Good luck, students in Berkley...

Literally ass-fucked us with the final. He's going to Berkeley anyways so it's whatever.

I really liked Siddarth and I didn't think of his class being super hard. He does talk super fast and it's hard to catch stuff sometimes, but overall he was fine. (Maybe I'm cutting him some slack since this is first time teaching and I had a *much* worse class this quarter.) His midterms seemed pretty fair, but the final was a bit too much theoretical and explanation-based. Overall, I liked Siddarth and think everyone else here is being too harsh on him lol.

---Professor: A lot of the other reviews paint Venkatesh to be a bad person, but I think he was just having an off quarter. People complained that he would consistently cancel lectures, but he also had migraines. One issue I did have was that he would never post solutions to homework, quizzes, or exams.
---Lectures: Lectures were hard to follow and confusing, but this could again be attributed to any personal issues he was having. His conceptual overviews were consistently confusing. When going through example problems he would rush through confusing steps.
---Homework: There were 6 homework assignments. He drops the lowest score. They were all pretty hard, but he gives a good amount of time for you to do them.
---Exams: He gave 3 quizzes, 2 midterms, and a final. The quizzes were kind of difficult, but not too bad. The first midterm was easy, but he made up for it with a hard second one. The final was the hardest math test I've taken. The worst part of the exams was that the TA's were insanely hard graders. One small mistake costs an unreasonable amount of points. At times they would punish you for not including reasoning that they did not ask you to provide.
---Tips: Read the textbook section before each lecture. Going into his lectures without any background will leave you confused, but if you've seen the material beforehand it's easy to follow. Focus on justifying answers for exams.

Siddarth is by far the worst professor I have ever taken. He doesn't care about students or the course, the only thing he cares about is himself. A selfish professor who with his effort is a disgrace to UCLA mathematics and the whole of the community. Students who pay thousands of dollars can expect teaching and explanation that is inferior to the textbook with a professor that doesn't deem it necessary to give students some extra points when he cancels lectures with vague reasoning, gives no idea how students do on assessments until grossly after they are submitted or never, and puts two homework assignments, a midterm, and a quiz within two weeks of a final. WHEN WAS I SUPPOSED TO STUDY FOR YOUR 17 PAGE FINAL SIDDARTH? WHEN? I ended up with a respectable grade but unless you desire mental stress and a demeaning professor then consider taking a film class or something.

He talks are writes really fast, but he really does care about his students and curves the class if too many people don't do well.

I’m sure the majority of the students are super dissatisfied with the class but I thought it was fine LOL the class groupme was very aggressive and harsh to the professor and they’ll prob rip him to shreds on bruinwalk so take every review with a grain of salt. While the prof did cancel a couple lectures, took a little long to grade quizzes/midterms, and uploaded documents late at times, I feel that he was genuinely going through something and most students demand empathy from professors but never give that same energy towards them. He seemed really sick towards the end so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he is human and we’re all going through it these days. A good thing about this class was that he followed the textbook pretty exactly and I never went to lecture and just taught myself so if you have trouble teaching yourself concepts, maybe skip on this prof. The quizzes and midterms were reasonably difficult, not too hard but takes a while to digest what the questions are asking. Homework problem sets were given in the beginning of the quarter on the syllabus so I don’t get why students were complaining about homework deadlines when they had access to the homework problems the whole time and could’ve started early. Overall, I’m pretty happy with this class and I feel that I learned what I needed to learn!

Overall, I would definitely recommend this class. The tests felt pretty fair, as all of the questions drew straight from either his lectures or the textbook (which is not something I can say for every UCLA math class). While he does speak quickly in lectures, everything is posted on CCLE so you can go back and review the material later. Professor Venkatesh is also more helpful than most teachers, as he accepted late assignments due to Covid difficulties while other teachers charged me a penalty. The one disadvantage is that he doesn't throw you any free participation points like a lot of other classes, so every single assignment is important. On the flip side, this means it doesn't matter if you decide to not attend lectures or discussion sections, which allows for a lot more freedom in your schedule.

The material up to the first midterm (stuff with vectors) was wonderfully taught. After that, shit hit the fan. The lectures were very hard to follow if you did not read the chapter beforehand. I was so confused most of the time that I didn't even know what questions to ask. However, he followed exactly the material in the textbook, so it was possible to figure out everything if you put enough work in (which was a lot). The discussions were totally and completely pointless. He provided review sheets for both his midterms, which were extremely helpful and had problems with difficulty similar to that on the tests. His final, however, was really hard. Although he said approximately 60% of the final would be material covered in the first two midterms, that was completely untrue. Basically everything was new material, and it was bad, but not completely impossible. However, he did curve it so I can't complain too much. Also, homework counts for 15% of your grade, and later on in the quarter it is very very very long. He also allows you to drop a midterm, which completely saved my grade.
Overall, Sid was a bad lecturer, but he wasn't a complete disaster. Like a 3 or 4/10. He just needs to slow down his thinking a little. His tests were fair and doable if you studied A LOT. His grading was fair as well and it was definitely possible to do well in this class, but be ready to study your ass off. Difficulty: 7.5/10

Venkatesh is probably the fastest talker I've ever encountered. This was nice because the first part of the course was very basic, and also lectures often ended early. But it proved annoying towards the end when the content was new, and also when he'd get annoyed answering questions.
The midterms were very nice. They were just like the review sheets he posted, and the questions were easier than the homework problems by far.
The homework sets were at first reasonable, but then they became ridiculously long. It would take me hours and hours to complete the last few homework assignments. And most of the questions were either repetitive or so abstract that you knew they wouldn't show up on any exams.
The final however was not fun. I studied really hard for it and I was kinda irritated to find that the questions from the material covered on midterms I and II were not recognizable to me; I definitely panicked.
My TA, Jake Bahr, was insanely smart but just not good at getting us ready for the exams.