Prof. Gleizer is possibly the nicest professor I've interacted with. From his overwhelmingly lenient grading policies (offering the option to redo exam problems in office hours for credit) to his emphasis on sound conceptual understanding, Oleg clearly cares about the wellbeing of his students.

During office hours, Prof. Gleizer's process for exam makeup was relatively straightforward. For any problems missed on an exam, Oleg would come up with a new problem grounded in the same conceptual area. If you could demonstrate learned understanding, he gave you points back on the corresponding exam problem. In order to balance allotted time for people wanting to redo missed exam problems vs people confused about the lecture topics, Prof. Gleizer made sure to take questions on lecture materials beforehand.

This review is for his 33B class in Fall 2025 as this class wasn’t available on his profile, but given that this professor expects us to have a solid understand of the content of linear algebra from 33A, it may as well be a 33A review

This was class was a very difficult experience. Every lecture was extremely hard to follow for me and every student around me, especially because the professor insists on only solving out examples (without actually showing much work) rather than actually explaining concepts, and they often involved tangential topics that were far beyond the scope of the class. The weekly quizzes (which have replaced homework grades for this quarter) were far too difficult, and they often tested our ability to understand terminology that is not found anywhere in the textbook or to compute overly complex integrals rather than the actual content of the class. Barely any curve was provided even with a midterm average of C-, and the second midterm far surpassed the difficulty of the first. The only saving grace of the exams was that you could (sort of) know what topics to expect, but given that the professor loved to throw in random topics from physics and linear algebra, the exams ended up being far too difficult regardless. Without a solid background in physics and linear algebra, a lot of this class made zero sense, even though neither physics nor linear algebra were prerequisites for this course

However, the most challenging aspect of this course for me was the absolute lack of help provided the professors. Although the TA’s certainly tried their best to be helpful, the professor rarely gave a useful answer to any question that me or several of my peers asked of him. After one of the exams, after having gone up to him for some clarification on the grading of one problem (not a request for a grade change), the professor instead looked at several of my problems and told me that my work was completely wrong with barely any explanation why, and he even threatened to lower my grade as a result (before taking back his threat and not changing my grade at all). After going to the TA, I not only found out I was mostly right (including my answers themselves) and got a proper explanation of where I went wrong, I also found out that he similarly threatened several other students to lower their grades as well when they asked for clarification on the grading of their exams. (One of my own friends later told me the same thing happened to them when they asked for help)

On top of his confusing lectures, his unnecessarily difficult exams, his unfair grading, and his lack of helpful answers to any questions, this professor also loves to make completely unnecessary political comments and rants in lecture. Despite claiming on the syllabus that political disruptions are not allowed, this professor has made jokes about bombing the Middle East, has openly admitted to microaggressing a student based on their accent, has made transphobic jokes, and, in every few lectures, has ranted about his qualms with “wokeness” in the American education system. Not only are these comments and remarks completely inappropriate, they frankly distracted from the content of the lectures themselves, which were confusing enough on their own.

Overall, I do not recommend this professor at all, especially for 33B

Go to this mans office hours! He literally will not leave until you understand what's going on in this class.

I went into this class not even knowing what a matrix was and left having mastered the material. Oleg is one of the most engaging professors I have ever had. His office hours are informative. Additionally he actually cares about your learning. When I took his class, he had a policy in place that allowed you to go to his office hours to make up missed points from the midterms. He would give you a new problem and if you could explain it to him step by step and were able to convey your knowledge, he would give you some points back. He did not believe that a single test grade should determine our understanding, that is why he allowed us to go in (on our own time) and show him that we knew the material.
Apart from this, his tests are by no means easy. They require complete understanding and at the end of every test, he gives an extra credit question which is usually theoretical.

MATH 33A with Professor Gleizer was a surprisingly enjoyable experience. At the start of the quarter, everything seemed rather overwhelming, as some of the problems were very time-consuming. Once I gained sufficient practice though--and the further into the quarter we got--I began to adapt to the situation and found the class becoming easier. Professor Gleizer really does try to emphasize the key concepts of linear algebra (such as the kernel, determinants, orthogonality, and eigenvalues) while also trying to make the class less stressful for his students.

With respect to the tests/exams of this course, I believe they were fair with respect to difficulty. The midterms were each five questions long, but he offered an extra credit proof-based question at the end of each, making it possible to score a maximum of 120/100 on each of the midterms. The final was ten questions (no extra credit) and we had a 24-hour period to take the exam because of the COVID-19 situation. Some questions were a bit calculation-intensive, but overall nothing too absurd for what we learned over the course of the quarter.

TL; DR: Professor Gleizer stresses about thinking in terms of questions, not answers, and helps students discover the answers to their questions on their own rather than directly giving the answer, enabling greater understanding. The tests in this class are manageable, with a decent amount of extra credit and aids to limit stress about the grading in the class.