I have always been adept at and enjoyed Math; nonetheless, I could see how a person who has never taken calculus before or who has never done too well in Math could struggle. Although Professor cares about his students (he organizes review sessions, is super helpful during office hours, solves a lot of practice exercises, etc), he explains the material in a rather superficial way (I don’t blame him, as there are only ten weeks available for him to do so). So if you have never been the best math student, you are going to have to put some extra effort to understand the material (the professor is super willing to help) and do well in this class.

I had already taken calculus in high school, and I still struggled a lot with this class. The exams made up the entirety of our grade, and the two midterms were too difficult to finish in the 50 minutes allotted. 8 AM class time also definitely didn't help. If you get the chance, don't take 31A with this professor.

This class was really easy. Most of the students taking the class have experience with the content already. This professor is really lenient with grading. He gave us 3 opportunities to answer HW questions w/o penalty and eventually we asked for 4 and we were granted that as well. The tests are extremely straight forwards and are variations from HW and classwork. He makes sure students understand what is going on in class by leaving time open for questions and he has no problem going back to something. I would say he's pretty accommodating overall.

Prof. Maimaitiyiming just started teaching at UCLA, and we were one of the first UCLA students he taught. He is very generous and willing to help all students. He seemed to understand that most students taking Math 31A would find it challenging because many of us are not math majors. He put a poll to check the understanding of the entire class, and he taught from the basics to ensure people really grasp the concepts.

For Fall 2020, his lectures and notes are posted on CCLE , so it is easier to refer back to the material. Also, attendance is not required, and it's okay to skip attending and just watch the lectures in your own time. He assigns homework on Sapling (which admittedly is a bit pricey), and he gives us 3 to 4 attempts to get the answers correct, allowing most of us to get high scores for the homework component.

As for his teaching style, he makes sure that his steps are methodical, and he explains each step well. However, I think his teaching style is not for everyone, as for those who already have a good understanding might find it slow. Personally, I benefited more from reading the textbook and doing the practice problems, but with his teaching style, Prof. Maimaityiming is a great teacher for math beginners or non-math majors.

I believe this was Professor Wu’s first quarter of teaching this class or his first quarter at UCLA. I felt he did an awesome job teaching his class. He is a very nice guy and you can feel very comfortable asking for help. Homework length was very fair. I felt tests were very fair also. He also gave practice tests which were very helpful. I highly recommend his class. I am not that great at Math and there was definitely a lot of resources to get the grade you want.

Professor Wumaier was very helpful and accomodating for all students as all his lectures and study sessions were recorded. His teaching style is very methodical which is very friendly to students who are new to the subject but can be boring for students who already know it. He was also a nice guy as always left time to answer questions and is willing to answer all questions.
The homework was mostly doable and we were given 3-4 attempts for all the questions, so it is easy to complete.

When I took this class, it was Dr Wumaier's first quarter teaching at UCLA. Homework assignments are tied to the digital textbook, so you need to purchase the access code to complete homeworks. Quizzes and exams are submitted through gradescope, where you are given 24 hours for an open book exam. Expectations for exams are clearly stated (the amount of working needed for full marks), and Dr Wumaier is understanding about technical difficulties involving remote learning.

There were certain points that I felt that Dr Wumaier could have been clearer with his explanations of the topics, and it felt like some easy topics were given too much time, while we rushed through slightly harder topics. If you have taken calculus before in high school then this class should be a simple refresher on most of the things you've learned before.

TA discussions were used to solve problems from the textbook and others prescribed by the professor, and complement the lectures well.

General:

When I took 31A, it was Prof. Wumaier's first quarter of teaching at UCLA. He's a really sweet professor who genuinely cares about your learning. Although I did find some of his lectures at the very beginning of the lecture slightly confusing, the quality of the lectures undoubtedly increased over the course of the quarter (as one would expect for a first-time professor). Having taken IB math in high school, I was familiar with most of the content before starting the course so I honestly didn't do too much studying beyond the assigned homework (worth 25% of the final grade). Nonetheless, I got a lot out of the course, as Prof. places quite an emphasis on understanding every step involved in answering each question. I now have a comprehensive understanding of some of the topics that my high school teacher glanced over, providing me with a stronger calculus foundation more generally.

