Had him for both math 3A and 3B. I know some students thought he was just down right terrible but I didn't think so. Then again he was my professor for two quarters so maybe I just got used to his style of teaching. He was very conceptual and tried to apply everything to real world examples. The most annoying thing about him to me was the fact that he would show up and lecture off the top of his head and he'd pause a lot and backtrack. Not saying he didn't know the material, he obviously did. I thought his exams were fair, mainly based on homework problems and examples given in class. The averages for both midterms and the finals for both classes were pretty low so my advice would be to obviously try to be above the average. He was often funny and he has an accent that isn't hard to understand.

Selling Calculus for life sciences textbook for $65 email me: *************

Seeing that Pietro had no reviews on BruinWalk, I had no idea what to expect when I enrolled in his class. However, I'm able to say that he was not a bad professor. He was somewhat fair--his homework assignments were not entirely unbearable (a few problems due before lecture every Friday graded for completion mostly, but occasionally correctness.)
There are two midterms, which were extremely difficult for me. They weren't typical "derive this" types of problem. They were problems that Pietro made up and were very difficult. The average for both midterms fell in the 50% range. Our final's average was a high 50, so Pietro emailed us all after and congratulated all of us for doing so well. The standards were pretty low, to say the least.
Even though I did below average on every exam, I managed to come out with a B-. Not too shabby, considering I hardly studied until the night before the exams and never went to discussion, which were optional unless you wanted to pick up your homework and exams.
Study hard, go to both your TA's and Pietro's office hours, do WileyPLUS (easy points!), and you should be fine.

Selling textbook "Calculus for Life Science" (Wiley Custom Learning Solutions) - Latest Edition

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Honest to god, not the greatest professor. I've had him for 2 quarters.
Lectures: Are often not clear, the notes themselves are ok, but when he explains concepts he is all over the place. And explains how to solve problems as if you've already taken this class, basically not thorough. He does try to answer questions people have in class to the best of his ability.

HW: There's physical hw from a mathbook. Plus online hw. The physical HW is usually 6-10 questions-- which sounds doable right? WRONG these questions were created for you to struggle(All of them are word problems). Several assigned questions were so difficult both the TAs and the prof himself had difficulties solving. I'm all for a challenge, but this is ridiculous. Don't assign a problem you can't even solve yourself. The online homework is a lot more doable.

Exams/studyguide : Most midterms had about 4-6 questions, some with several parts. I don't know if he will change his style of exams but 3A had many word problems (almost all of it was ) and for 3B, the 2 midterms had no word problems, but the final had many. You never know what you're going to get on an exam with Pietro. Studyguide consists of the topics he has gone over and a sentence describing what you should know about it. No practice problems of what might be there, he says to "do book problems, and problems fromthe online HW"---SO vague

Helpfulness: Gone to his office hours several times, somewhat barely helpful. He should go over the problems on the board so that eveyone can benefit, but he has his own style. He goes around the room answering questions individually. And when he does explain, he is never that thorough he'll ask "didn't you go to lecture, I went over that extensively"

Take this class if you have a good grasp on Calc already or if you love word problems. I got an A in Math 1 but could only get a B from taking his classes.

It is very sad how he has bad ratings. Honestly, he is a great professor. Yes, his class might be hard for some people, but if you wanted an easy class, why are you even in UCLA? If you're not up for a beneficial challenge, then that's just upsetting.
Anyway, his way of teaching really helped me understand the conceptual aspects of math, something I struggled before. So if you're up to really try to understand math, he is the guy to take. Plus, he is very funny and makes math interesting all the time, plus he's super clear.

Pro:
1. Seems to genuinely care about students. He holds plenty of office hours and I have seen him stay behind lecture to answer questions from students.
2. Lectures are clear and cater to math dummies like me. He actually writes plenty of English on the board so people with weaker math foundations can easily understand.
3. Talks about how what we learned can be applied to the real world. I know some people hate that he does this, but I personally found the things he talked about interesting.
4. Has a sense of humor. Not visible at first, but later you can kind of tell.
5. His homework and exams really aren't that bad. I don't know what people were expecting, but I thought the lectures do cater to exams and homework quite well. I will warn you though. Pietro is pretty big on real world application, so he prefers word problems over mechanism. If you hate word problems, you should probably take Paige. I saw her exams, there were barely any word problems on there.
Con:
1. He talks way too softly. I usually always sit in the front five rows, but I often have difficulty hearing him. I wonder how the twenty rows behind me can even hear a thing that he says.
2. His study guides are " possible inexhaustive". This may just be an idiosyncrasy but I hate it when professors write that on their study guides. To be fair though, his study guides were always overly but never under exhaustive. So I don't really know why he says that.
3. When he is behind schedule, he tests the material he didn't teach anyway. He either asks the TAs to teach it or the students to read for themselves in the textbook. I don't do well with stress, so I really hate it when he does this.
4. He can be LAZY. Despite the fact that Pietro seems genuinely concerned with his students, he can also be very lazy. He didn't upload the syllabus until about a week into class. He doesn't assign homework over the weekend like most professors. Instead, he does it on Mondays or Tuesdays. He doesn't post exam study guides until 4~5 days before the actual exam. (This probably also indicates he also procrastinates when he makes exams) Lastly, and most importantly, he doesn't print the exams ahead of time. As a result, we had to wait for almost 40 minutes before he came in with the exams.

Selling the textbook for this course:

Calculus for Life Sciences by Schreiber (with the gold fish on the cover)

$85

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Honestly he is one of the worst teachers at UCLA. He makes the course 1000 times harder than it has to be. Also he doesn't give you a study guide which means you have no idea what to study for. Also he told us that a topic was going to be on the exam and then he ended up not putting it on the exam. I spent hours studying for topics that were never even put on the exam. Also I would like to add that he was 40 min late to the final. He literally writes the exams the night before and is super last minute about everything. Honestly would never take his class ever again. One of the worst math professors at UCLA.

I don't understand why people have a negative opinion of him. He teaches math so of course it is not going to be an easy class to get an A in. To be successful in this class you need to attend his lectures and do alot of problems from the book in order to FULLY understand the concept. Once you understand the concept his tests are not that bad but if all youre doing is memorizing how to solve something without really knowing why you wont get the problems on the exam.
Also he is very helpful. I have emailed him many times and he has replied answering my questions within an hour or two. He held multiple additional office hours for the final and went over anything you didnt get. with that being said you need to put in work yourself in oder to do well!