Leaving this class felt like 1776. I was glad to be free of the British, but at what cost?

Jokes about his nationality aside, I will say that Harrop-Griffiths is very charismatic and quite funny. He also is a very solid lecturer. However, the way he approached the second midterm put the majority of his students under extreme and unnecessary pressure.

He does not make this class an easy A. He doesn't even make this class an attainable A. I honestly think the only people who got an A after the curve were those genius whiz students (or that kid who kept mansplaining to the prof in class all quarter). I am a math major and I absolutely love the content of 32B, however, despite the fact that I ate, slept, and breathed this class 24/7, I scraped by with a B+ after the 10 pt curve at the end.

His slides are pre-written, so rather than focusing on his approach to the problems, many of us spent class time trying to jot things down as fast as humanly possible. Also, the questions on the exams are harder than homework questions, so you really need to spend hours doing tons of practice problems that may not even help you come exam time.

The real nightmare was the fallout after the second midterm. While the first and the final were pretty fair, a large portion of the students in this class failed the second exam. Despite recognizing that he made the test too difficult, he told us that he never curves and that he would only curve if we *magically* did very well on the final.

This class is difficult. The content is extensive. Rather than recognizing that, he expected us to have graduate-level comprehension of the subject and made absolutely no changes or accommodations to make this class manageable. He created a culture that incentivized cheating and that did not allow students to fully engage with the material out of stress and anxiety.

In the end, he did award us a generous curve. However, it was completely unprecedented. We all expected a final with the difficulty of the second midterm, so we spent half the quarter stressed out of our minds. After all, we were told that a curve would only be awarded to those who managed to score well on the final.

Overall, I don't believe I would take another class with him. However, I would also not be miserable if I were forced to. The key is emotional detachment and the acceptance that your grade will likely tank no matter how much effort you put in.

There's something about this class that just... worked.

Professor Harrop-Griffiths is both clear and engaging, his slides do an excellent job of teaching the concepts (if you're paying attention), and the examples are great for checking your understanding and making sure you get things down-pat.

The TA sections, however... were awkward. Breakout rooms were frequently muted and camera-off, and no one seemed to say a whole lot or really want to be there. I chose to skip a few, just out of awkwardness, but the TAs went around, so if you had questions, they definitely could be answered.

I'll be honest: as someone who isn't great at math, this course initially intimidated me. Homework was largely graded, which I didn't do well with at first, and I got a 67 on the first midterm. After that though, it was largely smooth sailing. My second midterm and final grades were strong, office hours were helpful, and the practice midterms and finals went a long way to help me study and really get the material.

If you need a little hand-holding through math like me, this is the professor for you.

This professor is doing something right. His teaching is clear, concise, and explained very well. This professor makes engaging lectures and is text savvy. I would definitely recommend it.

Professor Harrop-Griffiths is the goat. Do not hesitate to take a class with him.

Professor Harrop Griffiths clarifies topics in Math 32B very well, something that is difficult to do when the topics of a course are so intimately connected. Personally, multivariable calculus is the place where I have begun to struggle with math, mainly due to my lag in visualization skills. I tend to look at problems discreetly, and so I have needed to adjust by connecting the dots in this course. Sometimes topics in this class were thrown in, seemingly out of context. I am mainly referring to the professor's treatment of applications (especially with the multivariable chain rule stuff). However, his explanation of these topics was very useful and the vast majority of this class was understandable to follow. He taught this class in a way in which every argument was progressive, and near the end of the course, much of the foundational work was paid off with general theorems.

His class expectations were very clear, and the homework was neither too easy nor too difficult. It helped me, a student who has been struggling mightily with the online format of this class, feel more comfortable with multivariable calculus. That being said, the grading was tough, and I do find the online format of grading homework for accuracy to be unfair and ironic. This does not detract from professor Harrop Griffith's understanding and excellent teaching ability. But it did tend to reward those who spent time simply looking up the answers online instead of engaging with the material and correcting mistakes (that you make with your own inferences). i also think that the midterms should have been longer. Why? Because the tests aren't curved, and so one silly mistake can dramatically damage your grade.

