Spaas is a great lecturer and probably the most wholesomest, nicest man ever. I think I have a relatively more unbiased view of his class lol because despite the fact that his final was pretty horrible, I'll probably go through w taking his 32B class again next quarter.

Homework: Super easy, graded on accuracy so just be careful and check before you turn them in. He drops the 2 lowest HW grades too, but that wasn't an issue for most people. They were easier than midterms/finals questions too.

Discussions: as others have said, completely useless. We're supposed to do worksheets during discussion, but my TA (Ben) would spend half the class going over the first 2 questions (always SUPER easy) and never talk about the last questions, which is what we actually needed help on. SPAAS does not provide solutions to his discussion worksheets, so you just have to pray your TA is nice enough to give them to you. Ben was not... but he was a very nice, wholesome dude that was always really approachable. The worksheets are also super conceptual and a bit tricky – harder than midterms.

Midterms: They are pretty straightforward, but they're only out of 40 points. SMALL MISTAKES WILL KILL YOUR SCORES. He is pretty nitpicky too about some small things as well. One time I wrote down the CORRECT equation with the numbers already plugged in instead of the original equation with variables AND he took a full point off (which is like 2.5% off right there), which makes 0 sense. The averages are like low B's which is pretty standard. After my first midterm grade came out, I was only marked off for nitpicky stuff so I was kinda mad at Spaas. But tbh seeing his beautiful face and nice personality in class the next Monday kinda made me forget about that. FOR MIDTERM 2, he didn't give us study questions or anything also, which was annoying, but he did for midterm 1 and final.

Final: SO HARD. He literally told us that it would 70% straightforward and 30% not straightforward the Friday before, so at least he was honest... The test was just extremely conceptual, with true/false/not enough info questions and a weird last thing where you had to calculate cross products using geometric stuff and arc length parametrizations .

Although our final grades were curved, ultimately, I got a lower final grade than my 2 midterms, which was pretty upsetting because I had done much better than average on both of them. Honestly, if it wasn't for that how tRiCKy/nOt sTraightfOrWard that final was, I probably could've done much better overall. :((

I highly recommend taking Math 32A with Professor Spaas. He genuinely cares about his students’ learning, is very open to answering questions, and is fair in his assignments. He explains the lecture material in a way that is easy to understand and he’s very explicit in what material is beyond the scope of the class. I’m saddened that he is not teaching Math 32B next quarter because I would have signed up for that class with him in a heartbeat.

Homework: questions are straight from the textbook. The workload is pretty light, each homework assignment (which was spread over the course of an entire week, assigned on Friday and due Friday the subsequent week) only took me about 2 hours to complete. It’s graded on accuracy, so try to finish the problems over the weekend so you can check with a group of students sometime during the week. The lowest two homework assignments are dropped, so don’t feel too bad if you get docked points for some stupid reason by the TA.

Discussions: I’ll just echo what other folks have said here. Spaas also posts worksheets on CCLE on Monday of every week covering material pertaining to the lectures around that day. These questions are about the same difficulty as the questions on the exams, though there are no answers. Theoretically we’re supposed to go over the homework answers during discussion with our TAs, but we always ran out of time or only had time to cover the easy questions. It’s probably better if you discuss solutions with a group of friends as well, and if you have any additional lingering questions, drop into office hours and ask Spaas himself.

Quiz: I don’t think this applies during non-COVID quarters so take it with a grain of salt. We had a 30-minute window of time to take and submit the quiz on CCLE, and we could start at any time over the 24-hour period. These were VERY conceptual. Honestly the homework didn’t help me prepare for these. You sort of just have to develop a geometric sense of the course material and then you’ll be successful. The preliminary questions in each section helped me develop a conceptual intuition of the lecture material. Second quiz was definitely the hardest, but he drops your lowest score.

Midterms: First midterm was a piece of cake. Second midterm was more difficult. You have 24 hours to take the midterm, though it was designed to be a 1-hour test. The main gimmick with Spaas’s teaching style is that he dislikes plugging in numbers into an equation. It’s clear from the wording of the questions that he wants us to have a conceptual knowledge of the material and be able to apply the calculations from that baseline understanding. For this reason, I recommend that you read the textbook as a supplement to the lectures and add to your class notes whenever you come across something of value. The practise midterms are for the most part a good representation of the exam, so make sure you do those and understand how you arrived at every solution. Make sure to check your work! The midterm that you did better on nets 25% of your final grade, and the one that you did worse on only takes up 20%. In terms of grade distribution, the averages were quite high – Midterm 1 had a low A and Midterm 2 had a low B.

Final: Not terrible. I felt it was somewhere in between the first and second midterm in terms of difficulty. Prepare for it the same way you would with the midterms. I was scared that the true/false/not enough info questions would appear on the final and kill my grade but the conceptual questions were surprisingly easy.

Background: I'm a first-year math major (so I came into this class interested in math), so keep that in mind while reading this review. I took this during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

I really liked Spaas for 32A. In my opinion, his lectures were really engaging, he did a great job explaining the material (and 3D stuff can be pretty hard to explain) and concepts, and he was really nice and accommodating. There is 1 homework per week and the problems are from the textbook. I thought it was pretty painless to complete. It's graded on accuracy, so make sure to check your answers (the lowest 2 homeworks are dropped). We had three 30 minute quizzes that were VERY conceptual. For these, make sure you can picture the concepts in your head and really have a solid grasp of what you're doing beyond the calculations (the lowest quiz was dropped though). The midterms were easy/medium and we had 24 hours to complete them. The final was a bit more difficult, but not horrible and we had 24 hours for that too. Definitely make sure you're taking the time to really check your answers and explain yourself really well in writing because they can get pretty picky while critiquing your exams. There are resources to study for exams such as practice tests and worksheets but these have no answer keys (it would be more helpful they did). Overall, I loved the class and found it really fun and interesting, and I thought Spaas did a great job!

