First of all, I bet Taylor would be a much better teacher, if he wasn't teaching at 8 in the morning. He makes mistakes a lot, and he is not a clear lecturer. He would often lose his place or train of thought, or just straight up be really confusing during class. Sometimes he was even late. I found him terrible and thought I failed, but barely passed. The first two midterms are pretty straightforward, actually (although there's true false on every test and it kills me every time). The final was brutal, and I was very surprised given the almost "easiness" of his first two midterms (at least in hindsight the two midterms were straightforwards and no curve balls were thrown at you). If you can avoid him, please do.

The class was at 8AM 3 days a week, meaning that the professor sometimes struggled to convey the concepts of the class in an easy to understand way. The midterms were pretty easy and straightforward, and the homework assignments were brief and generally helpful. The final, however, was awful and nothing like the midterms in terms of difficulty.

I took Math 31B with professor Rooney last quarter and thought that I had seen the worst in terms of testing in college mathematics. Now, I look back and laugh at such naïveté. Let me get this straight: yes, I received an A in this class. However, like the previous reviewer, I know that I would have gotten an F if COVID-19 did not force us to take the final at home. This professor's final was the most difficult test I have ever taken. We did not touch on quite a few of the concepts that made it on the exam, and some were not even in the textbook. After having discussions with classmates on Reddit, it was clear that many of them felt the same way. Like me, people spent much more time than 3 hours completing it. I spent 9 on it and still left answers blank before turning it in. I am, therefore, extremely thankful that he offered an alternative grading scheme at the last moment in which you could remove the final exam from your final grade calculation.

TL;DR: This professor's testing, in my experience, is unfair and does not adquately assess a student's achievement in the class. I do not recommend that you choose this professor for this class if you are concerned about getting good grades.

Let me be clear: this class is easy for 95% of the time. There are weekly quizzes, with two questions each, for which he always said ahead of time what would be on them. The quizzes were easy. In terms of homework, this prof does NOT ASSIGN HOMEWORK. He posts problems on CCLE but does not require you turn them in for a grade. I thought this was an amazing policy until all of the sudden midway through the quarter I realized I barely knew anything because I never did work outside of class. Don't be fooled!!!! Just because there is no grade for the homework does not make it optional. Yes, you never technically turn it in, but you should do it. The final...oh god. Let's just say I'm glad that coronavirus is going around because if I had to take this final closed-book in 3 hours, I'd have an F in the class. The final is EIGHTEEN PAGES. It's ridiculous. It's so much material for one test, and the questions are very difficult. For some, they don't even seem related to the lessons we learned. Luckily, the professor is being pretty generous because of covid-19 and is allowing for the option of not having the final affect our ultimate grade. He's a nice guy, he really is! Sometimes the lectures are boring but not any more than a regular math class. It's GREAT that he almost never goes over theorems!! Some teachers exclusively do theorems, but this professor covers the formulas but focuses on examples and applications.

You can find the textbook online for this class, don't buy it. However, I did buy the solutions manual because I didn't understand what was going on by his lectures. He's not a good teacher, stops himself a lot and doesn't teach like he knows what he's doing. Does examples super slow and will explain proofs for the entire class and not do any examples. He does have a real passion for math, that much is clear. His grading is somewhat fair, and pretty nice since he doesn't collect homework. 25% weekly quizzes (best 5/9 count and they come straight from the homework), 25% midterm (wasn't hard very straightforward), and 50% final. Since I took this class when we were being sent home because of corona virus, the final was optional and take home. It was hard, not going to sugarcoat it. Luckily didn't matter for me, but if I had to take it on my own and have it count for 50%, that would've been a doozy. But overall not as stressful as 31B for sure, material itself is very straightforward and pretty easy to wrap your head around and practice. Take him if you're good at teaching things to yourself and don't care about attending lectures.

