Excellent professor, helpful and easy to reach by email, and preps you well for exams. It's tough keeping up with lectures considering how much content is covered but overall it's a very straightforward class that is not too difficult to succeed in.

we never got to see the grades for our final exams, koffi didn't cover entire units of the content so now we're behind in 32b and he was lecturing during finals week. overall disorganized class, easy tests but not great for learning the content well

Dislikes: Koffi is a good professor, but his way of lecturing is a little sporadic. For instance, he doesn't make pre-made slides or anything like that; he just writes everything on Notability or some kind of digital note-taking app on his iPad. What's more, he doesn't write that stuff during lectures, it's all pre-written so a lot of times he goes faster than anticipated because he has his stuff already written down which makes it hard to copy down example problems or long theorems. If he is still recording his lectures or making YouTube videos, I would definitely recommend just watching those instead of going to in-person class (something that I ended up doing after like Week 3). Additionally, he is known for assigning essentially all the problems for each section of the chapter in the textbook, but the nice thing is that he lets you submit them till the end of the quarter. I took advantage of this as I was finishing up a couple of assignments after the final and submitted them on the very last day. ---On top of that, a lot of people complain about his thick accent and point to that making him a bad instructor, but this is my opinion about it. A lot of people have had instructors who have very good English or speak English as their first language, but honestly, you will continually be learning in the real world and not everyone you will be learning from will have perfect English or you'll be able to understand completely, so I think that this a good opportunity for students—especially those that only speak one language—to practice understanding what someone is saying despite their accent and also to practice showing respect for someone who is doing their best with the language. Also, there was an incident in 2020 where individuals "ZoomBombed" his class —took control of the meeting and made him unable to leave—and preceded to harass him by calling his racial and homophobic slurs (you can read more about this by looking up the DailyBruin article). I didn't know about this until someone told me but the fact that he is still here teaching after that says a lot about his character and I really admire him not only for having the courage to continue to teach here after that but also for learning English and being able to teach in that language. ~That's the end of my rant, but the purpose of it was to recognize the effort that Koffi is putting in by being an instructor, and to think of his struggles and what he's been through before you go complaining saying "Omg his accent makes this class such a struggle, he's such a bad teacher, I should have taken someone else."---However, the reason this is in the dislikes section isn't that I don't like the way that he verbally communicates with the class; it is because of the way he communicates through writing. His handwriting is like 1800s caligraphy so half the time I spend watching his videos it's like deciphering ancient text. This is why taking the time to understand him while he is speaking is that much more important because it is very difficult to read his handwriting.

Tips: Definitely take advantage of Discussion sections and OH. Because Koffi assigns almost all the problems for each chapter section, this will include the very last questions for each chapter which are usually weird derivations and proofs. Honestly, though, he only grades like 3 questions from a 30 questions problem set, and looking at which problems ended up being graded—revealed after the quarter via gradescope—it is usually some of the more basic and beginning questions, not usually the harder derivations. You never know though so I would definitely recommend just going to your TA and asking them to do the weird derivations for you or just help walk you through it. Additionally, I mostly made use of my TA's for Homework help, but I would highly recommend you go to Koffi's review sessions leading up to the test. They can sometimes be a little erratic and sometime's he makes algebra mistakes, but take note of the kinds of problems that he does during review because those are usually what ends up on the test. Another thing to note is that he will send you an email like a week or so before the test with the exact topics that will be tested, but if you go to his office hours on the night before or even a couple nights before the exam, he will usually give you hints/more specifics on what will be tested so definintely take advantage of that. Even if he doesn't end up giving you more details on the kinds of questions, going to the office hours the night before will help you because he will typically end up going over some of the harder points of the material.

Overview: As a whole, Koffi was one of my favorite professors who really cared about his students and made the entire class smile with one of his light-hearted giggles <3. He assigns a lot of homework but as a whole, he is very lenient with deadlines and if you buy the physical textbook there is an answer key in the back (otherwise if you use an online version of the textbook, you can find an older version of the textbook with a solution manual where most of the questions are still the same so the older solution manual still works). Some issues that you'll probably run in too are reading his handwriting, his quick lectures, and those long long assignments, but as a whole, the first part of 32A is pretty easy, and even when it gets hard, it never gets too bad so it shouldn't be that bad of a class. Overall, would recommend :)

Great lecture and nice dude.

