Professor Vicaria is okay. She does not have the best lectures, but they are also not the worst. I do not know the overall grade distribution yet, but I believe that the questions on both midterms and the final were fair. In particular, you are allowed to bring a page of notes to all three exams and she informed us regarding one of the questions on the final beforehand so we can prepare for it. The homework problems were also good as she provided a large sample of problems and only a small portion was required. Math 61 is not a difficult class and your experience will be solid if you ever take it with her.

terrible and egotistical professor. takes things personally and lets their feelings affect how they grade the class. do not take them under any circumstances!

I've never written a Bruin walk review but she is so terrible I had to. She clearly views herself as better than everyone and gets upset when people ask for clarification, she views it as contesting her teaching. She is genuinely a terrible teacher and honestly a terrible person.

She's awful

She emphasizes how this class has no curve even with average midterms of 76% for both, super unclear, I like the material but I would never take again with this teacher. Stay away if possible

I took this class in her first quarter teaching here and received an A. However, I don't think I've met more of an entitled professor in my entire experience at UCLA, even when her personal teaching and accomplishments warrant little to no entitlement. At some point she got angry that people used her solutions as a guide to base their own work off of and assumed they should get full points, and then she stated that she doesn't even have to give solutions and she "does much more" than other math professors by giving out solutions to her own homework (obviously not true, every math professor does this and much much more). I got an A in the class but would have much rather covered this topic with a more empathetic professor who cares about their students and making an impact on their studies, rather than shutting them down and taking every disagreement to their teaching as an attack. Also pretty unclear lectures overall, material is simple and trivial but her teaching honestly makes the material harder rather than simpler. I could have likely learned the topics better through online websites and guides.

I honestly have no idea what all the reviews stating that Professor Vicaria is "terrible" or "egotistical" are talking about. She was a nice professor and cared about students' success if they showed interest/effort. After explaining a concept, she would often ask if anyone had any questions or was confused about a concept. She took the time to explain things, and if she didn't get to all the content in the slides, she would let us know that it wouldn't be tested (granted, there were quite a few holidays in Winter Quarter, so this might be more situational). I felt her lectures were clear, and even though there were definitely confusing points, that's probably more due to the subject matter. It was easy to get lost while following complicated proofs, but I learned not to get hung up on them since they would never show up on exams.

If you did the homework every week and went over the practice tests she uploads to BruinLearn, the tests are fairly easy. I often put examples of proofs/problems from past tests on my one-sided cheat sheet and found that incredibly helpful. The homework was graded based on a singular problem selected by the grader and on completion—you also got to drop your two lowest scores, which I found very generous. Lectures were recorded for my quarter, which was nice for watching her work through proofs from the slides on the whiteboard if I couldn't make it to class. Overall, I enjoyed this class and thought it was extremely fair—anyone overly bashing the professor's character in the other reviews is honestly a hater.

The class material was definitely interesting and the professor made sure that the motivation behind each abstract concept is clear to the student. In my experience, the Professor was helpful and understood that this is an introductory proof class. Her midterms (both of them) and finals contained at least 2 questions that were from the weekly Homework problems. What was helpful for me was to attend the Professor's and the TA's Office Hours. They were definitely helpful for getting a stronger understanding. In one of the Office Hours, the Professor spent up to 1 hour going through one of the most complex proofs in the class and it only took that long because she was insistent on ensuring that every students present could understand each step in her proof. It is important to note that her exams are not the easiest but they are fair (i.e. you will do well if you put in effort in her class). The homework problems were genuinely fun to complete, they were a little bit like a list of brain teasers to solve. The course is hard (especially if you are aiming for an A and above) but I think the Professor is alright.

Genuinely the worst class I've ever taken. Please avoid.

Professor was very difficult to follow during lectures and I'd often walk out of class with even less of a grasp of the material than I walked in with. However, this wasn't the biggest problem: I've had several professors who were poor lecturers.

My biggest issue with this class was the discrepancy between the material presented to us and the material that was tested. As an introductory proof class, developing precise communication and syntax is important. So naturally, I would study her solutions closely and model my proofs after hers. However, replicating her explanations from lectures, homework solutions and past exams would not suffice for the exams. If her solution was presented verbatim on the exam, points would be deducted. Any slight deviances would be penalized unfairly.

This was further exacerbated by the grading system. Exams were out of 25 points, so minor errors in syntax would cost as much as 1 point, resulting in a 4% reduction in the overall score. I went back and forth with the graders on several occasions during the course and they never seemed to acknowledge my perspective.

It also didn't help homework wasn't graded on time. We had gone nearly 7 weeks before a homework assignment was graded. Without timely feedback on our homework, it was difficult to understand what was being assessed in this course.

Furthermore, her attitude towards the class made it difficult to stay motivated. She failed to fully answer questions and explain the material with humility. I would expect that making certain elementary errors (which are inexcusable for a PhD holder in math to make) during lectures and on slides would prompt her to take a step back and question her ability to distill important concepts and clearly present them.

Terrible professor. Without a doubt the worst professor I have ever had. Now you may be looking at all the reviews and be thinking "oh, only the people who hated the class or who sucked in it write reviews so its biased". We'll that may be true but for context I had a 4.00 before this class, then I left with a B-. I wasn't even confused about the material. I actually felt like I understood it, but apparently that wasn't enough. A couple things:
- She claimed the lectures were recorded but then didn't give the password to the recordings until like week 8 which made the recordings completely pointless.
- She doesn't curve
- She is VERY nit-picky about the grading and even if you make a small mistake she'll deduct 1 point out of the total of 25 for each midterm. I know someone who got deducted a point because they used the word 'theorem' instead of 'definition'
- Very disorganized. She would often assign homework that we hadn't covered the material for
- She did post slides but lots of the slides were incomplete.
- She blames everything on the math department, which I'm not saying that they're the best department ever but also some of the stuff you can clearly tell is not something the math department said. like we have taken more math classes than she has taught at ucla (fall quarter was her first).
- Homework is worth a very small percentage of your grade and took ages to be graded.
- She often says one thing and then immediately contradicts herself. At one point, she told a student that the solutions were enough to base our answers on and then a few sentences later said that they should be used merely as a guide.

Honestly I hated this professor and I could go on and on about it but you get the gist of it. One pro is that she gives you a cheat sheet, but I assume thats the case with every professor for math 61. If you can get Olha as your TA definitely do it! She sympathizes with the class and really tries to help. Kong, on the other hand, speaks at 2 times speed and leaves you more confused than when you walked in. I was originally in Kong's discussion section but quickly switched into Olha's and it was no problem.