Only take it if you are a masochist and that doesn't care about grade. He gives test so hard i don't even think the TA will get any grade higher than a F. His curves are also not generous. 1/5 DO NOT TAKE

If Mark Ebert has a million haters, then I am one of them. If he has ten haters, then I am one of them. If he has only one hater then that is me. if Mark Ebert has no haters, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world loves Mark Ebert, then I am against the world.

I used to enjoy math. I do not anymore. There's something about this man that makes me feel ridiculous for even trying to succeed in his class. I've never seen someone so qualified yet incompetent. It's just sad, to be honest. I feel so hopeless in this class. I would've gotten a 90 on the first midterm if it wasn't for those god awful proofs he just has to put on every exam even though the other 32a professors do not.

There is literally no rhyme or reason as to why he is the way he is. If he's the only professor left and you need to take this class. Take it next quarter with someone else. Take it over the summer with someone else. Graduate later. It's not worth walking into a class that will tank your GPA if you're not inherently good at math or have taken calc 3 in high school.

this class should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment

I will preface the following complaints by acknowledging that Professor Ebert is a nice, smart person. I know he is not intentionally trying to frustrate, demoralize, or fail his students; however, he is. While overwhelmingly negative, this review is not to criticize him as a person but to provide an honest evaluation of his teaching capabilities.

Professor Ebert’s lectures are entirely unorganized and incoherent. Lesson planning and time management are absent as he routinely attempts to pack the last two minutes of class with the chapter’s foremost concepts. Worse is how he evades all clarifying questions by mumbling a nonresponse and persisting with the lecture.

Most distressingly, Professor Ebert’s exams are plain unfair. His quizzes, although simple in content, test material taught less than 24 hours prior, forcing students to anxiously cram the necessary concepts. And, the midterms have been genuine tragedies. The first midterm had an average of 69%, which is disheartening as those of the other sections were in the B+ to A- range. This is largely due to his inclusion of question types that were not incorporated in the lectures or homework. Shockingly, the second midterm was significantly harder--I anticipate the average to be below 50%.

To note a couple of pleasant aspects of the class: he promises the class itself will have a generous curve, he assigns light homework with ample time, and he is, again, very nice.

The students who take Math 32A are hardworking and capable, but Professor Ebert’s class makes them stress over their GPA and competency. Overall, to expect high standards of students, the professor should be equally equipt.

Ebert is really kind, funny, and smart as he moonwalks for us in class, but he expects a lot from students. The rubric curve for his class is generous, as 90-100% is an A for example, or a B is a 75%, but nonetheless the midterms are hard. There is a high complexity of the problems for a 50 minute midterm, and many students end up not finishing. He said he tried to make this midterm easier, but unfortunately it was harder. One thing I will say is that the homework workload isn't that bad, he rarely assigns it (maybe once every other week) for a bunch of textbook problems that are not too rigorous. If you take this class you should sit near the front because he handwrites small and messy sometimes. A con of the style of his teaching is that he teaches the proof to a equation/concept we do not need to know, but a pro is also that he emphasizes which equations we should know. He follows the textbook, so it helps to have the textbook open next to you while he teaches. Lots of students hate him for how hard his midterms are rightfully so. Basically, if you take him be prepared to practice lots of problems on your own.

The class started off as being extremely tough but Ebert started to improve as the quarter went on. The averages on the midterms were around 65-70%, and throughout the whole quarter, it was pretty clear that this was the first class he has ever taught. For context, I took this exact class in high school, but I still struggled on midterm #2 because it was so time consuming and tough computation wise. However, he listened to our feedback and his final exam was very doable, plus his lecturing got slightly better over time (although he still isn't a great lecturer). You can tell that he definitely is smart and has a brain for math, but he isn't the best at communicating his ideas, which makes his lectures hard to follow. His exam grading style is interesting as well, since he's more focused on whether you understand the material rather than if you can solve all the computations which is nice. As such, if you have a good grasp of the material you can get a lot of partial credit on the questions without needing to go through all the math. As many of the other reviews say, he isn't a bad person, and he definitely worked to make things better towards the end, whether it was making a doable final or curving our midterms slightly to have more reasonable averages. Around 40% of the class ended up getting an A or better. Still probably would not take the class again.

He is by far the best teacher I’ve had in my life. His outfits inspire me. His voice is music to my ears. His homeworks and tests are so easy a kindergartner could do them. Please take Ebert. He is the greatest math teacher of all time.

Hands down WORST prof I've ever had. Don't even know where to start.

