APMA 2120

Definitely try to take the course with Prof. Hellings if you can. He teaches the concepts really well, without going too fast for people to keep up. However, to encourage attendance and note-taking, he doesn't post the recordings — you need to email him to get the recordings, and sometimes he doesn't respond until a few days after.

The instruction is partially in pre-class videos, which you watch and then complete a simple pre-class PDF worksheet. Then, in the lectures, Prof. Hellings teaches the rest of the material and gives you some time to complete the worksheets with other students and ask him questions. If you don't finish, you usually have until the next day to finish the worksheet.

The course doesn't require you to read the textbook, but you still have to buy the textbook + WebAssign (which is quite expensive; I think you can find access keys on eBay for cheaper but I didn't try that). There are two or three WebAssigns per week; although these aren't super difficult, don't leave them to the last minute.

The midterms are okay (if you study well for them, that is) and the final was pretty fair (not super hard).

Overall, it was a pretty good course under Prof. Hellings.

#tCFF23

Any class in the APMA department is naturally going to be a grind. However, Hellings make the experience in multi ten times better. Chris is exactly what you want in a professor in almost every way possible. He is clearly interested in what he teaches and makes learning even the most boring topics enjoyable. His teaching style is very similar to Khan Academy. He is very nice and easy to approach and always keeps the class upbeat and lighthearted. He will help you with as much as he can during office hours and after class. Although it is a pretty rough class in the thick of it, by the end of the semester you'll be happy with the results if you have consistently put in effort and studying before the midterms and final. He seriously puts all the other APMA professors to shame. TAKE APMA 2120 WITH HELLINGS!

Hellings is a pretty good proffesor. He is actually very accommodating and open to extenuating circumstances as well as a pretty good lecturer. He makes content easy to digest and the classwork is not too overbearing so just keep up with the work and you should do fine. Exams are not too bad, it can be easy to make small mistakes but the partial credit is very forgiving. The final in my opinion was very hard, a step up from the midterms, although I did end with an A. My only criticism of Hellings is that he can be difficult when it comes to responding to emails and sometimes he just forgets about them so tbh just talk to him in person and you'll get way more communication out of him than with any old email.

This course was fantastic, Hellings teaches the content in a very simplistic manner and attempts to help every student with the course material. Hellings doesn't have lecture slides or recorded lectures so you have to show up to class to understand the content, in theory, you can ask him to send you recordings and lecture notes however he doesn't reply to his emails. Hellings is super kind and if you approach him during OH, he is more than happy to provide you with the materials needed. One thing about this class is that if you have trouble visualizing in 3d then it'll be a rough ride during exams, for other assignments it's not bad due to online software.

Regarding the class itself:
To address everyone saying calc 3 is easier calc 2, I think it depends on how good you are at visualizing in 3D. Since I am more comfortable working with 2D, I think calc 3 is definitely more difficult than calc 2. Some of the concepts in this course can be difficult to understand (parametrizing surfaces, triple integrals, stoke's theorem...etc). The good thing about calc 3 is that everything builds on top of another, so there isn't much content to understand in order to be successful in this course and ace the exams. In the end, it is really about parametrizing surface/lines, taking double/triple integrals, vector dot/cross products, and partial derivatives. Even though I don't agree with how some people say calc 3 is just calc 1, I can get why some people say this. The concepts of calc 3 really have very little to do with calc 2 (we don't use integration techniques, series, and paramatric equations in calc 3) , and they heavily rely on the foundations of calc 1. So, if you are not good at calc 2, you can still do well in this class!

Regarding the professor/class structure:
Professor Hellings is a great professor. He lectures like he is actually enthusiastic about the content, and the way he solves problems are easy to understand and follow. If you ask him to check the answers in the worksheet, he will be very happy to do that, which means you can easily get a 100% on all of the worksheets. This class is heavily weighted toward exams (I believe about 65% of the final grade come from them), which means your final grade in the class will not differ much from the average in all of the exams. The exams are not overly hard, but they are harder than the typical worksheet problems and there is also a good degree of time pressure (you only have 50 minutes to solve 10-12 questions, and some of the questions are long), so make sure you actually understand the concepts beforehand(The practice questions that he release before the exams will help!)! There are also 2 extended assignments that take up 8% of the final grade: the first one can take some time to think through, but the second one are more of just time consuming rather than being difficult.

