Professor Spaas is a fairly good lecturer and is occasionally funny. His midterms were not too difficult, but because the max number of points you could earn on each was 40 points, making a small mistake could cost you a significant percentage of the points. His final was much more challenging in the sense that you needed a stronger understanding of the material in order to answer some of the questions, but overall the difficulty level was still reasonable. The discussions were not very helpful -- my TA passed out a worksheet and spent the majority of the discussion period going over the first few (often the easiest) problems, leaving us confused on the remaining harder questions. My TA also did not post answers to these worksheets online, which would have been very helpful. The homework load in this class is reasonable, with one homework assignment due each Friday. Each homework assignment took me around 3 hours to complete, which is honestly not bad considering that it's a week's worth. When doing the homework, it is often helpful to skim through the chapter of the textbook just to refresh your memory on what Spaas taught. Also, Spaas posted practice problems for the first midterm and the final, which are very helpful to do.

Pieter Spaas is the MOST wholesome professor I had. Constantly roasting himself about his inability to do math or making fun of his little mistakes make going to lecture worth it. The final was rough, and midterms were decently tough, but imo, that's just the content of the course. Pieter did the best he could to lecture, and he was ALWAYS helpful during office hours (he even got them moved to a bigger room when he realized a lot of people were coming every week!) He always held extra office hours right before exams too. He WANTS you to do well on his tests, so there's nothing tricky on them, really. The tricks on his tests involve if you understand what's going on conceptually rather than just using the formulas. Unfortunately, I do have to say that the discussion sections seemed pretty useless. I stopped going halfway through the quarter. The worksheets always felt unnecessarily hard, harder than the exam? I couldn't even do half of the questions on the worksheets during discussion and just ended up not doing them at all, because they don't count for anything and I still did decently well on the exams. I liked Pieter, so decided to take him again for 32B!

I love Professor Spaas! He was the first math professor I had at ucla, and he was amazing! His lectures are normal, but the way he explained things were really clear for me. Homework is given every week, but it's really light and in discussion you just do worksheets he assigns. (not mandatory though) His tests are decent; some found the final crazy hard but for me it wasn't horrible unless you study well enough. I liked his teaching style so much I took 32B with him again :) Overall, I recommend taking this class with him, you will learn so much!

I took this class with Professor Spaas after taking 32A with him. First midterm was a little hard; the average was in the 70s and I got just above the average. Maybe seeing how bad people did he made the second midterm easier so I got a 100. However the covid19 pandemic made the final take home and open 24 hours. Because of that he made it extremely difficult and took me 6 hours to finish. I ended up getting a 73 which brought me down to a B+... I remember in his 32A class that his final was HARD. He is a great teacher and I definitely recommend taking his class, but the final exam will hit you like a truck so be careful ....

Besides the fact that the class was at 8am, it was very good. Professor Spaas' lectures were very clear and he goes over plenty of examples. The midterms (particularly the first one) were quite easy and since you have the option to drop one, I suggest trying to do very well on the first midterm so you don't have to care as much for the second one. However, the final is much more concept-based than the midterms were, so watch out for that. Overall a good class and a good professor and I'm taking Spaas for 32B as well.

In general, his class contends are clear and he is very helpful, but exams got harder and harder. The first midterm was fairly easy (I did badly due to personal psychological reasons). The second midterm was harder in contends and the number of questions. The exams were in class, so they should be done in 50 mins. In each exam, there were 5 questions with approximate 3 questions within each question. The final was hard. Within 3 hours, 10 questions (or 8) needed to be finished. The calculation was hard and there was a question testing did you fully get the definitions of some knowledge.

I liked his class and tried to attend most of it (it was at 8:00 am). Going to classes definitely helped to understand knowledge. He is a good professor, but I hope he can make his exams have a consistent difficulty level.

Final was atrocious and absolutely destroyed my grade (which was 100% going into the final). I still decided to take his 32B class next quarter, please Spaas don't murder my grade or I can't transfer to the major I want :(

Class is taught well and was only a bit harder than 32A but the grading was inconsistent and overly picky. I wouldn't take this class again for that reason.

I would definitely recommend taking 32B with Spaas. This class is gonna be pretty rough no matter who you take it with, but Spaas' lectures are extremely clear and helpful. His office hours are not as helpful because they are overcrowded and he doen't get a bigger room, but I would recommend going to TA office hours. The midterms are on a big time crunch, study A LOT. Do old tests, even if they are from other professors, as well as his practice tests. His exams are difficult, but fair. Make sure you understand the homework and the worksheets from discussion to do well on them. He doesn't try to trick you, but you really need to have a good understanding to do well, and make sure to show all your work very clearly and in a very organized fashion, because it can either really help you to get lots of partial credit or totally screw you if it's hard to follow. I believe the averages on the midterms were a 78% and an 84%, or something like that. The final was super super hard. We had 24 hours and boy did I need it. Overall, I do really recommend this class, but make sure you go to ALL lectures and do the homework ahead of time, because you will most likely need help on it and want to check your answers with other people.

Spaas is a pretty good teacher for 32B. The class is pretty hard but it's mostly just the content not his fault. I did feel like there was a little bit too much homework assigned every week and that the grading was a little too picky, but nothing major. Homework is worth around 10% of your grade, and then there's two midterms (there's a grading option to count only one midterm if one of your midterm scores is drastically lower than the other) and a final. All in all, it's a pretty hard course, but Spaas is a great professor to take it with.