I was really nervous about taking 32B after hearing it was a really hard class, but Harrops made it bearable. He was a great professor with pretty straightforward midterms. He provides practice finals and midterms, and review sessions in class for each. I went to my TA's office hours which really helped me a lot, and I would recommend doing that as well, as it helped me score well above the average on the second midterm. The material definitely isn't easy but Harrops does a good job explaining, and as long as you make a good effort to understand it yourself as well, you will do well in this class.

Overall, Ben is a great professor, and you can’t go wrong with him. There are a few things I will nitpick and warn future students about, however.

The first several weeks of the class are very much like a high school probability/stats course or Econ 41. You learn about counting, then conditional probability and Bayes’ theorem, then discrete random variables and MGF’s until the end of week 4. After week 4, the class becomes markedly harder. You learn about continuous random variables, bivariate distributions, conditional bivariate distributions, continuous bivariate distributions, and inequalities like Chebyshev’s before finishing with the central limit theorem.

I thought Ben did a great job of putting all the information about these topics out there. However, I feel like I leave this class with a lack of intuition about probability. I still lack an intuitive understanding of what a random variable is, for example, even though I kept up with the class. It felt like I was playing around with objects I didn’t fully understand, so I’m leaving this class with a little less understanding than I expected.

Big warning for future students: the class is very backloaded. The final alone is worth 45% of the grade. The topics that you learn in the latter half of the class are generally harder, in my opinion, meaning that the class will be smooth sailing until the very end, where you realize it was a bad idea to put this class on the back burner for 5 weeks. I imagine Ben grades like this so that students are tested most on the new material they learn (rather than the introductory material they they may have learned in high school). Although I completely understand why he does this, it still makes the class pretty hectic toward the end.

If you have to take 32B take it with Ben. I had a really tough time in 32A and was pretty worried about this class but this quarter was so much better. Some of the homework problems can be challenging but if you go to office hours he's extremely helpful and will go through the problems step by step. His lectures are clear and well organized and he often makes funny comments that are just as endearing as his accent. Both midterms were fair (we'll see about the final though) and he's an all around really nice guy and a good professor.

Professor Harrop-Griffiths is an excellent choice for 32B. He is a clear, effective lecturer (with a London accent as well) who is very helpful during office hours. His midterms were both fully computational and reasonable, but the final was significantly harder. Median was a 64%.

Some tips for success:
-Put in the work throughout the quarter. 32B is a tough class with a lot of material to cover, so its critical that you stay on top of things.
-Try to do well on the second midterm because the median was significantly lower than the first.
-Try to understand the tough homework problems, because the final may include things such as parameterizations of ellipses and irregular cones, extensions of cylinders on non-z axes, etc. Doable stuff but takes practice.

Overall, take HG if you have the opportunity. You'll develop a strong understanding and appreciation of the material.

I'll list off what I like about him: great professor, clear lectures, awesome accent, good at teaching.
The hardest things about this class are undoubtedly the FINAL and some of the "additional problems" he puts on the homework.
My advice to you if you take this class is do not think the final will be as easy as the midterms. Make sure you can do the PRACTICE FINAL he gives you without hesitation. The final will be like the practice one.
If you didn't deduce it I didn't do so good on the final. I got a 49 and a 47 on the midterms and I still got 10 pts above the average on the final. I guess it wasn't good enough because that turned out o be a B+. Just goes to show you study for the final.
If you have the option I definitely recommend taking a class with Harrop-Griffiths.

If you have to take 32B definitely take it with Harrop-Griffiths. I had May Clover for 32A and she was a really great professor as well. However I think her and Harrop-Griffiths have different teaching styles so it took me awhile to adjust to him. After I did adjust though he proved to be a great lecturer and his examples in class really help. Reading the chapters in the textbook also helps a lot and his lectures are also based off the textbook as he often explains things the exact same way the textbook does. His midterms are pretty easy and his final is slightly more challenging. Although he does give partial credit on problems, in some problems I feel as though the partial credit he gives is slightly unfair. Remember to draw out the regions on tests as he sometimes gives extra credit for them. Discussions are helpful and homeworks are time-consuming but helpful.

Ben is an amazing professor. His lectures are always well-prepared and he is extremely helpful and clear when explaining material and answering questions. 32B material is not easy, but Ben makes it seem not as bad. If you have the opportunity to take his class, do it!

The midterms were not too difficult, the second midterm being harder than the first. However, the final was significantly harder. There is a lot of material in 32B that the final mostly does not skip on. Make sure you can do the practice finals he provides without much difficulty, and nail the parameterizations and bounds of integration for problems. The final is much more important in determining how well you do in the class, so even if you don’t do well on the midterms you can still bounce back on the final!

Overall, Ben has probably been my favorite professor so far. Highly recommend!

Ben was a great professor for Math 32B! He was very clear, effective, and engaging as a professor. 32B is without a doubt, a very difficult lower div course, and if you have to take it, I would take it with him. He certainly may not be the easiest, and a good amount of work is required, but he is a great prof. If you have Harrop-Griffiths for 32B, here's some tips:

-He teaches the class a little out of order of the textbook, but trust him and follow his sequence, it makes much more sense in the end.
-Really practice 3-D parameterizations, surface parameterizations or else they'll kick your butt on 2nd midterm/final.
-Do not count on dropping a midterm and saving your grade with the final! The final is significantly more difficult/abstract and will require more conceptual knowledge.

I think I'm just an idiot, which is why I got this grade. 32B is a hard class overall, but Ben really clarifies materials very well. He is articulate and goes in depth to help you understand. I really like him and would recommend him for anyone not wanting to do poorly.

32B is considered one of the hardest lower divs at UCLA, and in this quarter I also had a pretty rough schedule. However, since I knew that it was supposed to be pretty hard, I made a really huge effort to go to office hours twice a week for HG, and these were pretty useful. He assigns homework from the book that was somewhat trickier than on the exams. The exams were mainly straight computation, with one proof-based question on the second midterm and two on the final. He did give out practice tests for all the exams, which were pretty helpful and comparable (although many people felt that for the final, this was not the case). One of the things he'll warn you is to NOT study strictly based off the practice exams, and these are mainly just an indicator of the difficulty of the exam and may not have the exact same problems/concepts. HG also had a unique order of teaching the material, which was overall really helpful and useful to understanding the material. He basically went from 1D all the way up to 2D and 3D sequentially, which helps you realize the patterns and similarities better.

Overall, HG is probably the best professor I've had so far. I took him my second quarter ever after taking Sylvester for Math 32A, and I actually felt like 32A was harder for me (this may be simply because I put in a lot more effort into this class). I would definitely take HG again for any other math class!!