With Pablo, the best way I can describe his teaching is with the parable of him giving us the fish instead of teaching us how to fish. He teaches directly from the book--whatever is said in the book is exactly what he writes on the chalkboard. He introduces us to theorems and then does really simple problems that don't teach us the strategies on how to actually go about solving the problems. I resulted to basically watching all of Professor Leonard online to make up for what I wasn't getting in class. Another major issue was not having recorded lectures--unless he was out for the day then he would record and even those were from the book completely. It was a genuine problem because there was lack of access/risk of spreading disease if someone had a cold which happened to be my case. Although his problems for his midterm/test are from the book completely, the difficulty came up in the fact that some things were just not known how to do. I did serious grinding the last week before finals to clutch up my grade to pass. One positive note is his very flexible grading strategy, basically giving you best case scenario on the grades you got for your midterms and your final--he will drop midterm grades if they don't result in your highest possible grade which is good. Overall, if you have the option to take another professor--who has good ratings obviously--you should take them not for a solid grade but for comprehension and understanding moving forward.

He really values your input and gives very manageable workload and tests. Don’t trust people who say he’s bad, he is extremely kind and although can be a bit unclear sometimes, he is very open to feedback and questions and reading the textbook also helps a lot!

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A SOLID FOUNDATION OF CALCULUS 1 (AP Calc AB/BC, 31A), TAKE 31A INSTEAD. I didn't take Calculus in high school, and I took 31A online over the summer... so fall quarter with Pablo was tough. Pablo isn't terrible, and his grading system is nothing to complain about. The problem is that the sheer volume of novel content and Pablo's lack of insightful lectures (that are NOT recorded, btw) made the class a struggle. I studied a TON and ended up with a 48% on the final. Getting 100% on 1 midterm and his curving of the overall class left me with a C+. I'm just glad its over.

pablo is the goat. although some people may dislike his lectures, i will FOREVER be a pablo defender. he puts in effort to make his lectures clear and he is also unironically funny. not to mention he is the snazziest dresser and always shows up with math-related shirts. his tests are also quite simple.

Oh, Pablo. He's a fun guy, wears mathy clothes, seems nice overall. He's definitely into his subject, but he's clearly still getting the hang of teaching a lower division class. Some "fun" quirks of this class included:
- Two MULTIPLE CHOICE midterms that either completely devastated your hopes of survival as a UCLA student, made you ecstatic that you're apparently good at guessing, or both
- Such challenging midterms that the final was, a few days before it happened, switched from multiple choice with no partial credit to free response with partial credit because of allegations of cheating... He also gave exceedingly little detail as to how credit would be assigned. With any luck, future exams will all be free response with partial credit, as they should be.
- A grading policy that actually saved my ass: 15% homework, and the rest is either both midterms + final, one midterm + final, or just the final (whatever's best). You could fail both midterms and still get an A.
- Lectures taken almost directly from the textbook chapters, and thus incredibly hard to follow if you don't have some prior knowledge of the class -- Khan Academy and Joe Breen's (UCLA) website were my saviors.
- Homework so long and challenging (not to mention not often helpful for exam prep) you start to question your sanity at late hours of the morning, and then start yelling at your friend when his page-long answer is different from yours, so you both have to check for correctness (by the way, checking homework with a friend is a MUST).
- TA review sessions filled with dread, uncertainty, and anxiety (shoutout to Eric Kim for being a nice TA, though!)

Essentially, if you MUST, you can take Ocal, and you'll just barely scrape by if you make sure to self-teach the concepts well. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend it. This class didn't have to be this hard. My friends with Padilla had easier homework + exams and a better understanding at the end of the quarter.

Pablo can't teach.
He never seems confident about what he's teaching, so I'm never convinced about the course's content. I ended up having to study all the course material by myself from the textbook and online.
Your friends and Khan Academy are the real teachers here, not Mr. Socal.

This class was much harder than it needed to be. Pablo is a friendly person but a terrible teacher, I stopped going to class around the middle of the quarter because they were pointless. He just copies the textbook examples, and the exam questions were much more difficult than the homework assigned. His grading scale is nice though, because I did poorly on both midterms but absolutely GRINDED for the final, got a 23/24, and passed the class with an A. I had Kiran for my TA and he was not very helpful, left me more confused than before I asked my question. The day before the final I studied 8 hours and went to a review session with Eric, he was AWESOME. Wish he could teach the class, not Pablo. I do believe I have a strong understanding of the material, but that was more from my own intense studying than from the professor. Do not take this class if you want an engaging, easy math class. Super hard!

I dont know what he did, but super light workload, easy tests, lectures were informative+engaging and are posted online. Knows his material.

If there are other lecturers teaching math 31b the quarter you are taking it you will most likely be better off taking this course with them as opposed to professor Ocal. That being said, if you do end up taking this course with professor Ocal, there are certain things you should keep in mind to increase your chances of doing well.

The first thing to note is that professor Ocal teaches from the textbook. More accurately, professor Ocal essentially reads the textbook, writes the textbook example problems on the chalkboard and calls it a day. And personally I felt that the textbook anyways did a better job of teaching the concept than professor Ocal did. It felt like professor Ocal had no actual idea how to teach the concepts in this course, and I say this because I felt he was rarely able to adequately address questions brought up during the lecture. Honestly I would recommend you read the textbook thoroughly, ideally before the lecture. I knew a few people who just learned from the book and skipped the lectures, and ended up doing well.

Secondly you should be aware that professor Ocal is very bad at designing exams. Setting aside the fact that the midterms were a low question count multiple choice exam which is generally unforgiving and setting aside the whole fiasco of the very last minute and very significant change to the final exam format, it feels as though his exams exist to quiz you on the approach to the very niche problems he sometimes assigns on the homework and goes over during reviews. To study for his exams you should focus your time on learning the specific approach to these niche problems as opposed to solidifying your use of the base skills.

Finally, you should do yourself a favor by starting the homework early and you should absolutely be checking answers against what your friends got, as not only is the homework graded on correctness, you will lose A LOT of points for doing the problem the wrong way/showing incomplete work even if you have the right answers. Not all the questions have answers at the back of the book and there is no where to check if you approached the question the correct way.

I want to add that professor Ocal has a considerably generous grading scheme. There are three markedly different schemes and one of them even drops one of the midterms entirely. Moreover, he dropped three of your lowest homework grades out of the ten total. While generous grading schemes are always nice I would prefer a good professor and a somewhat harsh grading scheme over and somewhat bad professor and a good grading scheme.

P.S. theres absolutely no way that professor Ocal was unaware that there would be rampant cheating in the midterms. He even said that the shift to free response for the final was not his idea and he made it sound like the math department forced his hand on the matter. I conclude that there is a (considerably unlikely) possibility that professor Ocal was counting on us to cheat on those exams, which if true (and in fairness, very likely isn't), is unfortunate.

Nice easy class and prof. It's important to understand how the foundation of linear algebra to do well in the later weeks