Spaas ticks off every box for a good professor. He's very knowledgeable of the subject, gives clear lectures, and is very approachable during office hours. There's really nothing to say, he's just a standard good guy

Definitely take his class.
He's a really nice guy; the workload is light; the tests were easy.
I think the majority of us ended up with an A.

Prof. Spaas is very sweet and does his best to answer all of his students' questions. The quizzes were timed for 30 min but you had a 24 hour period to take them, and they were harder imo than the exams because of the time limit and the true/false and conceptual questions. The exams were open for 24 hours and were super long, but not entirely impossible, especially because you have a lot of time. The questions weren't that hard, you just need to check your work—you have the time so why not. Don't believe him when he says the midterms will take 1 hour or the final will take 3 because they took me ALL DAY.
He came in clutch and dropped our lowest quiz grades though. What helped me a lot in this class was going to the Tau Beta Pi exam review sessions and watching Professor Cunningham on youtube to learn stuff in advance.

Even after receiving a B+, I liked this class enough to take Math 32B from Prof. Spaas at 8:00 AM Winter Quarter! Although Spaas does not provide slides or lecture podcasts, so I would recommend showing up to lecture, he makes the material very engaging and is always willing to take extra time to answer questions and ensure his students understand what is happening. I considered the midterm exams (there are two, one at the beginning of Week 4 and one at the beginning of Week 8) pretty straightforward, but the class average for each was in the high C/low B range. The homework assignments are also relatively simple, with very few challenge problems, and I was usually able to get them done within a few hours. The final, however, was surprisingly difficult, and most of the class was caught off guard.

Sit down because I’m going to spill the REAL tea on Spaas. This man is as wholesome as they come, he will take 10 minutes to reexplain some concept if someone doesn’t get it and will spend a long time trying to help out everyone who raises their hand. The homework is not bad, especially for the first half it took max 2 hours for the whole week. Towards the last few sections it got a little longer but still not bad. Discussions: complete ass. The TA I had (Tianqi) seemed to try but he didn’t explain things very well. Worksheets were harder than midterms and homework and I didn’t really understand the point of doing them as even after thinking about the problems for a while I still didn’t get them lmao. I guess they were there to try to help us get a deeper understanding but I’m probably just too dumb to find it. Midterms: they are not that hard because they are very straight forward but you will get NAILED if you make small mistakes. Only 40 points for 4 questions in 50 minutes gives you little time to check your answers and bank on missing a point for calculational errors. The first midterm was alright, average was an 82. Second the average was higher (84) but I personally did 3% worse on. The final is where shit HIT THE FAN. First, that thing was long af. 8 questions and pretty much everyone was in there for 3 hrs. The last question was some conceptual thing with geometry of dot and cross product that I may have gotten completely wrong or completely right, I will never know. There was also a true false not enough info question that I straight up guessed on, I literally just based it on A being true and prayed that A was in fact true. The other 6 questions were manageable but I did run into some spots where I felt confused. My grade had been a pretty low A going into the final, and coming out of it I literally thought I would cry from joy if I got a b+. In the end I have really no idea what happened, I somehow pulled an 87 on the final out of my ass but when I calculated it w my midterm scores my grade is like a 90 flat. Since this came out to be an A for my “final letter grade” I guess he made a 90%+ an A, and maybe a b+ an A-? Overall, this class was a roller coaster but Spaas is wholesome even if his grading will cause you major anxiety and his final will make you question your choice to be an engineering major.

The workload is manageable with only one homework assignment due every Friday. The discussion sections were extremely unhelpful because we would get an optional worksheet assigned and were never given solutions to them, so we would never know if we are doing them correctly. I found the midterms to be doable, but the final was very difficult.

I found that reading the textbook was honestly more helpful than lecture, but I still went to lecture everyday in case I would miss anything. I know some people who would not go to lecture and only read the textbook and managed to get A's in this class. Make sure you understand the topics conceptually instead of just plugging in numbers. READ THE TEXTBOOK!

Overall, Spaas is a really nice and understanding professor. It's a manageable workload but I found that self-teaching through the textbook is required alongside it.

Okay, I was honestly expecting to do better since I had taken the equivalent to the class in a high school setting, but UCLA would not count the class for credit. Spaas did a great job trying to keep the class entertaining, but it was still very difficult for me to stay awake during the 8 am lectures. I went to the first few discussion sections, but my TA was useless because he didn't know much of the material and I eventually stopped going. I did okay on the midterms, but never knew how to view them to see where I lost points. The homeworks were much easier than the tests in my opinion. The final was really hard. Spaas warned us that the final was going to have hard questions, but I didn't realize exactly how hard until taking it and BSing my way through the last question because I could not figure out how to do parts b-d even after spending the whole last hour of the final on them. I do not know how much partial credit was given for questions nor how much was docked for small mathematical errors, but I felt as though I had a good understanding of the concepts and how to apply them until I got my score for the final back (it knocked me down a letter grade). Anyways, Spaas overall was a decent professor, but he did make me realize that I don't really enjoy math like I thought I did before this class.