Overall, calc 3 is not an easy class and it should be viewed as being similar to calc 2 in terms of difficulty (for the general student population). But if you are working hard enough to understand what you are learning, you can still walk out of the class with a B or even a A!

honestly a shining light in my first semester at uva. hellings is genuinely one of the sweetest professors you'll find out there. he is pretty thorough with his explanations and is always willing to answer questions and help you if you are confused. tests unfortunately are a good chunk harder than worksheets and examples as they are department-wide but you can still do solid if you understand thoroughly. after i had him for multi i had him for ode which was a similar good experience. webworks are annoying but just don't leave them till last minute.

BESTIE CHRIS IS BAE. Professor Hellings is so chill and kind in class and during OH. His lectures are engaging (sometimes he'll tell a linguistics fun fact) and he always explains concepts well. If you don't understand, he will try his best to use different examples and reasonings to ensure you know what is happening. I always went to OH with random conceptual questions or just like "what if I did it this way..." kind of things and he was always happy to sit with me and figure it out! He loves solving problems and is always enthusiastic about helping out. You can get 100% on all the worksheets because he'll check your answers for you during OH or after class, and all the pre-classes are graded on completion (and they're usually like 1 multiple choice question). The tests are not super hard—there are 4 midterms and they're all only 50 minutes long, so they're all not too bad. The final was just a really long midterm (same difficulty). Chris is a very awesome guy and my favorite APMA prof definitely take multi with him.

Overall I felt calc 3 was easier than 2 in the sense that there is not nearly as much content to know and remember as there is for calc 2. I actually almost enjoyed some of the stuff we learned. Prof. Hellings is incredibly nice and a great prof but sadly this class is ruined by him not having control over the exams which instead are written by all the profs and given to everyone.

Class always consisted of a pre class which was a few videos always totaling less than 15 minutes and a 1-3 question worksheet graded on completion (a very basic concept check). Then he would lecture for ~30 minutes and then hand out a worksheet that was due the next day at 5 pm (meaning if you had questions, you could ask during the next class; and friday's ws was always due on monday at 5).

The worksheets were helpful and mostly easy but sometimes could be confusing. WebAssigns would be long and tedious as to be expected with apma calculus. My big gripe was that I always felt confident in my knowledge leading up to exams because of the webassigns and worksheets and I would spend many hours studying for the 3 midterms just to end up not doing very well. The exams were usually 7-10 questions with question 1 being T/F roughly A-H. My grade in the class was roughly a 93 for non exam work but ~80 for exams. The final was rough but at this point I wasn't surprised.

Overall, calc 3 is tough for some and some just get it, I am not one of those, but regardless of who you are, Prof. Hellings is incredibly nice and very caring and also very accommodating. Try your best to get him if you can.

Multivariable Calculus is not an easy course, but Hellings made it worth it. He's a great lecturer who really knows and understands exactly what is going on, and is really passionate about making sure everyone succeeds and understands. He's willing to understand that life sometimes gets in the way, and makes reasonable accommodations. We had 3 midterm exams and 1 final, which were all fair and not extraordinarily painful. The way the course was structured is you watch about 10-15 min of videos before each class (I recommend putting it on 1.5x speed), and then do a short pre-class activity (graded for effort/completion) so he can spend more time in lecture discussing the more complicated parts of the topic. Then after he lectures for about half the time, you do a worksheet to reinforce the ideas (working in groups is highly encouraged). There are also weekly WebAssign problem sets, don't leave those to the last minute! It was a really good course, definitely recommend taking it with Hellings.

Prof Hellings was a great professor and he did a good job at making the difficult concepts simpler to understand. He did add in physics concepts a lot of times that were harder to understand, but they were useful and not on the exams. There were 3 regular exams and a final exam for this class. The material got more difficult by the 3rd exam, and the topics build on each other so it's important to go to office hours early if you don't understand something. There were weekly homeworks and pre-class videos but there were no quizzes. Overall, the class is tough but Prof Hellings makes it easier to understand and conceptualize.

I have no complaints about hellings or the class. He's a nice professor with easy to understand lectures. The homework prepares you for the tests well and he is a flexible with extensions etc. I would reccommend

Professor Hellings is a sweet professor. You can tell from his lessons that he is super passionate about the subject and really wants to see his students learning. He is really nice and super helpful during office hours and about emailing him for questions. I also found that his lessons during lectures were a lot more helpful than the textbook. While the textbook is a tad dense, his lessons were clear and help you digest the topics and see connections between chapters a lot more.

With four midterms, this class is definitely a kicker. Hellings didn't have quizzes so take that as you will as far as making the tests harder or easier. Still, def recommend!
#tCF2020