First of all, Jukka is a literal legend for (1) Being so damn helpful, (2) Keeping everybody reassured about their grades/exams, (3) Having a good sense of humor (as compared to other professors), and (4) Holding review sessions that involve the SAME EXACT questions as his midterm and final. The only downside that I could find would be the workload in this class, since it does require at least 3 hours a week to complete. While the workload of this class is pretty heavy as compared to the others, most of the studying you will do for this class will be the homework. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough, GO TO HIS REVIEW SESSIONS! HE PULLS QUESTIONS STRAIGHT OUT OF HIS PRACTICE EXAMS FOR HIS ACTUAL MIDTERM AND FINAL!

IF YOU CAN TAKE JUKKA TAKE HIM!!!
He is the best professor I have had. He's funny, he cares about his students, the workload isn't too bad, he gives extra credit, and his tests aren't hard. Jukka takes time during class to answer questions and clarify content. He has clicker questions during class, but they are also up on CCLE for you to complete (due 1 week after class meets). He usually chooses 10 homework problems (2 pts each) to grade (based on accuracy) and adds 5pts for completing the assignment. He also offers extra credit throughout the quarter. We have weekly quizzes, which are sometimes hard, but they are helpful. The labs don't really connect to the material we learn, but they aren't difficult since the TAs and LAs help you. He drops the lowest score for each section (lab, lab quiz, weekly quiz, homework, and participation quiz). There's 1 midterm and 1 final. Jukka holds review sessions the weekend before the exam (go to them, they are USEFUL). His exams are divided in 3 parts: study guide, individual part, and team part. The study guide part you literally create a study guide with your learning team (can be used during exam). The individual exam has mostly calculations with some conceptual parts (all multiple choice). The team part you work with your learning team and complete 3-5 additional problems. Overall, his exams are fair and if you do bad in one part, you can bring your grade up with the other 2 parts. I would definitely take another class with Jukka.

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If you want to get an A then take this class. Jukka is extremely understanding. He has at least 3 office hours sessions weekly, and towards the end of the quarter it is usually around 5. He will often stay longer than planned, sometimes until 9 pm even on the weekends. If you attend these, you will know what will be on the quiz/exams. The class did bad on the 2nd midterm, and he gave an ONLINE makeup exam where you could earn 100% of the points you missed. If you were the only one that failed, (probably because you partied every night), he will have a 1 on 1 meeting on zoom with you. He curved everyone's grade in the end as much as possible without breaking department rules. So there is no excuse to fail, or if you put in effort, no excuse to not get an A.

However, it is not a "free" A. To do well, you need to attend office hours (at least once in a while). Be prepared to do 30-50 hw problems each week. That is pretty much it if you want to do well.

I wanted to respond to the comment made 12/15/23. First of all, yes, professors often give study guides. Does that downplay the amount of effort Jukka puts in? Do you hate the fact that he gave you those study guides? Not to mention the first and final study guides were almost complete replicas of the actual exam.

Second of all, Yes he doesn't check in with you when you are stressed. And yes, he also has 230 other kids in his class. Do your other profs check on you when you feel stressed? What are you trying to say? Also he had the ones who failed to have a 1 on 1 zoom meeting. What more is there to expect in a professor?

Third, yes we retook the 2nd midterm. You could score ALL of the points you missed back, in an online test. Why did everyone swarm him to curve the grade? Personally, I'm not sure. From my perspective, I was pretty prepared for the exam as he went over the difficult problems such as Rolle's Theorem like 5 times during office hours.

Finally, I agree that the lectures were not helpful. Many of the lectures were too confusing. He used many formulas and definitions that did not really help. I was usually on my phone waiting for the iclicker. This led to me relying solely on the office hours and hw solutions. So I see where you are coming from when you say his teaching methods are not it. Again though, you mention "no support existed". What support do you want? You could have talked about literally anything during office hours.

Overall, I agree that there are a good number of hw problems (30-50 per week), and that the lectures were not very helpful. I still think this was a great class though. Jukka is extremely understanding. He wants you to succeed. He prioritizes being fair (and often merciful) when giving quizzes and exams. He canceled 2-3 quizzes and drops the lowest assignment in every weight category. He curved the final grades as much as possible without violating school rules. There is no excuse to fail, and if you just put in some effort, there is no excuse not to get an A. The diction and tone used in the comment before made it seem as if they were salty about the grade they received. Lastly, I would say “good luck” but you don’t need it because you have Jukka.

I took this class during a Covid/pandemic quarter and honestly, Jukka is a real one. He's very understanding and flexible about people's situations/if something unexpected happens and truly wants his students to succeed. He also responds to emails promptly and is always willing to extend deadlines for us if we need it.

The weekly homework assignments (problems taken out of the free textbook, you don't need to buy anything) were very time-consuming to me but I found that many people are willing to help and each other out and explain concepts if we didn't understand them. He also drops the two lowest homework assignments and does like half of the problems during his office hours (which he records and posts).

