BEST PROFESSOR - Had a very similar experience with Fumiaki in 32A. He has engaging lectures and the tests are very straightforward (especially the midterms). The final was a little tricky and took me all 3 hours, but it was still doable. Don't get overconfident before any tests and do all the homework and you should get an A. Discussion work is mandatory.

Overall, 32B with Professor Varvarezos was certainly an interesting experience to say the least - as I probably should have expected considering he's a brand new instructor.

All said and done, Professor Varvarezos as a person generally did an adequate job - for a first-time lecturer at least. He definitely could have been a lot worse, though I will say that he without a doubt has a great amount of room to improve. In terms of clarity, some of his explanations of the concepts in class were just bizarre and incoherent, which led me to attend office hours frequently, where he usually was fairly responsive and able to articulate himself a bit better. Continuing on the topic of accessibility, he also set up a Piazza chat for the class to ask him questions online, though his responsiveness on that platform was questionable to say the least.

My biggest gripe with Varvarezos definitely related to his structuring of some assignments. He openly admitted on at least one occasion that he just straight up didn't even read through the weekly homework questions all the way before assigning them, which led to a lot of needless confusion when certain assigned prompts covered topics we hadn't mentioned in class. Needless to say, this was a completely unacceptable oversight that he might just get a pass on only because he's a brand new teacher. I hope he rectifies this mistake quickly.

In terms of the other aspects of the class, both of the midterms were quite straightforward with generous time limits given to complete them in (two hours instead of the usual fifty minutes), but the final was significantly elevated in difficulty (likely because the class instructing team realized the average grade was a bit too inflated). Discussion sections were generally pretty uneventful.

To be totally honest, I just really disliked the actual material that the course focused on, so this class became more of a slog as the quarter went on. Varvarezos has much work to do in order to become a solid teacher, but I feel like he definitely has the potential to grow into the role with time.

highkey top g, nice af, really good lecturer and recorded, tests are literal cake, absolute dub of a class and u actually learn stuff

Overall, Math 32B with Varvarezos is a solid class. As long as you go to lectures or watch them (recorded, which really helped later in the quarter!) and give yourself enough time to really do the HW problems, you'll be fine. He was new this quarter, which means he was probably still figuring out the adequate difficulty for exams, meaning his midterms were very easy while the final was more difficult, but I honestly think this is because he was learning what difficulty levels would properly survey the class (that is, achieve the desired grade distribution). I would anticipate that future quarters will be more balanced.

His homework is very light, 10 or fewer problems per week, all of which are doable. Sometimes you need to read the textbook to solve them and there are always a few challenging ones, but I suppose for the foretold difficulty of Math 32B this is justified. I believe compared to other professors, his homework is reasonable and his grading scheme is forgiving. His lectures are also very helpful, well structured, and to the point; he labels all the important conjectures/theorems and does a recap at the beginning of each lecture, so you never feel lost. His explanations make sense and in general he cares to help you if you ask. There's also a Piazza to ask for additional help, and he is pretty responsive in general on there.

The only thing of note is that the final exam is very heavily weighted; 40 or 45% of your grade depending on the scheme you use. So, you can do terrifically throughout the course and mess up on the final (which had only 4 questions and 40 total points) and destroy your grade. So just, be careful, and study/prepare well for the exam. I think a lot of people this quarter rode the wave of easy midterms and assumed the final would be just as easy, forgot how heavily weighted it was, and then lost out as a result. Even if the class feels easy, still treat it as an important class. Then you can't be surprised on the final.

Okay the reviews here for my quarter are terrible but I actually liked Prof Varvarezos! His lectures were really well-organized and easy to understand, but there was only audio recording (no video or lecture notes). Whenever I missed a class I would just get notes from a friend and listen to the audio at the same time so it was basically like being in class lol.

I thought the midterms were both reasonable, not at all more difficult than the examples he did in class. But the final was genuinely really really bad. I'm lucky I did pretty good but it was definitely far more difficult than anything he had covered in class before. His homework is also really hard—he picks all the hardest questions out of the textbook (even problems) to actually grade on correctness—so I think the final was about the same difficulty as a lot of the homework problems (probably it was easier tbh, HW was hard).

Something I liked about Varvarezos was his office hours. I only went a few times, but every time I asked questions, he was super helpful and understanding, and took the time to fully answer the question. This is mainly how I was able to answer a lot of the homework questions, because he would be fully willing to explain the solutions for them. He also answered a lot of questions from the class during lecture. Lowkey sometimes he spent too long answering questions I got pissed off lol. But it's clear he is really knowledgeable about the material and is generally good at teaching.

IMO if you take the time to fully understand the material conceptually (his tests have true/false) and go to office hours for your questions, his class is actually not that bad. Outside of class time or time spent doing homework, I think I probably spent 1-2 hours/week on average studying? Obviously more around the time of the exams. He's a pretty considerate + competent guy and idk wtf happened when he was writing the final but I would honestly consider him the best math prof I've had so far.

I feel like this prof is not as bad as the reviews from my quarter make it seem! I didn’t have any experience with the content beforehand but got 98, 99, 97.5 on the midterms and final (which was definitely harder). The other reviews are right in that his lecture examples are way easier than the homework and exams, but the homework questions and the practice exams are about the same level of difficulty as the actual exams for the midterms. If you paid attention in class, really understood the homework, textbook questions, practice tests without taking shortcuts, and thought carefully about the true/false questions, the tests were really very straightforward. For the true/false, even if I didn’t know the answer, I could still come up with examples to test to make a good guess. His grading scheme is 45% final at the minimum which kind of sucked but that’s kind of how the math dept is. The only weird thing was recording lectures. He said he couldn’t get the video to work so there was only audio, but I took a class in the same room in the winter and there was no issue. Hopefully that gets fixed next time. I found 32B pretty interesting, but the content itself is not easy and there’s nothing he can do to change that. Overall, he explains the concepts simply but tests with harder examples similar to practice tests. I would definitely take him again, especially compared to things I’ve heard about the other 32B profs!

Honestly... if you are going to teach a class, at least put some effort into it. If the students are bombing the midterms and final on a lower div class, then it is really the teacher's problem, rather than the material being too hard or the students being too dumb. If you only teach the most basic examples and expect us to build a rocket to Mars from that, then you must be chronically insane. Midterm averages to 60s and he "curves" it to 80, final averages around 70. NGL, this is atrocious for a lower div class and if you expect a bunch of college students who just want to pass the class to put some effort into it, at least make it honors so I can avoid you.

It is definitely possible to get a good grade in this class but it's absolutely not easy. The old reviews from 2023 aren't accurate anymore; Professor Varvarezos no longer records or has easy exams. Expect to spend some time outside of lecture going over content because the homework is harder than the examples he goes over in class. There were 4 CONCEPTUAL T/F questions on each midterm, and each T/F was worth 5% of the midterm total which is... bruh idek what to say. So try to get an understanding instead of memorizing the formulas. Also the final was lowkey atrocious and there is NO EXTRA CREDIT!!! T_T

It wasn't all bad though. Overall the content was really interesting! As a life science major, this class is making me consider a math minor. The midterms were fair and matched the difficulty level of the practice exams he provided. He lets you drop a midterm score and allows cheat sheets on exams. He was also very helpful when I asked him questions after class or during office hours, so make sure you take advantage of that!