Good lecturer, fair exams. Very understanding professor.

I think some of these reviews are way too awful at least from my experience. She wasn't the most engaging lecturer ever but she got the point across and made things pretty clear to understand and covered the content quite well. The tests also could have been much harder but weren't so I found them fair, even slightly generous maybe as she used homework/very homework-like questions on the tests which was nice. Though there were some issues with class, Vicaria herself wasn't really that bad like some of these reviews make her out to be.

I honestly don't know what these other reviews are saying. This class was the easiest math class I've ever taken. All you had to do was read through and actually understand the slides (understanding the idea; not just memorizing the proof for particular questions) and maybe redo some of the harder HW questions. Also, the thing about her belittling students is patently untrue. All you needed to do when you ask a question is show her why you're stuck, what methods you've tried, and why those attempts failed.

LMFAOOOO PLEASE PLEASE DONT DO IT 💀 💀 💀 Don't get me wrong, the midterms are alright if you study the homework and past exams closely as a lot of questions are similar to the ones from there, but this class overall was not a good experience. First of all, she has a very condescending attitude in general (not going to elaborate but it was bad), and exams were graded extremely strangely. People literally got major points off for tiny things like referring to a theorem as a definition, and it was impossible to know when this would happen. Also, there was a huge delay in grading homework, and most of it wasn't graded until the last week so there was no way to be able to determine our grades. I get that the homework grader was sick, but the professor was generally not receptive to emails and requests anyway. I will also warn you that she does not curve at all and grades completely on a straight scale. There are also no quizzes so 85% of your grade is based on 2 or 3 exams, with the other 15% being homework.

The final, although much harder than either of the midterms, can be done if you meticulously go through the textbook and slides and either totally memorize the proofs there or copy everything, including any homework/past exam problems onto the one single-sided cheat sheet you are allowed for all exams. I literally had no idea what was going on by week 10 and never wrote a formal proof in my life before this class, but I still clutched an A because I filled that sheet of paper with literally every problem I had seen on past exams and prayed that something similar would be on the test. If you did math competitions or have previous experience with proofs you will be fine, but if you're not just memorize all the resources and I guarantee you will at least pass.

If you need to take math 61, I encourage you to do it with Do because his class is significantly easier and better organized. However, if you must take this specific class and haven't really encountered proofs before, trust me, memorizing the homework/past exams/slides/textbook is going to save you.

I've never felt the need to write a review like many people on this. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. AVOID her as a Professor if its the LAST thing you do. She is terribly egotistical and thinks she's above her students. Instead of being a helpful caring teacher, she simply made it more difficult for anyone and everyone involved. Never graded HW and frequently said it was the "grader being ill," but they must've been ill for over 6 weeks. One of the worst professors of all time. Avoid at ALL costs.

AVOID!!! I know blah blah selective bias whatever, but TLDR: do not take Math 61 with Vicaria!!

She had beef with the class because we would ask questions a lot and because some people were chatting in class. I understand her frustration and completely empathize with her, but it is not fair to make exams harder because of that reason!
I scored pretty well on the two midterms midterms about a B- to B average, but the final was insane. I read here in the past that if the midterms are easy, expect the final to be hard and that became true in my experience. So be warned!
The homeworks were doable and I do recommend doing the optional questions, but they did not get graded for SEVEN weeks! Additionally, the grader was very harsh with the grading. Each homework was only out of five points and the smallest mistakes would land you a three already.

Math 61 is a very interesting math class and it was probably the first math class where I was engaged and saw real applications (I'm a CS major so calc was kinda meh in terms of my interest). I wish that we weren't graded so harshly for an introductory proofs class, but here we are.

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.

COMPLETE LUCK-BASED CLASS. professor doesn't even know how to spell "pigeon" and spells "3rd" as "3th", so don't expect her teaching to be comprehensible either. on top of that she emphasizes that she cares about your logic rather than the format of the proofs which is completely a lie because your HW and exams are graded more on the format rather than the correct answer...

overall inconsistent teacher, absolute headache of a class, and managed to make what should've been interesting content miserable to learn and study.

if youre stupid enough after reading all these reviews to take the class with this professor the strat is to just literally copy paste the exact answers from every homework problem onto your cheat sheets. dont take any risk deviating even a single punctuation mark from her answers key answers...

legit one of the worst teachers I have ever met... her lectures are painfully slow and uninteresting and worst of all she takes every question as a confrontation and it is clear she views herself as being "above" her students-- also our hw wasn't graded for 7+ weeks so in summary if you can avoid her. NGL I'm Hella surprised she got hired lol

legit one of the worst teachers I have ever met... her lectures are painfully slow and uninteresting and worst of all she takes every question as a confrontation and it is clear she views herself as being "above" her students-- also our hw wasn't graded for 7+ weeks so in summary if you can avoid her. NGL Im hella surprised she got hired lol