Definitely one of the best lecturers at UCLA. He's very passionate about the course material and explains concepts very clearly. The workload and HW are not bad at all. The first midterm is very easy, but the second one is significantly harder. The final is not too difficult if you understand the material, and he is very generous with grading (4 different grading schemes). Overall one of the best classes I have taken at UCLA and I would highly highly recommend.

My god, what a beautifully brilliant class. Everyone I talked to said he was one of the best lecturers they've ever had, and I definitely agreed. The way he broke down what could have been very difficult concepts (discrete math is hard), I genuinely think you could drop middle schoolers in the class and they would get it. HW is pretty fun (can't believe I'm saying that) and easy, never taking more than a couple hours. All you need to do to succeed in this class is to understand what he covers in lecture. Grading is very chill, with 6 grading schemes our quarter. The midterm was easy and the final was hard, but if you understand lecture and his practice exams, you'll probably be fine. This class felt like a fun IQ puzzle, and was overall an amazing experience and a light workload. Kannan is 100% the best 61 teacher anyone could ever hope for, it literally can't get any better than him.

The three main subjects touched in this class are sets and their properties, counting problems, and intro to graph theory.

This is by far among the best classes I've taken at UCLA, and unfortunately this is last year that professor Kannan will teach at UCLA. He is extremely passionate about the course material, and since he was relatively new you might see conflicting reviews from prior quarters as he figures out what works best for his class.

The exams are not easy, but the material and specially the lectures do an extremely good job at getting you prepared.

One thing of note about the lectures is that they go really fast since unfortunately this class has only 1 hour lectures, so there's not so much that can be done to make them into a more comfortable pace. Therefore, if you are a fast typist I would suggest you try to mix typing and handwriting to take notes. During lectures the professor does a very good job of pointing the subjects of interest, remark things that will surely be on the exams, and gives alternative methods of understanding the material that are not present in the book.

I would highly recommend taking his class if you need to take this class and want to learn the material or are passionate about it. I would also highly recommend attending his office hours. The professor is extremely receptive to questions.

If you have to take Math 61, choose Siddarth. Probably the best math class I’ve taken so far. He’s only taught a handful of classes at UCLA but he is killing it so far. His lectures are really easy to digest and understand, which are all recorded and he publishes his notes after. However due to the content of 61 it is still a relatively difficult class. Even then you could tell he really wanted everyone to do well, as he heavily encouraged us to ask questions, and even hosted review sessions before every midterm/final. During lectures he made sure to highlight important concepts and even pointed out what to use on the homeworks. He also pointed out things he found fascinating and connected what he taught to applications in the real world. The homeworks were to the point, it wasn’t just busy work, but rather the point of them was to hammer down the key points of the current topics. Overall, a super solid new professor that I recommend.

I'd say his lecture style was really fast paced. It was hard to keep up if you fell behind in note taking during the actual lecture, so a lot of the time I would end up not taking notes in class and watching recordings after. Other than that his notes were really easy to understand and he prepared us well for his exams. Given events that occurred on campus this past quarter he was very understanding and willing to give his students leeway. Great professor.

Professor Kannan did a great job during my quarter of Math 61. 61 is a hard class overall because it's very different from the other lower-division classes. It's not complex math but complex logic. Despite the difficult class, Kannan does an excellent job with his explanations, he makes proof-based logic and explanations go from dense to digestible and will explain some of the confusing math jargon. His exams were rather hard, but I feel that is mostly just the content itself being difficult to think through on a test. Many exam problems are similar in content/ structure to homework questions, especially on midterm two. Homework could be quite difficult, but were very helpful in helping me to understand the topics so I found they were worth doing even if they weren't always required. Overall I highly recommend Professor Kannan

I absolutely would rate Kannan as one of the best professors I've had at UCLA. He is so kind, patient, and understanding, which reinforces his already great teaching ability. Kannan is one of the only instructors I could possibly say is better than Khan Academy. His explanations before new concepts provide the depth and intuition that sets university attendance apart from independent study. The additional lecture time benefits Kannan's explanations rather than obscuring them. In addition to everything great about Professor Kannan, they are incredibly cooperative and understand the difficulties students face throughout the quarter, and Kannan's adjustments to the course and its deadlines were always greatly appreciated. I hope the university can retain them as a professor because Kannan is an excellent resource for both students and the community, and I feel more welcome for having taken their class.

This was the most challenging math course I've ever taken. I took this course after receiving an A+ in Math 115A and was humbled; my advice is to only take this course if you love proofs, theory, and desire a challenge. The homework assignments are manageable, and the lectures are (for the most part) a heavy review of 115A content within a more theoretical framework. Lecture notes are great so attendance in lecture is not necessary unless you want to ask questions. The exams are extremely challenging and make up a majority of your grade. The homework and lectures on their own are not sufficient to prepare for the exams, so a strong understanding of all the theorems is absolutely necessary to pass. I would recommend concept mapping and discussing in a study group. Luckily, Kannan is a great guy and genuinely wants his students to succeed; he is more than willing to help if you reach out.

AVOID THIS CLASS.

Even though Professor Kannan is a good guy, his exams are certainly not. As a new professor, I'm afraid that he doesnt know how to control the difficulty level of his tests, making the average and median in the Failing range in the absolute scale. There are NO computational or simple proof questions on the exam at all, but every question require you to master the contents really well to know the tricks to solve them. To put it briefly, exam questions are FAR MORE DIFFICULT than 115A, and materials of this course is very managable but the exams are far beyond acceptable. NO practice exams, so you'll just have to guess what will be tested on the paper. Cotents of 115B should not be that difficult at all, and I am afraid that he just doesnt want to give simple questions or proofs he went over in class or on the text book. If you think mastering the notes and HWs, I can tell you that's still far from enough. Instead, you have to spent great amount of time practicing the problems at the end of every chapters to do a little better in the exam.
Overall, if you dont want to screw your GPA, and certainly this is not a mandatory elective, I suggest that DONT TAKE THIS CLASS. If you have any other options, go for it, just AVOID THIS CLASS.

Tests are really hard (midterm is more than doable if you just know the concepts, but the final requires a lot more in the realm of problem solving, so it's still a bit of time crunch). 115B's material isn't all that difficult since it has a ton of overlap with 115A. I got an A in 115AH a while back so I didn't really give this class the respect it deserved, but it's still a math upper div so you have to take it seriously. If you start reviewing and doing problems a few days before a test you should be fine.