I have very mixed reviews about this professor. I understand a lot of students' complaints about him, he's not a very good lecturer and he does not even seem to be passionate about teaching. At the same time, he definitely makes an effort to help the class. His practice exams have an identical structure to the actual tests, and I noticed that throughout the quarter he improved in his public speaking and became more thorough with his lectures. Altogether, he's not the best professor at math (you're going to need to already have background knowledge of calculus to be successful ) but don't get too discouraged if you have him.

Ou was kind of hard to understand because of his accent, but he was still an okay professor. His midterms were very similar to the practice midterms.

selling loose leaf textbook for this class
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Selling loose leaf Calculus Single Variable 3rd Edition. $50
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I got to know Prof Ou since I was young. He's one of the brightest guy you could meet in life. If you don't agree, either you're at Prof Tao's level, or you are far below.

As I read through all these reviews, I surprisingly realized that the quality of the student accepted by UCLA is really poor, at least in generally, given the assumption that the reviews here were sampled randomly. For such an easy topic/course, there are still tons of complaints about teaching clarity.... Oh come on, it's your own problem of comprehension. Math is not playing toys. It requires basic comprehension ability to understand someone, or something that's more intelligent than you.

Anyway, still suggest Prof Ou to improve your teaching skill if you want to stay in UCLA or elsewhere to teach kids at such level. Just walk them through step by step like you teach the 3-year-old, or explicitly tell them how to answer the questions during the exam by standing just next to them, and finally offer all A's to the class. Then you'll be highly rated as if you're Eistein.

I don't like giving bad reviews for professors but... I really wouldn't recommend Ou. It's not even his accent, but mostly his way of teaching that's incomprehensible. He spends all of lecture rambling proofs and was pretty intimidating in my opinion. This was the first calculus class I had ever taken and honestly I learned more from discussion than I ever did in lecture. I believe almost everyone in this class had taken calc in high school, but if you think you have a super good grasp on the subject before you start his class, then you'll be fine. On the bright side, his curves are really great and there's not much homework! I miraculously got a B even though I did terribly on every test.

Did not go to lectures because I couldn't understand. The midterm was OK but the final was hard. In the end, he curved generously because everyone did not do well.

Nice guy, somewhat incompetent professor. English isn't his first language though so everyone should cut him some slack, but that does mean that going to lecture won't really help. He does put in genuine effort to teach and his practice midterms were identical in structure and difficulty to the actual midterms, which did help a lot. Workload is really light too: homework is assigned/collected once a week and consisted of 10-20 problems usually. There are no tests or quizzes, only homework, 2 midterms and a final, which wasn't long but was pretty difficult. Frankly speaking if you want to succeed you're going to need at least some knowledge in calculus already; I went in having never taken an AP level calculus course and that was enough. Overall, it wasn't really a super difficult course and I respect Ou as a professor. Just attend lecture when you don't understand something, ask your TA questions during lecture, and put in the effort and you will be fine.

My best advice for this class would be to find a study group and study for everything with that group. Professor Ou isn't the best lecturer, but he gives out practice midterms that are almost identical to the actual midterm (he just changes the numbers in the problems) which are extremely valuable. If you completely understand the practice midterm, you will do well on the actual midterm. The first midterm wasn't too hard but the second midterm was slightly harder. I found the final to be pretty difficult, but somehow my grade ended up okay. He does curve the class which helps. You can also drop one midterm and just have the final worth more of your grade which is nice, I think that's what helped my final grade. There is weekly homework, but it isn't too hard and your two lowest homework grades are dropped. I never got less than an A on the homework, I just checked all of my answers online before turning it in. You do need the textbook for the homework, but there are similar versions of the textbook online, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend purchasing the textbook. As far as Professor Ou's helpfulness outside of class, I never actually went to his office hours, but I have friends who did and they said he was pretty helpful. I did go to my TA's office hours pretty frequently, which helped me. If you think you might struggle in this class, just utilize all of the resources available to you (office hours, free tutoring in the math center, etc.). Overall Professor Ou's 31A class is a pretty fair class, there is nothing on the tests you've never learned, and you basically know everything that will be on the tests ahead of time. Just find a study group to do the practice midterms with and you'll be fine.

As long as you understand the process of how to do the problems on the practice tests you should be good. Midterms were pretty much identical to the practice midterms, however the final was more challenging. Homework is not too bad and I got full credit for all.