Mal teaches primarily from his slides and posts them to CCLE so you NEVER have to go to class. However, his slides are from 2007 with typos and edits all over them.

His tests are very straightforward, with the questions similar to the homework. He did ask for a proof on the midterm and final, so you need to go to lecture to find out which one he's going to ask.

He's a nice guy who cares about learning and he advertised an internship position in class.

Professor Mal is pretty good at teaching the material for 156A. Make sure you go to lecture because a lot of his exam problems incorporate stuff he discussed in lecture. Many students made a mistake on the first exam, in which he told us many times not to make that mistake in lecture. Make sure you do the homework on your own and carefully because many of the problems end up on the midterms. Caution: The two midterms have pretty high averages, while the final was on the difficult side. One simple mistake can cost you a lot of points. I would advise you not to rely on the textbook too much because Mal says there's a lot of mistakes in the book.