In my case, I parametrized a cone-like shape with spherical coordinates when I should have used cylindrical. This one mistake subsequently costed me 6 points out of 9 on a question (I needed the parameterization to find the unit normal for a flux integral). As the midterms were only 30 points each, you can infer that I did poorly on them.

Overall, I would be happy to take another math class with Harrop Griffiths, but preferably in person.

Dr. Benjamin is extremely helpful and eloquent! However, be careful with finals because it is extremely confusing! He is a great teacher and I will be glad to have him again, just that his grading curve is a bit tough (usually around a third got As but for this class it’s around a fourth)

Harrop-Griffiths has pretty clear lectures, but definitely continuously review and go over notes because all the similar yet different theorems add up over time and can get confusing. The class is structured so that he has time to both present the definitions and theorems, and go over problems in lecture.

Homework was a bunch of book problems and 0-4 harder additional problems. Homework-wise, workload wasn't too bad. I'd say that on average, I probably spent about 5-6 hours each week on homework.

For the quarter that I took this class, our midterms were on two Fridays at 6 pm, so he used the Friday class on the day of to go over review problems.
The first midterm was pretty simple and had a pretty high average. The second midterm was definitely harder than the first midterm. I ended up doing below average on this one, but he does drop one of the midterms if that helps your grade. The final was on a completely different level, but I actually did decent on it (score of mid 80s) because I finally understood how the theorems worked. It wasn't actually too bad, but it had a few tricks and required some thinking. I would advise you to read through all the problems before beginning just so you have time to fully think through the ones towards the end of the test. He also gave us 2 practice finals which were very good review and practice for the final.

This class was pretty hard but I can't blame the professor. He knows his stuff, lectures clearly, and is very approachable. The content of this class is just pretty annoying and tedious. You have to keep a lot of different stuff straight in your head, much more than 32A and 33A. That means that you have to be thorough about the concepts and homework throughout the quarter. It's not a class that lends itself to cramming. The stuff on the midterm was doable if you really know what you're doing, but if there are holes in your knowledge they will be exposed. The final was quite hard, the average on it was about a 70 and the class wasn't curved. For that reason, I wouldn't sacrifice one of the midterms in the hopes you can drop it and it won't matter. I got a 90 on the first midterm, 40 on the second (LOL it wasn't that hard I'm just an idiot) which was obviously dropped, an 82ish on the final, and ended up with a B.

Ben gives some of the most clear lectures I've ever had in a math class. His midterms are very fair, and while I did very well on them (near perfect scores), the final was a completely different story. The final was HARD and I did pretty badly on that, so I walked out with an A-. Beware that a lot of things that you learn in 32b are very similar and thus very easy to get confused with (Green's theorem, Stoke's theorem, Divergence theorem, etc) so make sure to spend that extra time to get everything clear. And lastly - go to class since his lectures are worth going to.

This class is hard. Harrop-Griffiths makes sure you learn your stuff, and if you fall behind you pay the price. He's a pretty good lecturer and his homework is really time-consuming, but it's a good indication of the level of difficulty of the class.

The midterms were okay, definitely not easy. The final, however, was just another level. Straight up the hardest test I have ever taken. I didn't really prepare well for it at all, so it was kinda my fault, and it really tested how much you understood the topics after the second midterm (Stokes/Greenes/Divergence Thm). I got a 65, and that was the average as well. This isn't a class you can fool around in and get by, unlike other classes such as 32A, 33A, 61, etc, because there is just so much freaking material to cover, and it all builds on one another. A plus is that Harrop-Griffiths uploads everything to gradescope, is good about regrade requests, has this sick accent, and made a really cool snapchat filter for his final. Honestly, looking back I can say the class was pretty fair, especially the exams, but you really have to know your stuff. My advice: don't fall behind, really understand the stuff after the second midterm, and do a ton of practice exams. If you are taking this class with other STEM classes, honestly prioritize this final because it is harder than most other math / physics / CS classes here at UCLA.