Nice prof, provides good intuition. Tough tests tho.
Go to discussion, the TAs are pretty helpful

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)

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.

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.

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.

Good professor, but I did not like 134 since it had too much applications

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.

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.

As a friend noted, "he's a PILF." Can't say I disagree.