I think Pablo gets an unnecessarily bad writeups; however, his class is still insanely difficult. Midterm 1 was the only reasonable test and the second midterm and final were unnecessarily difficult. The final required an immense amount of computation instead of just checking to make sure we understood concepts. The best advice to doing well in this class has been said already which is to watch youtube videos. I personally watched Professor Leonard's videos as I found them to be the most comprehensive. If you're looking for extra practice problems go to the OCHEM tutor. Pablo was trying to explain concepts but given his tendency to get off track he could never fit in all the content he really needed to. This led to the disparity between what was expected of us and what reality was in terms of performance. You can do well in this class the only real question is how hard are you willing to work for it? Also, Pablo's office hours are useful you just have to come with a very specific question so if you're totally lost then try other resources firt.

I received an A in the class, but not thanks to Sanchez Ocal. On youtube, there is a man named Agus Soenjaya who recorded his math 31b lectures and posted them. I watched his lectures on double speed instead of attending Mr. Sanchez Ocal's and I got an A. Pablo's lectures are completely useless, his homework is incredibly long, challenging, and is graded for accuracy; his tests I thought were difficult except for the first midterm, which was fair. Overall, if you enroll in this class I recommend not going to lecture and learning from either Professor Leonard, Agus Soenjaya on youtube, or some other outside source. Good luck.

THIS WAS THE WORST CLASS WITH THE WORST PROFESSOR EVER. do not take this class with pablo at all costs, wait for another professor to teach it. if i had one word to describe pablo, it would be CLUELESS. he can't solve basic problems and adequately answer students' questions. i had a tutor with a phd in math help me throughout this entire course, and even he said that the questions pablo would assign were completely unreasonable. i spent over 25 hours a week studying for this class and i was still barely able to get my well deserved A.

midterm 1: probably the easiest test out of all of them, but still had pretty low averages. initially he only wanted to curve the midterm for lecture 2, but after lecture 1 found out, they had to fight and argue with him in order to have him fairly curve everyones' midterm.

midterm 2: AWFUL. literally a 60% average and he refused to curve because he was mad about the whole curving situation from midterm 1. definitely way harder than any of the content he went over in class or assigned for homework.

final: probably even worse than midterm 2. such hard and long computations, and it included concepts we didn't even cover in class. mostly focuses on the content after midterm 2, but still has a few questions from midterm 1 and 2. good luck with this one, he provides no guidance or help whatsoever.

cherry on top: he lied and told us he was sick 2 days before the first midterm and that he had to cancel lecture, office hours, and the review session that many students were dependent on. come to find out, he was doing a conference at UCSD that day. extremely unprofessional and i honestly don't know why ucla is keeping him around. he's a bad name for the math department and the school as a whole.

hopefully this convinced you not to take this class, and if it didn't all i can say is good luck and you will struggle a lot :)

Didn't go to a single lecture after the first week, not a good teacher but with the notes from the textbook and the class website, you can keep up with the class. Honestly this class isn't about doing better than everyone else, its more about who did less bad on the exams since mostly everyone is going to do bad. I think I got a C or maybe even a D and still passed with a B+. So just keep up with the class even if you have to do it on your own and try to answer as many questions right, don't be discouraged if you can't answer a lot right since everyone else is probably doing the same.

I just made an account so that hopefully I can deter anyone from taking Ocal's class. Word of advice, DO NOT IGNORE HIS RATING AND WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HERE ARE SAYING. I made that mistake when I enrolled in the winter. His rating was a 2.2 at the time and I thought that I could manage. Everything people have said so far has been mostly true. The first quarter of his class is somewhat okay since the topics are fairly straightforward, but once the course hits integration by partial fraction decomposition, that's when it all goes downhill. Ocal is a terrible lecturer. His pacing is way too fast and explanations are too confusing. The problem he picks out to demonstrate on the board would be relatively easy but then homework problems would require you to use some type of technique Ocal has not taught you. For example, I remember he was talking about how to find the error bounds of taylor polynomials. He picked out a cosine function in which the max value of k would always be a 1. However, on the homework, he would assign homework that would have functions that involved natural logs. I would have to spend hours of my own time trying to figure out how to do this problem because Ocal failed to teach.

Homework is unnecessarily long and tedious. Every week you are assigned upwards to 30-40 long arduous problems. You are not given the answers to these problems so good luck if you want to know if you're doing them right. The final and midterms are also harder than they need to be which would be fair if he allowed cheat sheets and calculators, but he doesn't. His midterm 1 average was around 60% and, to his credit, he did curve it by 8 points. Then his midterm 2 was around the same area but this time, refused to curve.

Long story short, do not take Ocal. Put it off for a quarter if you have to. If you think I am exaggerating, I am not. The only reason I see anyone taking his class is if you are already strongly familiar with Calc 2 concepts. I have talked to multiple people that had Ocal and none of them liked him.

Doesn't teach and doesn't care. What a horrible professor

What a horrible dreadful man. Don’t trust him. Pablo if you’re reading this, I know what you did.

Don't take a class with this professor, period.

Worst professor I’ve ever had. It’s so clear he has no idea what he’s talking about and he basically teaches us nothing. He then proceeds to assign the hardest homework problems graded solely for accuracy, which is kind of hard to do considering that you’ve learned nothing from his lectures. He then gives you midterms with averages of 60% and 50%, but doesn’t think this is worth a curve. His final is something as hard as the worst upper div I have ever taken and even then, they still let us use cheat sheets. Honestly, how hard could it be to give us a notecard and let us write. DO NOT take him under any circumstances, unless you want to make your life hell. I hope for the life of us he reads these reviews and takes at least some part of what his students are saying into consideration. I do not know how he got hired and I hope the department takes a closer look at his class soon and realizes he’s not fit to be a professor.

all the reviews should basically give u an idea. i hesitantly took the class even after seeing his bruinwalk reviews, because it was required for my major and he was the only available professor. however, he is SUCH A BAD PROFESSOR that i literally wish i just skipped the class and took it next quarter instead, even if it put me "behind". yes, math 31b is gonna be hard, but honestly, the class shouldn't be as hard as he made it. i did all my studying outside the class (watching the entirety of Prof Leonard's Calc 2 playlist, which was hours and hours), and the tests were still difficult. it was frustrating how i genuinely know the material through my own studying but i can't prove myself on the tests because of how they are the weirdest/hardest examples from the textbooks. overall, this class simply didn't have to be this way, so i would stay away if possible