Homework isn't overwhelming, and two of them are dropped at the end of the quarter. Prof. Nam gives short lectures that typically have a couple of example problems to help explain his points. The tests weren't that bad since we had 24 hours to complete them, but he wasn't very lenient on giving partial credit. Great personality and always had a positive attitude.
Edit: his final was very very difficult. Made no sense.

Nam is a super nice teacher and teaches in a straightforward manner. His homework assignments are easy and he drops the lowest two which is nice. His midterms are fair, though a single mistake will drop you a whole letter grade. The downside to this class was the final, where the majority of problems were not even remotely close to what we had been practicing or what was in the textbook. Nam is a decent teacher but unless you want a brutal grade-lowering final, I recommend looking elsewhere, unfortunately.

The two midterms were fair and most people did well. The final? Absolutely no words. I’m convinced half of the questions weren’t even for this class. I sat there for hours mindlessly staring at the screen because the final fried every single brain cell I had left.
Nam is a nice guy. Idk. I can’t really say more because, like I said, every single brain cell was slowly fried up over the 10+ hour period I took that final.

Professor Nam is the cutest- the positive attitude he brought to lecture every Mon Wed and Fri would always make me smile and lift my mood. Seeing his smiling face would always make me smile- you can just tell he loves the subject and is so passionate about teaching it. He is extremely mindful to answer any clarifying questions, but make sure to ask your questions or he will assume you understand and move onto the next concept. I loved how he structured his lectures- first he would introduce the concept, next he would show you the application in 1-2 practice problems. Each day was only about 2-3 new concepts, and the homework would be exactly like the practice problem he did in class. The first midterm was just like his practice problems from lecture. The second midterm was just a little harder than the first midterm. However, he does warn during class that he can make problems very very difficult, and this is what he did for the final. I spent close to 13 hours on the final (24 hour, open notes exam). Super nice Professor, super caring and kind, always smiling. But just be warned that he can make things very very difficult.

Note that this is a review during COVID-19

Grading Scheme: homework 30%, two midterms worth 20% each, final 30%

After taking Math 31B with a professor who gave very heavy homework loads and time-consuming exams, this class initially felt like a breath of fresh air (though let me be clear that I still got an A in 31B). Professor Nam was very kind, his lectures were very clear, and he always took time to answer as many questions from the chat as he could. Lectures never ran over time. Homework was not overwhelming, just some textbook questions from each lesson to ensure we understood all the main concepts. The lowest 2 homework scores are also dropped.

The first midterm was not particularly challenging. It was reflective of problems we had seen in lectures and homework as he’d said it would be. The second midterm was slightly trickier, and unlike the first midterm, the harder questions were weighted more heavily than the easier ones. Partial credit was also very strict, and some students who asked for regrade requests on certain harshly graded problems were denied. I think he said at one point that scores on the first midterm were "too high" which was why the second midterm was harder. I don't know if that's because the math department mandates certain score distributions or if it came from Professor Nam's own personal assessment of the score distribution, but I don't know that having scores that were "too high" should've been a concern; if students are performing well on the exams, shouldn’t it reflect that the professor is doing their job well? It did still feel like a relatively fair exam though, as the questions were generally reflective of class material including the slightly trickier ones. You just had to be more vigilant and precise with the tricky questions.

The final, however, was a completely different story. Based on what he had said in class, I expected the difficulty to be similar to that of the second midterm but the questions had suddenly become much more complex, requiring computations of complexity beyond those which we had experienced in any homework or lecture before. Because of covid, exams were open book, yet for most of the questions, there was not a single textbook example that was similar to the exam question. I felt content with this class before the final and after the final, I was at a loss for words. I know individuals in this class who had to pull an all-nighter to maximize their score, and even then scoring an A was rare. Believe me when I say I studied like hell and was still unprepared for the final, and I'll reiterate that the open book policy barely helped due to the book having no similarly complex examples. That said, he stated that if grades on the final exam turned out too low, he would consider curving the class, see the update for more info.

(Originally at this point I responded to another review that had said the final was fair, but I have since removed that response because it was moreso me letting out my emotions after finals than anything and wasn’t super necessary. However I still believe everything else I said still stands. I’m leaving this note in here as a testament to the emotional state the final left me in, take it as you will)

UPDATE: Some people reported their final grades as being higher than their calculated raw percentage. Personally, this was not the case for me; my final grade matched my percentage exactly (as did many other students’ grades), which was a little disappointing since I was less than a percent away from the next grade (which again was similar to many other students’ situations). So it seems some people may have been curved or rounded while others weren’t, I’m not sure exactly how that worked. That said, I might consider taking a class with him again based on the circumstances (such as the type of math class being taught and who else was teaching the class that quarter). The final was abnormally difficult, but the rest of the class until that point was ok, so it kind of just depends on how much concentrated difficulty you’re willing to deal with at a given time. Overall the class was ok, Nam was ok, it’s just that things took a sharp turn at the very end that many of us didn’t see coming.

EDIT: Someone said the final exam ended up on Chegg?? If so that’s kind of outrageous. This would mean that some students may have gotten the answers from there and those people’s final exam scores might have pulled up the average and screwed the rest of us. This is just a rumor so I’m not going to pursue it any further. It’s just the fact that it might have happened that I find outrageous. However, again, this is a rumor and I’m just addressing it because I like to cover all my bases

TLDR: Very nice guy, lectures are helpful, homework and midterms are very fair, final was wayyyy too hard, would possibly consider taking again depending on the circumstances

Nam is a very easy-going guy. His first two midterms were easy as they were very similar to problems we had encountered in our homework sets. However, the final was RIDICULOUSLY HARD. Only 2/7 problems were similar to homework problems. The other 5 required you to have a full understanding of computational ideas as well as the CONCEPTUAL ideas which I believe were not emphasized enough in class. That was the first exam I've ever failed and Nam said he would curve but he didn't (I think he even curved us down as he made a 93.3 and above an A and didn't let those with a 93 get an A).

