He is the best math professor I have ever had in UCLA, and one of the few professors (in all area) that I can actually understand. Take him if you like critical thinking on the exam.

I don't understand why there are so many bad reviews for him. Thiele is a great professor. His grading system is extremely generous and fair. I took his 32B class in the Spring and really liked it. For one, he comes to the class 10 minutes early and wipes the chalkboard every time, so you can clearly see what he writes. His lectures are both humorous and really interesting. I found his explanations to be more intuitive than the books. He does NOT give any quizzes in discussions, instead you have to do the homework assignments from the book. Pretty doable, and you only have to do 40% of the assigned homeworks and you automatically get the homework points. The first midterm was pretty easy and he lets you bring a cheat sheet to all his tests. The second midterm was tough, but his curve was really sweet. There are practice tests available from previous years that he has posted on the class website, these help out a lot. The final exam had a mean grade of 50% with his curve turned out to be a C. He also lets you miss one midterm, that is if you miss a midterm, that grade will be replaced by the final exam grade. All 3 tests are equally valued. Also if you go to his office hours, he is a really cool professor, actually gets to know the students, and is pretty useful. So take Thiele for 32B, its a good choice.

Took him S10, and he was my least favorite teacher of my first year. His lectures were a waste of time. the homework is assigned and graded but don't factor into your grade unless you don't do it, in which case you fail the class. His midterms and finals show problems that are nothing like those in the homework, and he expects you to figure out 6 of them in 50 minutes for the midterms which is practically impossible. His averages on tests were around 50% which helps a little but the class was still miserable. And I was considering being a math major, not anymore.

I can completely understand why his ratings are so low, but I really can't agree with most of these comments. True he doesn't spoon feed you some superficial, surface level calculus that you, from rote memorization, are able to apply to every problem, but his class is extremely interesting for people that actually care about the material they're learning. Instead of simply showing you how to approach problems, which the book does, he spends his lectures proving multi-variable calculus from basic arithmetic truths, which can be understood in any dimension. I've never learned so in depth and been so appreciative of calculus in my life. Secondly, his tests are extremely do-able. They don't require any special understanding of the proofs he's done, so you MAY skip lecture, do the homework, and do fine on the tests. I wouldn't recommend that for the previously mentioned reasons, but it's very possible. What you CAN'T do is show up to lecture, not practice the problems, and do well on the tests, since he doesn't teach you how to apply the formulas. His tests do, however, have very helpful hints and you're allowed a note card. In sum, his class requires a lot of practice outside lecture, a lot of careful attention in lecture (if you want to learn), but not any particular brilliance to do well.

This professor carefully erased blackboard with water before and after each lecture. I like him! His proofs are more elegant than Stewart book's proof, so I did learn something extra. The tests are not that hard, but students need to be smart to figure things out.

The reviews from the past could not be any more wrong at this point in time. If you want the worst math professor at UCLA, take Thiele's class. His lectures are horrible. You will have no clue what he is trying to prove in his lectures. He could at least title what he is trying to do, but no. No study sessions to help any of the students. It's true that his midterms are impossible, and it's true that the kinds of problems on them are things we have never seen before. You will have 50 minutes to power through 6 critical thinking problems that you will not know how to do. Studying the book's problems won't help because Thiele's problems are completely different. Best to know just the concepts. Thiele is not fair and not helpful; avoid him.