I do not recommend this class. I wasted my time attending lectures because I would not learn anything. Concepts were overcomplicated and not explained well. Also, the class itself was always rushed and at the end, she taught so many chapters in a span of so little time and put those concepts on the final exam

We were given a practice exam for midterm 1, and the concepts that were covered by the practice midterm were identical to what was covered on the actual midterm. Great, right? Fast forward to midterm 2, we were given another practice midterm. Since the first practice midterm was enough to do well on midterm 1, you would assume the second practice midterm would be enough to do well on midterm 2 as well, right? Unfortunately, no. The second midterm consisted of three problems. The first two being worth 30% each, and the last one being worth 40%. The practice midterm was enough to do well on the first two problems, but not the last one. The last problem was actually something we went over only once during lecture for no more than 5 minutes, WEEKS ago. There was nothing even slightly similar on the practice exam. Dozens of students emailed her about this, but she announced through Canvas that she would be keeping the raw scores. Her excuse was that the practice midterm was only to get you used to the format of the midterm, but if so, then why was the midterm 1 identical to the first practice exam? Why was it not the same case for midterm 2? As you can probably tell by now, she's just making up invalid excuses that don't even make sense to justify herself. Oh, and the final exam? I'm not even gonna get into that -- just know: it was significantly harder than midterm 2 because half of it went over concepts that were not mentioned on the practice final. Besides exams, she also wastes a lot of time during lectures. She answers 5-10 questions per lecture and takes her sweet time doing so. Most of the time, she's not even able to properly answer people's questions, so she just ends up wasting time for no reason at all. This resulted in us falling behind 1-2 weeks in material. How do I know? Well, my friend is taking an equivalent course at UCSD, and he's weeks ahead of us. Well, he was weeks ahead of us... until now. Trigonometry was what we covered in the last two weeks of the quarter, arguably being the hardest part of precalculus. She rushed through ALL OF IT, in an attempt to catch up, leaving many of us confused of the material. How do I know she rushed through it? Well, I checked in with my friend at UCSD, and apparently, we ended up in the same section as them at the same time. We were 1-2 weeks behind not too long ago, so what happened? Oh yeah, she rushed through it, VERY quickly. As if the quarter system didn't already make things move fast... The only good thing about this course was that the homework was easy. Once a week and only 10-15 questions. The homework does help on exams, but you need more practice than that because obviously, she loves to switch things up for no apparent reason other than to try and have us fail.

Math 164 covers content on techniques of minimizing/maximizing functions. Content from multivariable calculus and linear algebra are applied in this course, making this a computational heavy course. There are proofs needed but nothing as rigorous as Math 115a or Math 131a. Professor Meng spends most of the time covering optimization on quadratic functions of multiple dimensions but will go over other techniques that are used for machine learning. She has 10 homework assignments, one midterm, and one final. Overall, this class is basically a prep class for machine learning as many techniques learned here are used for many different forms of machine learning. Now for Professor Meng specifically:

Pros:
- Grading is very lenient. On homework, she grades it based off a select random collection of problems, but it seems like she's giving many lenient points even if you get the problem wrong. On exams, it's structured to have around 5 multiple choice questions and a free response section. On the final, I did not finish the frq and wrote random bs around, yet she gave me full marks on it. It seems like as long as you get the idea, she'll give points.
- Her class pacing is consistent. Never did it feel like we were going too fast/slow or behind/ahead. She stuck with her schedule well despite the occurrences she was gone and even during the protest week.
- She's very helpful in office hours. Note, she does NOT go over current homework during her office hours but she will take the time to explain solutions for past assignments. She also explains thoroughly concepts that were covered in class so that students can fully digest the material.
- Practice exams are similar to the exams. If you understand how to do the frqs, you can basically ace the exams.

