I really don’t like him. He posts slides and videos (we use zoom this quarter) way later than I needed. Like he posted Wednesday’s lecture on the next Monday, which is hard for people in different time zone to catch up. That’s why I feel he’s not devoted in teaching. He talked lots of unrelated things in class as well, which made a 50min lecture 80 mins

This is my first time writing a review for a professor because I feel like I need to warn other students before taking a class with Taylor and not making the same mistake like I did! Since this is my last quarter in UCLA, I have no other choice but to take this class with him.

His lecture is really boring because he basically just COPY AND PASTE the exact same thing from the textbook and you’ll do just fine if you don’t attend the lecture, so I think there’s no point on taking this class with him and I feel like I can just read everything by myself without him rereading things that are already in the textbook.

Moreover, his exams are TOUGH! and some parts are not related to the materials (the random walk material that are always there on every exams). He’s a tough grader and one thing that I dislike the most is the fact that he talks too much and always uses his time more than he needed (he can go over the lecture for more than an hour!)

I feel like I didn’t learn anything from him and this class is supposed to help you to get a better understanding about the stock market but it was the worst and useless class that I’ve ever taken in UCLA!

please do yourself a favor by not taking this class with Taylor!

His lectures via zoom were mostly reiteration of the textbook. I only watched only first two weeks of lectures, which talks about most of math content (the hard part) would be during the quarter, and read the textbook on my own, which I think is more effective than watching his lecture. However, one good thing is his exams are fair game if you did all the homework problems (optional) he assigned. I don't know if it is because of the online instruction, the grade inflation is quite big compared to other upper level math class; the average of the midterms and the final are around 88-90%. I got a 92% overall and somehow received a A-, so I'm guessing maybe you have to get 94% or more if you really want to get an A.

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.

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

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.

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.