My experience in Math 32A with professor Mark Ebert has been unfortunately very inconvenient. Between his exams having mathematical proofs on them which he fails to teach or even go over, to not having enough time on the exams to finish, to feeling incompetent enough to complete one of his exams which have material and questions which are unlike anything we see in lecture or on the homework, Mark Ebert has left me confused on whether I am proficient at math or not. Each time I walk into his lecture, I take a chance and always end up leaving more confused than when I entered. He always seems to go over allotted class time by an average of 5 minutes. His lectures are rushed and unclear such that simply reading the textbook would be more explanatory than actually going to class. Whenever students ask questions, he always answers a completely different question than the one he was presented with. His first midterm average was a 63% which was lower than even he thought that it would be, leaving many students, including myself, feeling incompetent about math and even questioning whether or not we belong in STEM courses.

This class wasn't easy, but it wasn't extremely hard in terms of workload. There are weekly homework assignments from the textbook and 1-2 homework problem-level quizzes before each midterm. I would say the difficulty of the class comes from unclear lectures and test difficulty. However, seeing that the class felt so miserably about the exams, Ebert put in curves and reasonable (?) adjustments to grades so that half the class received a B or above, I believe. But, I definitely felt fucked at certain points in the class. About the lectures, I know people straight up went to other prof's lectures because Ebert was not very clear. He teaches straight from the textbook. I recommend going to office hours for questions. If you take this class, it's not impossible to get an A but you should be prepared to self-study.

I'd like to thank Mark Ebert... for absolutely NOTHING. While this class is difficult based on content alone, Ebert did not make multivariable calculus any easier (actually a hell of a lot harder). His lectures were hard to follow in practically every aspect. First off, he only uses the chalkboard, no slides or projector whatsoever. This is problematic because he can't write in a way that students can understand. No spaces between words (looks like a big jumble of letters that you have to strain your eyes at to read clearly), puts decimal points so high that it looks like "2 times 6" instead of "2.6," and ultimately writes too small to read anything even if his writing was perfect. The only question ever asked by students in lecture would be "What does that say??" Secondly, though you would think him talking through everything that he's writing would help you understand what he wrote on the board, it doesn't. He can't get through a full sentence without either trailing off into oblivion or ending in "so..." without getting to what he was going to say. Many times it would sound like he was going to say something helpful but would leave me disappointed as he failed to finish the thought and would erase whatever he started writing on the board. Though sometimes students asked clarifying questions related to content, most of the time he would chop up his answers to "you'll just know" when asked about strategies for solving certain problems. Finally, he could not draw to save his life. In a class where we're being introduced to 3-D shapes and planes that are already hard to visualize on a 2-D surface, his attempts to get us to visualize anything 3-D failed, the shapes looking like blobs every time. You know it's bad when he starts off saying "I'm not the best drawer" yet REFUSES to use the projector to show what the shape would actually look like. While his lectures are recorded, I'd honestly say you should go in person because the person recording (not at the fault of Ebert) would either stay zoomed out so you couldn't read any writing (not even Chat could discern it) or will zoom in but not pan the camera so you're stuck looking at nothing and relying on words only to get through the lecture. Lectures truly sucked so studying for tests sucked way harder. If you have to take this class, lecture-only study will not work. You have to read the textbook (the standard calc book every lower-div math assigns), watch Youtube, literally the definition of self-study. Coming from being a humanities major, I underestimated how much of the work would be on me and not only needing to complete whatever was assigned. In the assignments department, the class was actually fairly generous with only one homework assignment (24 textbook problems) per week with some weeks skipped due to midterms. No discussion assignments so technically it's optional to go. But as I said, you'll have to do a lot more work than the homework to actually understand anything. The grading scheme is 25% homework (none dropped so pls do them as this saved my grade), 20% for each midterm (2 total), and 35% final. There's an alternate scheme too with one midterm counting for 30% and the final counting for 45%. Tests aren't any easier, never felt fully confident in any of them. But if you feel this way, chances are everyone else is too. Midterm 1 average was a 52%!!!!! I was so baffled at my first failing grade but the curve truly saved me. To be fair, Ebert seems knowledgeable in this work and I will say that I never took advantage of office hours so maybe this is on me, but in the teaching department, he really can't be understood. Overall, avoid if possible!!

Math with Professor Ebert is an experience. Not one I needed in my life. Not one I will ever forget. Just an experience.

Nothing he says makes an ounce of sense. His writing isn't much better than his speaking. If you sign up for this class, Ebert is not your professor - the textbook is. That is the only way to do well, or to even understand what is being taught. Lecture is worthless, unless you can somehow decipher what he's saying or writing.

Exams are fair enough. Homework is very manageable. Not once did his assignment/exams feel like they were constructed to sabotage student performance, so that is the one plus.

I do believe some of the comments about Ebert are harsh. He is very knowledgeable about what he is teaching and is a kind person at heart, but he just tends to have a bit of trouble being clear. This lack of clarity comes through in inconsistently paced lectures, discrepancies between what is taught and what is on the exam, and questionable answers to both mathematical and grading questions. However, the class isn't impossible. As long as you are willing to read the textbook and do practice problems, you can pass. If you can take this class with another professor, highly recommend doing so, but don't skip out on taking this class just because Ebert is the only professor available to enroll in.

