Winter 2015

I had mixed feelings to professor Taylor. He clearly did a lot of work and prepared his notes and powerpoints carefully. However, he became nervous and disorganized during lectures. He made many mistakes, that is true.

His midterms were not difficult. Some of the questions were even identical to the book problems or only changed slightly. But this class itself required a lot of calculation. Practices always make you faster and more efficient in solving problems. His final was harder. Those in part b were tricky. But it won’t be a problem if you have followed the material.

My advice is if you don’t really care about going to lectures, he is definitely a good choice. But if you rely your study on effective lecutres, you should compare him with other professors. He might not be the best choice, but definitely doable.

Really smart and charismatic guy. I only went to one office hour right before the final, but he helped out so much. The class was great. He seemed so happy to be teaching and knew so much about his field that it motivated me to learn.

He's extremely fair on tests and if you get the problem mostly right except for an arithmetical mistake (such as multiplying one term wrong in a 3x3*3x3 matrix) and even if the whole answer is botched, if you show that your process is correct, he will give you most of the points for it, which is unlike some professors I've had. However, the tests are not "easy", you will have to know the material and be able to solve some complex problems.

I learned so much about algebra in 33A that I almost forgot I was in a lower division class. If you're willing to learn and go to office hours, you will have no problem passing his class.

Also he's one of the only math professors at UCLA who has a tan and keeps himself fit. A nice change from the usual pasty skin tone.

He is a fair professor and grader. He does make the occasional mistake during his lectures but he knows what he is talking about. Some other people mentioned that he focuses heavily on memorizing formulas but that's not true. He allowed us to use a note card on the final so that we could focus more on problem solving as opposed to straight memorization. Math 31B is not the most enjoyable class but Professor Taylor definitely makes it better.

Bad teacher. Very disorganized. He makes many mistakes in lecture and spends a lot of time trying to correct them. It also feels like he is more concerned with having you memorize formulas instead of actually understanding the concepts. I stopped going to lectures because his lectures ended up confusing me. I would recommend not taking math with this professor if you can.

Professor Taylor is a pretty decent professor. Math 132 involves a lot of theorems and concepts that you have to fully understand.

Although it was a lot of work to understand all of the concepts in the class, Professor Taylor did a good job of explaining them during lecture.

Some people get frustrated with complex analysis, but you need just to do a bunch of practice problems to understand it well.

Midterm and final were very fair. They were moderately difficult, but the questions were not trick questions. He simply tests you on the material you learn.

Overall, Professor Taylor is a good professor.

I honestly can't understand all those negative review about Dr. Taylor. Yes, he is a bit disorganized and he does make mistakes in lectures and posted material. However, for me it did not affect the clearness of the material given. Dr. Taylor explains everything pretty clearly and does it with passion, so the lectures are enjoyable. He is always very helpful in the office hours and his midterms/exams have a fair level of complexity. So, if you do end up with him as a professor, do go to the lectures and do the homework, then you should be fine. I learned everything on lectures and then used only summary in the book to revise the material.

Such a fun class! We just watch one movie a week and do a small writing assignment about the film (graded on participation). Just a fun thing to have in your schedule if you like movies.

ok this is definitely funny. I'm studying 12 hours right before the final because I did not attend the last half of his lecture (as he makes so many mistakes every time in lectures.) So everything went smoothly but i was stuck on several problems forever because no matter how many times i solved those problems, i got the completely different answer to his solution provided.

I was feeling hopeless about the exam, as well as my life.

So i woke up my buddy who mastered at math at midnight and i let him to check.. he went mad because there was nothing wrong with my solution!!!

but guess what?! I was right all the way, his solutions were wrong...

I'm speechless and feeling more stupid right now...

Professor Taylor is a nice, hardworking, easy going and handsome guy. but his problem of committing too many mistakes in lectures and solutions are definitely making the course harder to learn...

Although i hope he'll miss some mistakes i make when grading my exams.

I had Taylor for both 33A and 33B. Overall, I really liked him as a professor and would definitely recommend his class.

Pros:
He's a very enthusiastic teacher who obviously knows his stuff, and he's pretty concerned about students and is genuinely happy if students learn. If it counts for anything, he's always well dressed and definitely has a sense of fashion. His tests are very fair and in that sense predictable. He often posts a review aka "what you need to know for the midterm/final", which contains all the information that will be on the test, and nothing random or unexpected is tested. There will often be a practice test which is very similar to the midterm/final. Most test problems are either on homework level difficulty or slightly harder. Any problems that are slightly harder than homework can all be solved, provided you understand the material and use a bit of cleverness. There are always students who get 100%, or really close. As for his grading policy, he drops one or two homeworks, and drops a midterm if it will boost your final score. Midterms are 5 or 6 questions, with topics well distributed throughout. Be sure to know the important theorems (not the little ones, but the ones a whole section is devoted to) since there will always be a question on that.

Cons:
As you've read, people say he's disorganized. I have to disagree. He has his lecture outlined, but just because he doesn't copy his notes line by line doesn't mean it's bad. I think it's good that the lecture is organic. It's not a big deal. You've probably also read that he makes mistakes in lectures. That is true, but these are all arithmetic errors, not logical or huge faulty errors. Granted you pay attention and follow the lecture, either point it out or write the correct answer in your notes. If you're able to follow his errors, you understand the material well enough anyways. People who say that he just wants people to memorize formulas probably didn't go to lecture or didn't pay attention in lecture.

If you want an A or A-, do your practice problems, go to lecture (or not, I don't think it's necessary though I went to them), go to discussion (TA's are really helpful), and just do a ton of practice problems. You'll do fine in the class, and learn a lot.

i took this math 33A course in my first quarter at UCLA. This was a morning 8 am course. Almost, the whole class was asleep. The clarity of this instructor is low, which required a lot of time for us to comprehend the course after the lecture. In this quarter, I chose 4 courses. Among them, Math 33A occupied most of my time. Actually, the workload from the instructor was not too much and only required one problem set per week. However, we need to spend a lot of time on the material. Also, the final exam style is totally different from the in-class midterm. The final also included the content which was not included in the final exam study guide.

I DID NOT recommend to take Math 33A with this professor, and also DO NOT take math class at 8am.