Gang Liu is the G.O.A.T. It took me a whole quarter to be able to understand his accent, but his class and the midterms are purely computational and much like the homework. (Speaking of homework, the weekly homework can be done all in one night, which is what I did every week of the quarter). His final is longer and more difficult than the midterms but the curve compensates for it. One of my favorite things about Gang Liu is his attire. He wore the same iconic blue-shirt brown-pants outfit every single day of the quarter, and so far he has continued to wear the same outfit every day of 32B as well. Does he only own one pair of clothes? Maybe he just has a closet filled only with identical blue shirts and a drawer filled only with identical brown pants. We may never know. Overall 10/10 Gang Liu is the reason I get up in the morning.

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I agree with most other reviews here. Class and professor are hard to understand. Midterms were easy, but I didn't do well because I didn't understand the material conceptually. After a while I learned that if I read and took notes on the homework before Liu lectured on them I could understand him through his accent a lot more. Final was really different and much harder than midterms because they were proof and variable based.

Honestly, don't take this class with Liu. His accent can be very hard to understand, and most of his explanations just seem disjointed. The class itself is very easy- just basic vectors, partial derivates and stuff. The midterms are fairly straightforward- make sure to do well on them, as the final tends to be much harder (median for the final was around ~58%). I bombed the second midterm, but aced the final and was able to get an A. He also has a nice grading scheme for guys like me that makes the final worth 90% of the grade.

Liu is a decent professor if you can understand the light accent because it's math and everything is just written down as formulas and graphs so it's not too hard to follow through lectures. His homework is very light and he gives it all out at the beginning of the quarter, assigning about 6-8 questions per section as he covers them. Midterms are also very easy and purely computational which means they are basically just homework questions from the textbook that he doesn't assign. Best way to study for midterms is do all the homework questions from the textbook. Final is much tougher and 4 of the 12 questions were proofs, but everyone does terrible and the grade is curved so my grade wasn't completely screwed over by the final. Make sure you don't mess up the computational midterms so the final averages your grade out nicely.

All in all, would definitely recommend if you already kinda know the material because his tests are comparatively easy and there's plenty of test bank resources but other professors are definitely better at actually teaching and explaining the material if you have trouble grasping the concepts.

He is impossible to understand. I cannot stress this enough. Unless you know someone with a very strong Chinese accent and have gotten very used to decoding what they are saying understanding lectures will be impossible.
If you don't do well on the midterms you will not get a good grade.

Don't take this professor if you can help it. I took this class first quarter of my first year, and because of that, every student in the class either received a 5 on the BC exam or had already taken some multi-variable in high school. This competitiveness along with Liu being a pretty awful teacher, resulted in a headache I wish I could've avoided. I think Liu is a math genius, but he never learned how to teach other people math, and I don't think he has much desire to. I realized too late in the quarter that lectures are useless. I still attended every lecture, review session, and discussion section. If you are taking this class, just teach yourself from the textbook and pray that your TA knows what he or she is talking about. He teaches straight from the book, his examples are from the book too. He comes to class with this small notebook that seems like he just flipped through the book and took his version of notes. My poor grade in the class could be attributed to multiple things wrong with the class, the professor, the adjustment to college, and the fast quarter system, but I will say I've always been a good student and my grades in other classes reflect that. The one thing Liu has going for him is that his midterms are fair. Its pretty sad that is the only nice thing I can say. The final was really hard but it seems Liu doesn't fail all that many people. My advice for someone who has no option but to take this professor: teach yourself, become acquainted with your TA, work ahead on homework, and don't freak out if you fail the midterms, you'll pass in the end. Liu is a great guy, but a bad teacher.

Dr. Liu's heavy accent is certainly something to get used to, but once you do (it certainly helps to ask him if you can't understand something he says) the lectures become far more helpful. For example, for the first five weeks of the quarter I kept hearing him use the term "honorary functions" to describe single variable functions, clearly, I wasn't able to find any other usage of the word "honorary" in this context online. Once I approached him in person to clarify, it turned out that he'd been trying to say "ordinary functions" the entire time. Other than the accent, I must say that Dr. Liu is a good lecturer. He sticks close to the textbook, speaks succinctly, makes good notes on the board, and has a habit of quickly reviewing the previous lecture's material at the start of every lecture, which is very useful.

If you're considering this class, do ensure to read ahead before each lecture, if you struggle with his accent it certainly helps to have a surface level understanding of the lecture material already. Also, be very diligent with the midterms! The midterms are easy every year and if you screw up one of them (as I did) you will receive a poor grade since Dr. Liu's finals are notoriously difficult.

Professor Liu's lectures were sometimes confusing, but he tried to explain concepts and examples from the textbook. Reading the textbook was very useful in picking up what I didn't understand from lecture. His two midterms weren't too hard, but the final was difficult - I didn't know how to solve a few of the problems. Overall, be sure to do lots of practice problems before the exams, and you'll do fine!