Short Version: If you have this professor as an option for this class, please please PLEASE choose him — you will have no regrets.

To preface, I’ve taken college calculus before during HS junior year, but I had such a bad teacher that I dropped it 2nd semester and since then pretty much forgot the whole thing.

Now the long version: Professor Gannon is the best. He’s super fun with his lectures, extremely understanding of what college freshmen are going through, puts in the effort and time to explain content thoroughly, and goes out of his way to make the class a memorable one. Though it’s only my first quarter at UCLA, I can say with no doubt that he has set an extremely high bar to beat. This was the only class where I truly wanted to attend every lecture because they were so engaging (if you can’t make lecture, he posts recordings of them on Bruin Learn).

The class had weekly HW assignments and quizzes (all easy and very reasonable — you can drop 2 of the lowest scores for each). We had 2 midterms — both were also very reasonable and we had a practice exam for the first one where questions from it actually showed up on MT 1. The final in my opinion was more difficult than the 2 midterms but was still very fair and doable (I actually did the best on the final exam in terms of score wise so…). He also gave us a practice exam for the final but the whole class thought it was ridiculously hard (he didn’t write the practice exam, it was written by another professor in 2019), so it wasn’t as helpful as I anticipated because most questions were unrepresentative of what actually came up on the final. From the 2 midterms and final, I can say that Professor Gannon is definitely not the type to try and stump his students; in fact, he even says in class that he won’t put super “hard” questions on the test.

In terms of communication, he’s a 10 out of 10. He’s super responsive by email and answers questions posted on Piazza (our Q/A platform) within 24 hours and usually sooner. He was even answering them by the next day over winter break and on Christmas day — that’s the amount of dedication he has for his students.

Some other miscellaneous perks that I’m not sure if other professors will give: 1) extra 12 hours to submit HW/quizzes after the deadline in case of tech issues, 2) 2 grading options where one counts both midterms and the other only counts one midterm but the final weighs more — whichever gives you the higher grade is your final grade, 3) 3x5 notecard double-sided for midterms and 8.5x11 paper single-sided for the final, 4) you can request regrades for both of the midterms and the final if you think you were graded incorrectly, 5) Professor Gannon is willing to make it easier to obtain a grade (ie. for the F23 quarter, he lowered each grade boundary by 1% so a 92 was an A and an 89 was an A- etc.), 6) on exams, he is very lenient with unfinished arithmetic and the methods you use to solve problems (except some like L'Hopital's where he will explicitly state in class not to use).

TLDR — please take MATH 31A with Professor Gannon, you won’t regret it.

Hands down the best professor at UCLA. Weekly quizzes super helpful in understanding the content of this course. Midterms and final were an accurate representation of the homework we were assigned. 31A with Gannon is 100% worth it.

Great professor

not sure why his name is gannoth on here but tom GANNON is a goat he is really engaging, funny, records lecture, and is super understanding. Manageable homework. it was my first math course at ucla and i loved it

goat.

Tom Gannon is one of the sweetest and best professors I have had at UCLA!

He genuinely cares about students and it shows in his lectures and tests. He records lectures, but his attendance is still really good because he engages with students and even jokes during lectures. He teaches incredibly clearly and answers questions online really quickly. The homework is doable, but it's easy to lose a few points for random things - I believe he does drop the lowest grade. Tests had little to no curveballs.

The best professor at UCLA in my opinion. 31A isn't a hard class, but can be a bit challenging, but Gannon is super helpful, funny, and clarifies everything. Lectures aren't boring, they aren't super fast-paced, they're perfect. Loose grading schemes so you can afford to bomb a midterm.

In my opinion, the worst thing about taking Gannon is having to come back to reality with worse professors next quarter.

I loved this class and Professor Gannon! He was always so engaging during lectures, animated, and explained concepts in such a thorough manner that was easy to comprehend. Attendance for both lectures and discussions are not mandatory. I would suggest going to discussions if you ever run into problems on your homework or if concepts lectured were confusing as my TA was very helpful in reviewing weekly concepts and going over practice problems. However, lectures are recorded so I wouldn't say you really need to attend if you already know how to do the assigned homework for the week. There are weekly quizzes. I believe your two lowest quiz and homework grade will be dropped, so don't worry too much if you miss a couple of points or get a question wrong on the quizzes. Overall, as long as you understand the homework assigned you should be fine. Both midterms were fairly easily, I got a 100 on the first midterm and a 92 on the second. While the final was a bit challenging it was definitely doable, and fair as challenging questions were graded with the same weight as easier questions so it balanced out!

Prof. Gannon is by far the best math professor, and also just a great professor in general. He is very engaging and teaches Calc materials in a very easy manner. If you struggle with math in general, he would be a great choice to take him for this course. His tests are very fair, and if you prepare well with the homework and quizzes, the test will be very manageable.

For reference, primarily, I did take AP Calc AB in high school so this class was relatively all review to me. But Gannon is THE GOATTT and I'm pretty sure damn near everyone in my class would agree with that. I could only hope to have more math profs like him; he was so clear in his lecture, generally just a chill and funny guy, and really wanted his students to do the best. His voice is also so satisfying like it scratches this itch in my brain and I just love it. I am so grateful for this guy for making my first college math course a fun, engaging, and relatively easy and understanding time.