Ebert is not a good lecturer, so if you struggle with math and need it explained to you, either expect to learn the content from your TA or pick a different professor. The homework is very manageable, and while the midterms were both very difficult, he curves so that the final grade distribution is very generous. He also showed a lot of improvement buy the end of the quarter, and the final was reasonable/easy. He also does a lot more proofs than is typical of this class, so if that interests you it might be worth a shot.

In the beginning of the term, I heard some call him "unnecessarily complicated," and while I understood his vector explanations, later lectures were a mix of last-minute examples and mumbled answers to students' questions. He writes small; I often sat in the front but relied constantly on my phone camera as a magnifying glass. He knows his stuff and gets into the backbone of why certain theorems/equations are the way they are (read: proofs), but as a new teacher, he isn't used to teaching people who don't get concepts like he does.
His lessons and HW come from the book (pdf available on Reddit), with HW graded on part completion and accuracy - he won't tell you which problems are for accuracy. Quizzes are doable if you do the homework and have a TA who reviews concepts right before. The lowest of three scores is dropped.
Tests were similar to practice midterms and did cover topics taught, but his midterm questions went HEAVY on technical computation like chain rule and improper integrals (which were not reviewed in-class), and the proofs. God, some of these proofs... The questions themselves were not totally out of the blue, but the 50 minute timeframe made these exams hellishly difficult unless you have a solid pre/outside-class understanding of math. I studied by rereading the book's explanations with the professor's notes, doing extra practice problems in the book (especially the post-chapter exercises), and attending office hours. You cannot cheese these exams. The biggest slap for me was the psychological shock of test time management. Flip through all the questions first and plan accordingly, or get swamped with one minute left on the clock.
First midterm was extremely hard, with a mean of 60 that was curved 2-3% after the 2nd midterm was over. The second midterm had a mean of 67 but was even harder than the first though he explicitly said in office hours and emails that he would try to make it easier. I got a B- and C on midterms 1 and 2 pre-curve. To be fair, he checked over his final exam with other math professors and his TAs, resulting in reasonable questions for our 3 hour test period. My raw A- on this final pulled up my grade.
As a person, this professor tries to be forgiving, engaging, and flexible, but as a professor, this person has caused a lot of unnecessary stress and ennui. I would not take this class until he gains more teaching experience.

Do not take this class!! Although I ended up with an A, I basically learned everything from YouTube and my TA. He is a nice person but not a good instructor. The two midterms created a lot of anxiety, but the final and homework are doable.

main takeaway from this review:
DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR!! I REPEAT DO NOT TAKE THIS PROFESSOR!!!!!!!

To preface this review, I really think Ebert is a nice guy deep down and that he has no ill intention of wanting his students to fail or purposefully making his class miserable. I honestly think he is completely oblivious to JUST how bad of a teacher he is. Anyway, this does not excuse the fact that you should do everything possible to not have him as a teacher. I thought math 31A and 31B were a walk in the park and while I expected 32A to be significantly harder, Ebert made it impossible to succeed. He has no skills in teaching. Lectures consist of him mumbling incoherent words that no one can hear, and even if you could, wouldn’t make any sense. He also writes extremely small and messy. Pretty much all he does is copy stuff from the textbook but make it WAYYY more confusing. It was much better to just skip lecture and teach the concepts to myself from the textbook. This was quite the struggle for me personally because I’ve never been the type to understand math just from reading a textbook. As you can probably tell from reading other reviews, the midterms were insanely difficult. He would give midterm reviews that made a lot of sense and weren’t too challenging, so I went into both midterms with a false sense of confidence that I was prepared for them. I was definitely not. I got a 63 and 59 on the midterms. Fortunately, he seemed to learn from his mistakes and made the final MUCH easier and actually comparable to the final review and I got an 85 on it. The one good thing I can say is he does have a very generous grading scheme. I think in any other class I would’ve gotten a C or C- for how much I know but I ended with a B. This class was so miserable and put constant stress on me the whole quarter. Now I feel completely unprepared for Math 32B. Seriously DO NOT take this class, please trust me.

Let me get the good stuff out of the way first.

His class is bruincasted, meaning that you don't really have to attend lecture, and the discussions are also optional unless there's a quiz (and even then- it kinda seemed like you could ask to take the quiz kinda flexibly as long as you were taking it in the other discussion section). The HW is pretty light (it comes out of the textbook), the TA's that grade the exams are quite generous when it comes to partial credit, and the grading scheme overall is pretty pleasant (You only need a 90 for an A, as opposed to a 93 pre-curve). Prof. Ebert also shows a willingness to curve the MT's and the class as a whole should the average be too low.

However, that's mostly where the good stuff ends. Attending lecture often leaves you more confused than you started (unless you've already read and somewhat understood the materials in the textbook), as he reads straight from his slides (which are basically copied straight from the book) like a bulldozer, and is generally incapable of answering simple questions without spinning the questioner around in a circle. His MT's were rather brutal-MT1 had a proof problem that none of us had ever seen before, whereas the computational aspect of MT2 combined with the extreme time squeeze meant that the entire class was basically up in arms after the midterm. You'll most likely be relying on your ability to self study, your TA, and whatever you can scrounge from YouTube- don't expect to get anything out of Professor Ebert's lectures.