1) Cannot articulate over 4 words at a time which is not to blame if it is an actual condition he has, but if so, he should not be teaching alone on his first quarter. Repeats the words, "um", "so" "yeah", and "ok" every few seconds, even when solving some problems. When students ask him clarifying questions, he repeats the above words without answering the questions and moves on with the lecture content, which is unacceptable as a professor. Attending lectures is practically equivalent to listening to him mumble as he tries to copy the textbook content. Ridiculous to be paying for such education when we are self-teaching themselves such an important course that stands as a foundation for further mathematics courses and even Physics (which is not even mathematics in itself).

2) Impossible exams that do not reflect course material at all. How are we seeing new things as we take the midterm exams? The class disrupted into laughter and cries of distress as students were unable to finish the exam. 50 minutes? I don't think even he can do it in 50 minutes (well of course he can because he made it and knows the answer beforehand!)

3) TA's are very helpful (or they feel like so since Ebert does nothing) but they are unaware of how the class is led at all. If they sat in a single lecture and experienced how bad and ineffective it is, they would be astonished.

I acknowledge that it is his first quarter of teaching and none of his actions have malicious intent but at the end of the day, we students, are the ones paying for and receiving the education so we need to be prioritized.

Shows a lot when a class that was full and waitlisted became open with spots open after the first lecture. Personally couldn't drop the class since I needed it to count as an engineering workload quarter. I guess none of that matters now since this will tank my GPA and I won't be able to switch into CS. Thanks for ruining my entire future major and future career!

He is not a good teacher. Does not know how to explain math concepts nor really answers questions. I feel bad because I know he is a nice guy and I can tell he is very smart, but he is just not a good instructor. He is not attuned to his students' needs and has no idea what is difficult to students. This is an undergrad lower div math course, and the tests have been so difficult I wonder how the TA's would even be able to solve them in a 50 minute time crunch. The midterms are laughably hard - literally, people laughed after the exam was over. To be fair, he seems to have generous grading curves so hopefully this will make up for the sheer insane difficulty of the exams. The average for our first midterm was a 69, and I believe the next midterm's average will be in the 40s.

I am not using this site to vent. Dr.Ebert doesn’t know anything, he reads off his iPad and without it he solves the questions wrong (he couldn’t do proofs or solve examples many times in the class). Ironically we’re expected to memorize everything (the way to solve questions, formulas, …) but he doesn’t even know this info himself as seen by his constant glancing to the ipad. Such hypocrisy. This class is actually not hard but the textbook sucks-Beep and the examples he gives in class are stupid and easy and not as complicated as homework. And there’s no way to check your answer because we have to lose points on gradescope first before we can figure out how to solve them (even then we’re not allowed to have solutions). The final grade median was a 76.3 which means half the class performed worse than this number. This material is actually not hard, but you have to memorize everything (formulas, TxtBKreadings, homework problems, and EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE IN CLASS). I would have performed twice as well if I had a notecard for each midterm but since I don’t have a photographic memory to memorize hundreds of formulas and questions then I guess I’ll work at MacDonalds heating up expired nuggets. Every other class (31a,b, 33a) allowed a notecard for each exam, so it seems that this professor is particularly harsh with exam policy. I strongly know I would have done better if I took the time to memorize every formula/example/homework/textReading for this class. That’s all you have to do is memorize all these things. Understanding is not enough b/c if you can’t remember/recall the info on an exam then what’s the point? I received As in 31AB/33A so it just goes to show that the professor is the issue here. But he has tenure and you’re all stuck with him so unless you have a photographic memory then I suggest you take this exact same class at community college (costs $200 vs $2000 at UCLA) and your grade will make you much happier and more importantly you’ll actually learn a lot more and perform better. Math is such an important subject and I actually like the class but……………..
P.S. If an instructor is reading this then can tell you that a common teaching mistake is to copy things on a board. Especially eg with partial derivatives where many cognitive steps are being done at once, you cannot just copy and write things down, you have to read aloud what you’re saying and explain what you did from step to step. Because it’s easy to learn the wrong thing when you just write things down. I didn’t realize that I was solving partial derivatives wrong until I did an example in the textbook reading. So this teacher could greatly improve if he would just explain instead of copy. Copying is not enough, you also need to explain as you write. There’s also very few examples and practice problems and I learn by doing. So it would have been nice to have similar high level levels questions to practice so that I know that I have mastered the skill. Just one example is just not gonna cut it. So please give students more practice problems so they can learn by doing and not feel like they only have one example to go off of. Good luck everyone and I will concede that my poor grade has made me more inclined to be more vocal about this class. But again, I am not venting.