It depends on the TA, but attendance to labs were optional for me. If you have a good TA, you'll probably finish or mostly finish your coding assignments before the lab ends. If not, you have to work on them as homework and they get collected at the start of the next lab. During labs, the TA will briefly go over the coding assignment as a whole group and then you get put into breakout sessions with your designated group (the one you take the midterm and final with) for the rest of the time. You can choose to work on the assignment with your group or individually. It honestly depends on how close your group gets to each other. Your lowest lab grade gets dropped.

Weekly quizzes are kind of tough but they're 4-5 questions from 2-4 lessons each week. He gives you two attempts for it, but takes the average of your two attempts. The lowest weekly quiz score gets dropped. Make sure to read over the lesson slides before you take it.

There were 3 parts to the midterm and final: a study guide portion (60 points), an individual portion (80 points), and a group portion (60 points). The study guide and group portion are basically free points and you work on them with the group that you're put into in the beginning of the school year. It's really a gamble but my group was amazing and became good friends over the course of the quarter. He also posts practice midterms/finals (basically old exams from past years) and a general outline for us to study off of. On top of all that, he holds review sessions the weekend before exams to clarify and go over anything we didn't understand.

Since Jukka is amazing, he also has 20 points of extra credit automatically implemented in his grading scheme for everyone they're basically buffer points so you can miss 90 points overall in the class and still get an A (since the maximum amount of points are 1000 and he's giving you 20 free points).

I was nervous about taking a math series as I have never considered myself a "math person" or have enjoyed it much either. That being said, Jukka is hands-down one of the most helpful, engaging, and enthusiastic professors I've ever had at UCLA. He holds several 2-hour review sessions for both the midterm and the final exam, where he goes over the midterm or final he gave his students one year prior. He posts all of his slides on CCLE and encourages students to go over them.

The weekly homework came from the textbook and sometimes had difficult questions, but if I needed help, it seemed like there was always a TA holding office hours and I also found it helpful to go to the professor himself. They will take the time to explain concepts to you and ensure that you aren't confused. For the midterm and final, I thought that the material he tested was fair, as it followed directly from the (4!!) practice exams he put on CCLE weeks prior. Work aside, I really enjoyed coming to this class 3x a week. Jukka really cares about his students, encourages questions, makes detailed slides, and has a great sense of humor. He cares a lot about how his students are doing and it shows.

Professor Jukka Keranen is a gift from god sent directly to humanity (and I’m literally an atheist so this means so much coming from me). Honestly, this class was a bit difficult for me because I had no previous calculus experience, but I still managed to do well because of how amazing he taught. He gives so much extra credit and help, but the course has a bit of a heavy workload, which is actually super manageable! So many things in my life went downhill this quarter, but because Jukka was such an understanding and kind person, he helped us through everything and went above and beyond his means to ensure every student was successful. There’s one midterm and one final for this class, and it helps to do the practice exam. They consist of three parts are graded super fairly. TA Qi Wu was phenomenal and honestly very good looking haha. The lab component got difficult as we progressed, but it was doable and you work with a group of 4 along with LAs to help you understand the material more! The entire learning team for this class is just amazing, I promise no one will ever disappoint you. Jukka always makes the funniest jokes, remarks, and honestly I was excited to go to class and lab everyday. Definitely a great course and super applicable. One last thing, the professor literally wants you to be a better person and use the course material to HELP people. If that doesn’t say what an amazing human being he is, I don’t know what does. It was a pleasure with Jukka, I was honored to have him as a professor.

Jukka is the best.

IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF, RETAKE THE MATH DIAGONISTIC!!! Jukka is a REALLY nice professor, loves Rick and Morty, and is quirky, but do not let that fool you. I scored a 75 on the diagnostic, I didn't want to retake it. Biggest mistake of my life. Jukka assigns SO MANY HW problems! Maybe around 60-80 a week. He reads off a presentation in class, you have to go to office hours if you ever want to see how to actually do the math. He will give 'practice midterms' and claim they are 'harder' than the real deal, ALL LIES!!!! I just came back from taking the final, within the first 30 mins, a girl ran out CRYING. The final had me contemplating running out as well. The whole class's vibe was sad. I would rather take every single AP test in the nation than have to sit through that final again. All my friends in 31A have barely any homework, easy quizzes, and easy midterms. I am doing harder work, taking harder quizzes, and harder midterms, when I am supposed to be in a class that is supposed to support you. RETAKE THE DIAGNOSTIC. Biggest mistake of my academic career, as of right now. However, Jukka said he will curve the grades at the end. That will be the only reason why the whole class does not fail. Also, do not misplace my anger, I love Jukka, he is so fun to talk to, but the class was absolutely way harder than it needed to be. This did not feel like a support class for 31A, this was a much, much harder version. Do Not Take 31AL. Please.

I have never felt more degraded and horrible in a class. The Professor would insinuate that we were "retarded" by saying, AND I QUOTE: "If you do not understand this, you are probably retarded."
Way to be encouraging :)
I understand that he is just being sarcastic, BUT some people genuinely struggled in this class and it was always so discouraging to hear him say this hurtful things. It was always very intimidating to seek help from him during office hours or after class.
Worst experience hands down. I would not want my worst enemy to take this course with this rude and conceded professor.