If you choose Nam as your professor, make sure you do the homework as it's not only an easy grade (you can check all your answers on Slader), but the first two midterms are nearly identical to the homework problems. TA sessions were also not mandatory, but I do recommend going as I found them extremely helpful!

I disagree with a lot of these reviews. Nam is a funny and nice lecturer, sure.
But his grading was unnecessarily hard. Everyone did so well on the first midterm that he decided he wanted to make the next midterm and final extremely difficult to drag grade averages down. His partial credit was ridiculous as you could lose 13% of your grade on that exam for using a method that he didn't directly address was incorrect in class, but the textbook contradicted him. The final was 24 hours, but myself and plenty of others spent over 10 hours on it only to receive a C, which dragged my grade down to an A-.
The people who are saying he's a great professor are either math geniuses or suck-ups. If you are the average Joe Bruin, I do not recommend him.
Edit: He downcurved the grading scale so a 93.3< would be an A-, and he doesn't have the courtesy to respond to our emails after the final.

The class started off really great. Even still, I really like the way that Nam lectures, it is so efficient and I learned a lot in a short period of time. Nam will introduce a concept and then bring up a few examples to support the concept so that the problem solving method is solidified.

HW: Assigned every week and is pretty light

Midterm 1: Super easy, was exactly like the problems he discussed in class and the assigned homework. If you paid attention/took notes, not hard to get 100 (got 100%)

Midterm 2: This is when our class saw Nam's tests change in style, they became way tougher than any problem we covered in class and involved concepts we barely covered (got 85%)

Final: Similar to midterm 2, there were a few problems that delved into concepts that we barely touched upon, which made it an unpleasant experience got (85%)

It was especially annoying that the tests were graded so harshly and had such few problems. For example , on the final, out of the 7 questions, for one of them my work was wrong and they docked 20 points out of a total of 150 for that one question. Basically, missing even part of one question knocks you down one letter grade.

Even more annoying that Nam said that he would possibly curve us up on the final if our test average was not all that great. However, there was no curve, even though our final class average was much lower than previous test averages. He also stopped responding to emails after the final.

Essentially, class started off OK, went downhill from there.

When I signed up for this class, I was kind of scared by the reviews, which indicated that Nam would have easy midterms and a crazy hard final to down curve his class. Unfortunately, these reviews were completely accurate. Despite the 24hr period to take the final, it was extraordinarily difficult. Keep in mind that this is during COVID with open book. I got a 62 on the final after spending probably 16 hours on it and it was pretty frustrating, mainly because Nam does not give substantial partial credit (like 2/20 or 8/30 points back for work - definitely write down what you're doing in word form, he looks for keywords and if they're not there, you don't get partial credit back). I had an A in the class before the final and it dropped me to a B, which like I said is how Nam curves. He would curve the class if everyone really failed the final (<50% average) but the whole thing ended up on chegg by the end of the grading period and a bunch of people cheated which kinda fucked us all over :(

Now that that's out of the way and you're probably scared, let me tell you why I said I'd take this class again and why I rated Nam a 4/5. Nam is an amazing lecturer. He's kind, supportive, and clear, with examples mirroring the book and good explanations. He frequently only lectured 35/50 mins everyday, which was so nice. He would always stop for questions. The only issue with his lecturing was that the examples were very simple and didn't come remotely close to the final's difficulty. But I'm not too upset about the final because I don't think that the amount I understood the material reflected an A-level understanding.

For homework, they were easy, all on slader, and closely mirrored his examples and the book's, plus the lowest scoring one was dropped so most of my friends just didn't do the last one. I would definitely recommend doing the homework (without slader) if you can, or at least coming up with the general concepts, as this will definitely prepare you for the exam. The homework is graded half on accuracy half on completion, and it is worth 30% of your grade. The other categories are 30% final and 20% for each midterm.

Overall, I'm not sure if I would have gotten a B if it were in person (like I think I would maybe have gotten a C), but if you put the time in and try to conceptually understand the problems unlike me, who just knew the computations, you'll enjoy the class. Nam is a super kind person, really fun to listen to lecture, and very loved by the class, so he'll really brighten your day despite the material being not-so-fun. Honestly this was a better experience than I anticipated given the reputation of the 32 series, so you'll be fine!

As other reviews have stated, the final was extremely hard. Out of the seven questions given, I only felt that 2 of them truly reflected what we did in class and on homework. The first two midterms were fine. Though the second one was trickier, I did better on it than the first. However, that final made me feel incredibly defeated. I worked on it from 11am to midnight and around 10pm, after having been stuck staring at the same problem for two hours, I just broke down crying. I ended up getting a 75% on the final, 76% on midterm one, and 87% on midterm two. For midterm two, I only got half of one question wrong. Half of one question cost me 13%, which I honestly find ridiculous now that I think about it a little more.

As for the actual lectures, they are okay. I think Professor Nam explains the concepts pretty well, but he only goes over examples that are in the book. I do not understand this because I might as well just read the book and not go to lecture. He is a nice guy, but it often feels like he does the bare minimum for lectures. I've heard a few students say he doesn't really answer his emails, either.

Homework was fine, too. I never felt like it was too much or too little. He drops the lowest two homework scores out of six homework assignments. No complaints there.

Would not take this class again because I genuinely do not know what else we could have done to do better on that final.