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.

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.

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.

For Math 61, Prof. Kannan is a good professor. The class itself is very different from other math classes since it requires developing a good intuition for combinatorics, recurrence relations, graph theory, induction, etc. and homeworks and tests require a lot of formal proofs (make sure to exactly follow the professor's wording word for word otherwise simply exchanging "where x > 0" for "for x > 0" for example can get points docked off). Kannan's lecture notes are superb especially if you missed (something during) lecture. Homeworks are pretty heavy and I would recommend visiting the SMC and definitely attending discussion for this class. (Shout out to Elias Manuelides for being really good at putting counting problems in laypeople's terms!) Taking this class along with Stats 100A can help you understand the first half of that class. Overall, his tests follow the practice exam's formats pretty closely, just keep an eye out for edge case true/false questions as a single word makes a huge difference. This is not an easy math class, homeworks take a long time to do, but I feel like it teaches a different and valuable way of approaching problems and if it's required to take this Prof. Kannan is a good choice.

As someone who enjoys discrete maths, I'm really glad to have Professor Kannan as my Math 61 professor. He explains things very clearly in lecture (which are all recorded, although the audio had issues) and has very detailed notes. His homework load was pretty reasonable and the exams were relatively easy. That being said, you had to get a 95 or above overall to get an A.

I believe this was Kannan’s first quarter teaching in general, not just at UCLA, and I’m grateful to have had him for a class which many complain about like 61. He made it enjoyable to learn, manageable and digestible, and was very reasonable with his homework schemes and exam expectations. He was responsive and helpful during his office hours and review sessions. And you can tell how much effort he puts into his class on account of the amount of practice he provides us to review our knowledge with, as well as a helpful set of notes which made the latter part of this class way easier to absorb. I think he has gone above and beyond to make the material something we could process within such a short time like a quarter which I complain about often.

Also, I just feel that Kannan is a great, passionate person in general. I liked his positive words of encouragement from time to time, and how he threw in nuggets of fun facts in his lectures. In addition, I felt that he was a humble person who was receptive to students’ requests for further explanations, ready to correct himself if he realized he made a small error, and so just wonderful as an instructor. 61 is not an easy class but he made grasping the content easy. I’m even more appreciative of having had him as a prof for 61 considering the lack of assistance my peers have had with other professors.