This class was relatively difficult in terms of probability material and definitely expected us to know more than we were taught in the prereqs. Professor Taylor is a really nice guy and cares about his students and was understanding of students struggles with everything going on surrounding the BLM movement. However, his tests are fairly difficult. For the second midterm I did all the homework that was suggested (homework is not actually due for a grade) and studied what he recommended us to look over. Even after putting in all that effort I was wildly unprepared for the exam and it took a lot of time for me to do the exam (we were given 24 hours due to the shift in learning environments as a result of COVID19). The lectures can be a bit boring as they are pretty much directly from the textbook so I preferred to just read the book. The lectures also often went longer than our 50 minute time limit because since it was on zoom there was nothing stopping the lecture from continuing. This made it difficult to stay up to date if you had another class directly after it. The prof also edited the recorded lecture before putting it up on the website so there was often some delay. A super passionate and nice guy, but not the greatest prof in my opinion.

COVID QUARTER
This class was one of the worst classes I have taken at UCLA. Before taking this class, I was actually looking forward to learning the material because it was the first class that really would apply math to the real world. However, Taylor was a terrible professor. He is not understanding at all to the current situation or to people living in in different time zones and in my opinion, wishes to make it harder for everyone. He would purposely speak about logistics before recording the lectures in order to give those students who can't watch the lecture during the normal time period a harder time. Asides from that, the exams had absolutely nothing to do with the homework or lectures that he assigned. He lacked communication with the students on quizzes or exams, leading us to be confused on what we should even study for. I understand that it was his first time teaching online, however he has still not learned how to use technology. Last week, I was left in the waiting room for 30 min before being let into the Zoom lecture.

COVID QUARTER
First off, he went 30 minutes over every lecture. Next, there was no correlation between the lecture material and the quizzes for the first half of the quarter. The lectures were spent on financial topics while the quizzes were entirely probability. This however improved as the quarter progressed. In addition, Taylor made it difficult for students in different time zones to keep up with the course as recorded lectures were not posted until two days later. I felt as though there was a lack of consideration for the current climate. Furthermore, the midterms took me the entire day to do when he said that they're the same exams he would give in person. I do not recommend this class

I feel like this prof does not care about his teaching at all. His slides are the exact same thing as the textbook. So reading the textbook sufficed to do well in his class and going to lecture was a waste of time. Sometimes, he was just too lazy to even copy the textbook and asked us to read the textbook. Yeah, he wrote on his slides saying please go to read the textbook. He used outdated slides that contain a lot of errors and typos that could be fixed easily and I don't know why they were still there after he had taught this class multiple times. The class material on financial math is not hard if you are a math major but it seems that he could not even teach the class materials clearly as I got MORE confused after I attended the lecture than just reading the textbook. Even worse, in the later part of the course, he used handwritten notes instead of slides but he did not even post them... I mean in either way, he just copied verbatim from the textbook which is useless. Regarding email communication, he did not even respond to my email AFTER I have contacted my TA to contact him. I feel like my TA Redmond can do a better job of teaching than my professor.
In short, do NOT take this professor if you want to learn something from the instructor, prepare for self-studying the whole course or being confused by his lectures.

I had him for 32A. I believe it was Dr. Taylor's first full academic quarter teaching, so he seemed nervous at times and did make mistakes during lectures.

That said, I do believe he was a very decent professor. He gave examples in class that were helpful for the homework. The fact that he did not give quizzes is also a plus. Also, his exams were quite fair and mostly computational. I lost points mostly for simple mistakes like using the wrong number and related issues. Unlike the other professors (Chayes and Williams) who were also teaching 32A at the time, Taylor was not one of those professors who goes too conceptual and focuses on the theorems.

His lectures, despite his mistakes at time, were understandable, except for one on curvature, but he fixed this during the next lecture. Also, if you have Ioannis Lagkas NIkolos as your TA, he goes a bit too fast during discussion but he is a good TA.

I did go to Taylor's office hours twice and he was helpful in both cases. In the second time I went, it was during finals week, and he gave me a tip that actually appeared on the final!

Overall, he was not too hard, but do your homework and do a lot of practice problems from the book. Go to discussion, look over your notes, and read the book as well.