Really terrible professor. Never take his classes if you can.

I'm writing this before the final grades are posted, just trying to avoid possible bias based on a letter grade.

Professor Liu has his styles, which is like "computation with tricks" and "inspiration", and you would agree with me if you have attended his lectures and seen the test problems. He always said "this is nothing but just ..." when emphasizing an important concept or a kind of abstract notion in lectures, not so hard to follow.

He has accents, for sure. But such pronunciation problems only have minor influence on the lectures as a whole as long as you do not fall sleep and miss something in the transition from one idea to another.

The grading scale seems kind of harsh; after all it is a lower division math class:

Scheme A: 10%HW + 40%Midterms + 50%Final ( you may find it really easy to understand your final raw score for this course since Prof. Liu gives 2 midterms of 20 points each and a final of 50 points).

Scheme B: 10%HW + 90%Final (Final is really hard, not just cumulative in contents covered, but also "tricks".

Fortunately, in lectures he covered most of his "tricks" appeared in tests problems. If you find something really tedious to compute, then please think of some "tricks" you may be not so familiar with.

As you've probably read in the other reviews, Liu's accent is thick and makes it hard to understand him. His lectures come straight from the textbook, so honestly, you don't even need to go to lecture. I learned the most from my TA and by teaching myself the material using the textbook or videos online. The homework is collected every week and there are no quizzes. The only reason I didn't fail this class was because his tests are almost identical every year. He has midterms in the test bank and he keeps the same format and question types every year. They've gotten much harder over the years, so the 2012 midterm isn't representative of the difficulty, however, the question types will be the same. I highly recommend going to the test bank and doing all of his old midterms. If you do that, you can score 100 on the midterms. And you'll want to do as well as possible because his final is impossible. There were 12 questions and I think there were at least 4 I had no idea how to solve. But there's a huge curve, so if you did well on the midterms you should be fine.

This class was extremely difficult, however 32B is generally a very difficult class regardless of the professor. Liu was overall a good professor and did a good job of explaining and visualizing concepts. Many people had difficulties understanding him due to his accent, however, if you listen carefully you would get used to it over time. Discussion is not mandatory in this class, however if you have a good TA it will really help you cement what Liu teaches in lecture. The midterms for this class were very fair and are very similar every single year if you visit the test bank. It is very important to do well on the midterms because if you mess up on a midterm, you cannot just drop one midterm and the alternative grading scale is: 90% final & 10% homework. This is extra important because the final was VERY difficult. I have honestly never taken such a difficult math test in my life before the final in this class. I'm pretty sure he ends up curving the final though so as long as you do as well as everyone else, you'll be ok. Also for the final, it is important to remember his various 'tricks' for complex problems. Oftentimes problems on the final would become much simpler if a few 'tricks' were applied

The first and most important thing I have to say is: USE THE TEST BANK. Gang recycles almost all of his midterm questions from his past tests only changing some numbers or signs, or even not changing them at all. Besides that, the midterms and final were purely computational (Gang says so himself), meaning that you don't have to do all the theoretical bs other 32B professors might make you do. For the midterms and final, one really important thing Gang stressed is memorizing the integrals of cos^2, cos^3, sin^2, and sin^3 from 0 to 2pi or pi since those came up a lot in his problems and made calculations a lot quicker. Also, as he says, you should sometimes look for symmetry if you find one integral impossible to compute; the tough part probably equals zero.

The grading scheme was 10% homework, 20% each for two midterms, and 50% final, or 10% homework and 90% final. Gang posts all the homework problems at the beginning of the quarter (it's just ~10 problems from each textbook section), and every week two of the sections are due in lecture on Friday. Since the midterm questions were almost exactly the same as old midterms, I got 19.5/20 on each one (the median was roughly 15-16). Like everyone says, the final was way harder in that it was 12 problems long whereas the midterms were 5, and it tests on Green's, Stokes', and the divergence theorem. He says about two-thirds of the final is the same difficulty as the midterms, and I managed to confidently answer about 8 of the questions and put down answers for 3 others, which was enough to beat the curve since the average is usually in the 50s.

As for his lectures, he has a relatively thick Chinese accent, but if you're Asian you should have no trouble understanding him. He sometimes goes over the theoretical background behind certain concepts, but it's only for intuition and not really needed to do his problems. After he does that, he does some practice problems, in which he shows some tricks he uses, like symmetry and the special trig integrals. I would recommend taking notes on the textbook sections yourself and going to lecture just to improve your understanding.

Very bad teacher and has very hard test. To do well read all pages of the textbook I.E. chapters 16, 17 and 18 and do practice problems all test questions are computational. Because he is a bad teacher and gives hard test most people do poorly however with a few keys you can get an easy A and ride the curve. First do the chapter review problems in the book and make sure you understand the concepts, second search his name on reddit there is a test back with all his midterms 1 and 2 and he reuses old questions from midterms just a few years ago. Basically I did not know about this test bank and got 80% on first midterm then used the test bank and got a 97.5% on second midterm. (by midterm 2 everyone knows of test bank so if you don't use it you will score well below average which is artificially high). The final is not in any test bank but the one key is that he almost only will have questions from chp. 18 and a few from chp. 17 but none from chp. 16 on the final. So when studying you must practice all the chp. 18 problems in the textbook. No matter how hard you prepare for the final it is so hard no one answers every question. Finally these tricks people are talking about are very easy once you learn them. Basically he loves trig integrals i.e. integral of sin/ cos square or cubed. He does all the trick integrals in problems in class so just memorize the integral of these functions and then use what ever limits the problem gives. Will save so much time on test and may actually finish.

Grading policy:
(Will do a curve of 30% A, 30% B, 30% C)
10% HW - Problems from book and solution manual can be found online graded on correctness so can be easy 100% in this section
20% Midterm 1 - this is before people know of test bank so will have low average (75%) make sure you do well here
20% Midterm 2 - After everyone knows of test bank avg is 90% must do well or get skewed by the curve
50% Final - Very hard just try to answer as many problems (skip hard ones) as possible know everyone is struggling and also won't finish the test so all about that curve

I thought I was good at math but this class proved me wrong. The material is difficult and Liu's lectures definitely do not help. The homework is reasonable and so are the midterms but the final was insane. I'm pretty sure that a third of the problems on the final were practically impossible to solve. Overall, would not recommend this class.

I could not understand a single word this professor said. My friend, who is from China, said that Liu had such a thick chinese accent that he couldn't even understand the professor. Math 32B is a tough class as it is. When you don't know what the professor is saying, it is impossible. I have to retake this class.

Disclaimer: Other students seemed like they could understand him? Some would ask questions and act like they understood what he said. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Selling "Calculus Multivariable Third Edition" by Jon Rogawski and Colin Adams

Looseleaf Edition in a binder with unused Pearson Online Access as well

No sign of use at all; Basically New

Selling for $70 (less than half the price listed in UCLA store)

Leave a message at ********** if interested.

I will personally deliver it to you if you are on campus.

Overall Great class. Try to get as high as possible for the first two midterm . Then final you will be fine