in continuing studies in Machine Learning and related fields.