Well I think Siddarth is a good professor overall. He is going to Berkeley next quarter so Bruinwalk doesn't really matter. But as I saw complains on finals, I still want to put this comment down. To start with, he knows what he is teaching and doesn't rely on slides except when he needs to check on his notes for examples. He shows steps for solving each type of problems and is clear on the methods, both algebraically and geometrically. His final is admittedly significantly harder than the homeworks (by the way, he gives a lot of homeworks and the last one consisted of 53 questions due the day before finals so remember this) but I personally think the test overall is well made. You can't solve those problems by simply plugging numbers into equations, this is, at least for me, how a test should look like. I missed something on the final also, but I still think it is well designed. On thing for me, however, the final is definitely longer than it should be, and I had to ask many clarifying questions regarding what the problems mean so spaces of improvements here. Like you shouldn't except students to think hard for a consecutive 3 hours cause many problems do explain some depth of thinking. Also, Siddarth should consider what topic to put on midterms and finals. Many things we learned between midterm 1 and 2 are not even asked in midterm 2 and what's asked in midterm 2 are mostly not in finals. Overall, in terms of the teaching, he is a decent professor, and good luck to him and his future students in Berkeley.

Unreasonable. None of the review materials helped for the exams. He didn't care about this class at all because he's leaving. I wish I took another professor for my first quarter here.

DON'T ENROLL IN HIS LECTURE!!!
His final is SUPER HARD!

I would say Venkatesh is a very good lecturer. He clearly knows what he's talking about and I found that the organization of the class was straight forward. The class consisted of him going through notes and he is definitely engaging and always shows proofs for things instead of just merely telling you things to memorize without context. He often explains topics through different angles to give you a more holistic understanding of the concept (ex: the algebraic and geometric applications of a concept were often discussed). I got a 66 on the first midterm and was able to end up with an A. I also see a lot of comments saying his tests are outrageous and I can tell he definitely saw these criticisms because I always though his tests were fair and if you can understand his lectures and do the homework you should be fine. I personally though his final was very easy and so did lots of other people because practically everyone finished early. Overall, definitely take him if you're considering him for Math 32A.

Professor Venkatesh was alright in terms of covering the content and answering questions. I think it would have been helpful if he held more review sessions and didn't assign so many homework problems (that were half graded on correctness). The two midterms were pretty standard level (although I found them challenging), and the final was just ridiculously hard. I felt extremely blindsinded by it because a lot of the problems were conceptual while what we had done for homework was very much calculation-based. The general consensus is that he really screwed us over for the final. I would not recommend taking this class with him (although he is going to Berkeley so it doesn't even matter).

He isn't teaching at UCLA after this quarter so this is pretty irrelevant. I will say, as most other reviews have mentioned, the first two midterms were fairly easy while the final was extremely difficult (but curved). Also, I personally didn't like his lectures. It felt to me more like he was teaching the material as if we were reviewing it rather than hearing it for the first time.

Good luck, students in Berkley...

Literally ass-fucked us with the final. He's going to Berkeley anyways so it's whatever.

I really liked Siddarth and I didn't think of his class being super hard. He does talk super fast and it's hard to catch stuff sometimes, but overall he was fine. (Maybe I'm cutting him some slack since this is first time teaching and I had a *much* worse class this quarter.) His midterms seemed pretty fair, but the final was a bit too much theoretical and explanation-based. Overall, I liked Siddarth and think everyone else here is being too harsh on him lol.

He talks are writes really fast, but he really does care about his students and curves the class if too many people don't do well.