Cons:
- Lectures are not concise. How professor lectures is that she covers concepts in an abstract way, making the homework a frustrating process as she rarely does examples. Most of how I did homework was through reading the textbook. She also assumes you remember past concepts from previous math courses.
- The grading scheme is wack. Final is worth a big chunk of your grade, at least 50% so you're stressed enough to do well on the final or you're fucked. On top of that, if you drop your midterm, she has another grading scheme with the final being worth 80%.
- Homework can take a good chunk of time. There is one homework assignment assigned each week with an average of 7-10 questions assigned. Some questions are straightforward, but others have taken me 2-3 hours to complete. Although the lowest 2 homework get dropped, expect to be on the grind each week (I'd advice to drop the homework assigned before the midterm and final).
- No cheat sheet, notes or calculators allowed for any exams (even the final)

It was an alright class. I found the material interesting. However I would have liked to see more demonstration of practical application; we mostly discussed only quadratic cost functions, but what about applications to situations where we don't know the function, like ML? Also, homework was relentless; even during midterm week we still had homework.

I'm leaving a review now that I've wrapped up my first year at UCLA. Despite not taking pre-calc in high school, I felt this class was easy. Professor Meng was a decent lecturer—her grading scheme, detailed in the other reviews, made it so that you'd receive the highest grade possible given your performance on the midterm and final exams (partial credit was awarded very generously on these). Attendance was not required for lectures or discussions, but I still attended regardless.

Don't let the other reviews scare you away, as long as you stay on top of things you should be fine. I recommend seeking out additional resources online (e.g. Khan Academy) and going to office hours if you're having trouble with material. Overall, this class well prepared me for Math 31A.

Big thanks to the fall '23 TAs who held final review sessions! I found those super helpful.

Lectures were just her solving problem after problem on the chalk board that is legit. I made the mistake of not going to discussion, i highly advise you don't do that and actually go to discussion. Also this class is not "easier" than 31A so if you don't have to take this class don't.

All the lectures for this class are recorded which means attendance is not necessary nor are there Clickers for this class. Same with discussion sections. This class moves at a pretty average pace, and having taken Precalculus in high school, it was just a review of previous material. Homework (textbook required) is very manageable, and did not take me more than 30 minutes for one assignment a week. Prof. Weng in my opinion was a bit harder to understand and if I had not previously taken this course I may have struggled, but the TA sessions helped to clarify unclear information. Compared to other mathematics courses (especially Math31A), this class is definitely on the easier side.

It's hard to say if you recommend a math class because you kind of have to take them, but this professor specifically was okay. She is kind of hard to understand and goes through some things too quickly. When someone ask a question I feel like most of the time she never answered it directly.

- There is a textbook for the homeworks, but she gives a PDF for it
- She records lectures
- Discussions are helpful and attendance is not required
- No calculators for the class
- She has 3 different grade schemes so you can get the best grade as possible

Homework: They would get posted on Sundays and you have until Friday at 11pm to turn them in, but she had a 24-hour grace period so really you have until Saturday. Your grade would be posted the following week and it's based on correctness. The 8 highest homework scores out of 10 will be counted to your grades. Most of the time there was about 10 questions (sometimes with part a-c). They weren't too bad, most of the time I would finish Monday nights after lecture. If I struggled I would go to tutoring and they do it with you.

Midterms: There are two in-class midterms. She gives practice midterms that week that are similar. About 3-4 questions with multiple parts.

Final: Similar to the midterm she gives a practice final. Some multiple choice, the rest free-response.

I got an A the first midterm, C the second, failed the final, and a 100 on the homeworks, but I still passed the class so you will be fine. I recommend just getting help when needed because the professor is not the best.

Meng is really an okay professor. Her lectures are very technical, which makes them a bit hard to understand, but she does try her best to go with at least some conceptual intuition. Her exams are indeed difficult, without a curve, but I wouldn’t say they are impossible to do well on. Read the textbook, understand everything from the core, and practice the medium-level homework questions (her exam questions are around that difficulty), it should be still okay. Personally, I like Meng a lot. If you ever try to approach her, she is a positive, sweet, and welcoming person. There is no pressure at all when talking with her, and she tried to help you when you need it. Overall, I would take the course again in a quarter when I have all other easy classes (if you plan to take it, consider your academic workload and the overall difficulty

The class was fine up until the second midterm and the final. For the second midterm, she put a type of question that she went over once in the lecture. Not in homework. We had no practice on that type of question and it was the question with the most points. As for the final, for two weeks she went over chapter 4. On the very last lecture of the class, she quickly rushes over ch 6 and ch 7, chapters which needed heavy computational skills. The final consisted of mainly Ch 6 and Ch7. We were screwed.