Homework: (25%)

As some other reviews already have indicated, he has weekly assignments using the Sapling software (typically 8-15 or so questions) that take anywhere between 20 minutes to 2ish hours — depending on the difficulty. We had 3 attempts for the first 4 chapters but then towards the end of chapter 4, he gave us 4 attempts for each question. In my honest opinion, the homework was very relevant to the exams and helped solidify my understanding of lecture material.

Exams: (20% x 2 for midterms, 30% for final)

For the first midterm, it is mostly on limits, limit laws and very simple derivative calculations using the derivative. For the second midterm, the content was solely differentiation (e.g. implicit differentiation, sketching functions, linear approximation, related rates, etc.). Given that we had 24h to complete and submit the exams, I found them to be quite straightforward. The final was comprehensive and was integration-heavy, as we had not had an exam that tested us on our knowledge of integrals. Once again, we had 24h to complete and submit the exam. Overall, I found the test to be significantly more difficult than the midterms, although it was certainly still manageable, as even the most difficult questions did not go beyond the scope of the textbook.

Quizzes: (5%)

There are quizzes every other Friday that contain 2-3 questions (10-15 points). They are directly related to the lecture material and are primarily a way for him to gauge how the class is doing. Once again, we had 24h to submit the assignment, meaning that they weren't too stressful.

Other comments:

Since learning was done remotely for the quarter that I took this class, I just watched the recorded lectures and did not attend live lectures. I found that I didn't get much out of my discussion sessions so I stopped attending those after the first week or so. In addition, I only attended office hours once for about 10 minutes. Although I can't comment on the quality of the discussion sections beyond week 2 and office hours, I did find that the recordings of the lectures were good. I never felt as though I was missing out by not attending live lecture (this is a consideration for students in different time zones, I guess).

Finally, I want to highlight that Prof. and his TAs were very good at communicating TA-organized review sessions, as well as exam dates. Prof. regularly had announcements at the beginning of lectures in addition to emails that he sent out frequently that helped give me clarity.

Overall, I found this class engaging, manageable and worthwhile. I am positive that Prof. Wumaier's lectures will continue to improve as he becomes a more experienced professor.

This was prof’s first quarter at UCLA and honestly I’d say it went pretty well. He was really quick to get back to students, tests were quickly marked, he was communicative (especially with online struggles) and gave clear lectures.

You can tell he really cares about his students and about the teaching as well. He asked when was best for us to take the midterms and gave us 24 hours to accommodate for timezones. His lectures are live as well (you get to ask questions) but he posts all of them as well as his lecture notes so if you can’t make it love you can still watch them. You have to buy sapling which is where the textbook and homework is (you get 3 tries per question for the homework) but the textbook is so useful and the homework is good for practice.

The only thing I’d say is that the examples he uses in the lectures (and pretty much the lecture notes) are basically identical to the textbook so you’re not necessarily getting any EXTRA guidance that you’d expect from lectures. That being said it was also his first quarter so i feel like that’s something he’d work on.

We also had quizzes every 2 weeks (they’re worth 10% in total) and at first we had a time limit of 40 mins (but you can do it any time over 24 hours) but he changed it to 24 hours in total - they’re only like 2 questions and more for practicing exam technique and showing full working.

Workload was pretty minimal (there’s homework for each lecture/unit but it’s really useful to do them and they don’t take so long) and I never felt stressed about this class - mostly because prof is so chill and clear.

Save your questions for office hours or emails because there are only 50 mins for lectures and it wastes so much class time and puts us behind.

Grade boundaries are pretty high though and there isn’t really a curve (if i remember right you needed a 96 for an A) but you’ll definitely pass if that’s all you’re looking for.

Overall he’s a really good prof - he’s so so clear and responsive and if you can take him I really suggest you do. The exams are more complex than the homework questions (obviously) but the 24 hours is useful and he actually sent out hints for our first midterm on a really difficult question - he also holds office ours during midterms if you need any clarifications on questions and stuff.

I took Dr. Wumaier's class in the Fall 2020 Quarter, and he was a really great professor. He gives very engaging lectures and he always answers any questions both during lectures and office hours. The textbook and the Sapling assignments were really helpful and I recommend him to anyone who's thinking of taking his class!