He seems like a nice guy but a bad lecturer. The way he explains material can be confusing and often it takes the TAs explaining it to better understand. Take another professor if you can. His tests are difficult, but he curves so the average is around a B.

Tests were often much more difficult than the practice materials and you will end up mostly teaching yourself the material as his lecture style isnt very effective. He often jumps from topic to topic not fully explaining their interconnection (especially when it really matters).

This was my first math class at UCLA and I’m glad it was. I had a background of Calc BC, however this class had a few more topics I wasn’t exposed to before, and the topics I did know, were an amplified/more advanced version in this class. Our professor was nice, and gave a manageable workload. everything on the exams was covered in class, so it’s important to understand everything he covers. He did spend time going through proofs we don’t need which was interesting, but I didn’t mind. The structure of the class was very great and the TA’s were very supportive, and always returned our homework with marks on our errors. I regret not spending more time reviewing my homework’s errors and practice exams he posted, but alas passing was still manageable. I recommend!

In my opinion, the professor really had no impact on how I performed in this class. While Xiong is really nice and is always open to answering questions from students, there it ultimately not much to be gained by attending lectures, which you realize after attending a few. The lectures are very proof-heavy, which is great if you're interested in that kind of stuff. However, if you're like me and are only taking this class to fulfill a requirement, it doesn't make sense to know those things. 90% of the content in lectures won't be tested, you only need to know how to do the example problems. Lectures are recorded so I stopped attending lectures 3 weeks in, but I was still able to get an A by using online resources (my lord and savior The Organic Chemistry Tutor) and attending discussions/review sessions. Weekly discussion sections weren't mandatory, but I found them to be extremely helpful. My TA Cecelia was amazing and I definitely owe it to her that I was able to do well in this course. I highly recommend attending discussions, office hours, and review sessions organized by the TAs.

In terms of the workload, this class has one of the lightest workloads ever. There are 7 assignments total, each due a week or two apart. Each one has fewer than 10 questions, and problems are gradually assigned over the course of the week (2 or 3 after each lecture) so it's really easy to space them out and manage your time.

The grading scheme is very test-heavy, which is to be expected from most math courses. However, the midterms were not too bad, especially since Xiong provides practice midterms which are very similar in content and difficulty as the actual midterm. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the final. Though a practice final was provided, the actual final was significantly harder and there were some curveball questions. I recommend doing the practice midterms (time yourself and take them like you would take a real midterm) because they will give you a pretty accurate idea of where you're at.

Honestly, how well you perform in this class is really just based on how good you are at math. You will probably have to teach yourself the entire curriculum, but it was manageable in my experience.

Professor was helpful in-lecture, though he goes through material somewhat quickly. Practice midterms accurately reflect the actual midterms, but the practice final does not accurately reflect the actual final (the actual final is way harder.)

The professor is kind of just there. His lectures are not very helpful. Organic chemistry tutor and other online resources do a far better job at teaching the concepts. I'm sure Professor Xiong is brilliant, but it begs the question, why we are paying to learn from a sub-par instructor when we have free content online that covers the whole course? The professor is not terrible, but not good. Midterms were not bad, but he decided to screw people on the final. He chose more difficult problems that we didn't have as much practice with, and included a practice final that was definitely easier. I'm almost certain that he said that the practice final was going to be harder, and that if we did well on that, we would be set for the final. It was the opposite. There is no value in taking this class with this professor. It seemed like he was just clocking in.

Mr. Xiong is not a very effective lecturer, relying mostly on his notes and students' prior knowledge. His lectures are seldom engaging and I felt more prepared afting reading the textbook than attending his classes. Despite this, his class is structured (in terms of grading scale and homework) relatively well, and I do appreciate his willingness to answer questions and help students. My overall experience with the class has been lukewarm but it is definitely not the worst you could do.

I can tell that the instructor tries to do a good job, but I feel like most lectures were just not worth attending. He often goes off on tangents that are irrelevant and difficult to understand (for example explaining proofs that are not needed in the actual exam or for understanding), invariably making class harder than it is supposed to be. I knew a lot of the first half of class beforehand but attending class just confused me even further; the second part, I had to self-study the entire thing. The professor is available outside class though, I would say.

I felt like his teaching style was very fast and he did not thoroughly go through each aspect of the course. His way of teaching a topic was also much more complicated than the actual topic was, which made it confusing to understand the topic. His midterms reflected the practice midterms pretty closely, which were slightly more difficult and complicated.

This class should be an Eighth Amendment violation. This class is a Biz Econ major's nightmare. If you take this class after reading all of the negative reviews, do not say that you were not warned.

Xiong is to Math 31B what Ebert is to Math 32A. Xiong's exams deviate so much from our practice material that it is mind boggling. Even though he may have barely gone over it, he assesses squeeze theorem, triangle method (Fall 2024 Final), and induction. In my opinion, he is one of the worst lecturers I have had at UCLA. The only people that succeed in this class are those who have nothing better to do than study for Math 31B, and even then, they struggle. I cannot emphasize this enough: If you care about your GPA, stay away from this guy!

What idiot would take this guy twice??? Oh wait, I think I know the answer to that question.