If I were to take this class again with Taira I'd do it in a heartbeat. Taira not only knows his material but also knows how to teach it. I never really had to use the textbook for learning aside from doing a few practice problems before the midterm and final. He weighed the midterm and final to be 25% and the homework to be 50%. Don't be fooled, the homework is NOT easy. Taira was a math major before he was an engineer, so some of his homework's involve deriving fundamental equations or proving something (unnecessary imo but whatever). The homework itself takes a lot of time unless you know your stuff; anywhere b/w 2-4 hours in my experience. However, the level of difficulty went down substantially after the first midterm. And they are doable by the way its just that some problems are just designed to make you sit for an hour debating if this class is worth it. Aside from this, the midterm and final are really just reflections of homework problems and often times easier. So if you survive his homework, you'll survive on the tests given that you actually solve the homework on your own. Last piece of advice: do not go to office hours expecting him to give you the homework answer, try solving it first. His guidance is going to be very vague, so partner up with someone. Best of Luck :)

Dr. Taira is a great teacher. Lectures are clear and engaging, tests are very fair, and homework, while difficult, is manageable if you work together with others.

This class kicked my butt conceptually, but it was the most interesting engineering course I have taken at UCLA thus far. Taira is an excellent lecturer and cares a great deal about his students. He expects a lot from us but gives a lot back.

The midterm was difficult, but the final was very straightforward as long as you did (struggled through) the homework. Emphasize doing homework, paying attention in lectures, and asking questions, and you'll do fine. Just be prepared to be humbled by the material every single week. It is simultaneously a stellar academic experience and an emotional roller coaster.

Sam is a good teacher and I enjoyed the lecture portion of this class. Homework is long and difficult, and weighted very heavily, which is pretty frustrating because it was hard to schedule around. I did really poorly on one homework (that I think everyone found difficult) and I think that lowered my grade significantly. That said, the high homework weight means you probably won't fail. Treat the homeworks like mini midterms and do not save them for the last minute! The tests were pretty straightforward, I thought the final was a little challenging but not too difficult. Sam is very clear and lectures well. Everything else seemed pretty standard for online lecture courses. I definitely recommend having your camera on from the start, as I think he values that and will take more time to work with you/answer your questions if he thinks you participate. I thought he could get a little short with people that he didn't think were actually interested in the class (but I guess he gets a lot of people trying to use him for letters of rec and such so it's kind of understandable).

This was taken during COVID. Sam was a great lecturer, and really cares a lot about his students. This class comes with a preface of being one of the hardest Mech&AE undergrad courses, but it actually wasn't that bad. Sam really makes sure that you learn everything you need to know. He is extremely helpful in office hours, and his office hours often helped me much more in 15 minutes that the entire discussion session did (and I felt our TA was also really good). The one downside to this class is the workload. Sam likes to assign hard problems for homework and these homeworks took up more time than homework from any other class. With that said, his midterm and final had questions that were similar to the homeworks, but often made to take much less time. I didn't feel unprepared when it came to the midterm and final.