Nice and funny guy and very lax on due dates, however, terrible lecturer.

I stopped going to lectures after week 1. A mask combined with his accent and a poor mic setup meant it was almost impossible to understand what he was saying in class. On the bright side, he recognized that and so he started posting youtube videos of lecture content the day before (where it was much easier to understand). He held review sessions before exams, and the exams had almost the exact same questions as those sessions (with different numbers ofc). Both were based on homework questions so you don’t really need to attend review sessions if you know how to do the homework. The only thing annoying is that he loves assigning the “further insights and challenges” questions on the homework, which sometimes took me hours to figure out and other times I just gave up.

do not take this instructor's class if you have a hard time understanding accents. dude seems really nice and he has cool funky outfits but i could not for the life of me figure out what he was saying because of his heavy accent which was aggravated by also wearing a mask. In the online lectures without the mask I could understand slightly better but it was just really discouraging and annoying and made me not go to lecture or office hours

Hilarious dude, very helpful and considerate, I recommend for an easy A. The professor's accent is extremely strong so it can be very challenging to understand because he is also quiet. His homework assignments are long and tedious and can be somewhat hard, but they are infinitely harder than anything you will see on the tests (plus the hw's are graded easily too). The tests are very very easy and the review sessions he holds before each one will give up to half of the questions on the test away. Thank you Professor Koffi!

A great professor. The homework assignments are very helpful to understand the topics taught during the class. The professor is vey knowledgeable of the topics. Overall, I recommend him for Math 32a.

Grading Scale:
discussion wksts: 5%
homework: 10%
midterms: 22.5% each (or 30% of best)
final: 40% (or 55%)
*better of the two options is chosen

Textbook:
Textbooks are only used for homework problems, but can be useful for practice or going over lessons, as lectures are often based off of them.
Selling my paper textbook!! email ************* for inquiries!

Exams:
Go to the review sessions. They tell you everything you need for the midterms. The final was much harder than the midterms, so do not put as much trust into the review sessions.

Grading:
The tests (I think) are graded by TAs but regrades are graded by Koffi. He is very stubborn and will more than likely not change any grades, even if you try to explain yourself.

Homework & Discussion Worksheets
For homework, he assigns a ton of problems but only grades 3-5 per assignment, and they are usually one of the first ones. Do not stress too much on the harder proofs at the end; they are never graded. There will be due dates for homework and discussion worksheets, but he gives you up until the end of the quarter to turn them in for full credit. Just email him to open up the submissions. Discussion worksheets are just problems from the textbook, and they do not have to be completed—a submission of what you finished within discussion gives you full credit.

Lectures:
Lectures are pre-recorded so that students can watch them before class. The classes themselves are also recorded. Koffi has an accent, but as long as you sit in the front or have your volume up on zoom, it is not too much of an issue. I found watching the lectures beforehand and following along with the textbook helpful to understanding the in class lectures. Koffi encourages questions which is nice, though he rarely understands the questions being asked. He oftentimes answers questions before people are done asking or just answers questions that he hears/wants to hear instead of the ones being asked. He can also be stubborn/blinded to corrections and it can be a little frustrating.

Professor:
Overall, Koffi is a very kind and funny professor. However, he spends a lot of class time with shady rants about students who go to the online lectures instead of in person (though he tries his best to express his understanding of the pandemic and it’s effects on learning). As said earlier, he is also stubborn with regrades and difficult with questions. Despite all that, he is a genuinely caring professor who wants his students to pass.

TAs:
I had Steven Troung as my TA. He’s a great TA! He’s been working with Koffi for a while now and is a great teacher. I had the Tuesday discussion which meant the worksheets oftentimes had material from lectures we haven’t had yet. However, Steven was great in giving mini lessons so that we could get them done. If you want these mini lessons that are easy to follow before going to the more heavy lectures, I recommend getting a Tuesday discussion. If you want to be able to do the worksheets after the lectures, choose Thursday.