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.

Haoren Xiong was a pretty solid professor and definitely made the class enjoyable and interesting. Homeworks were very reasonable (<= 8 questions) and the tests were fair based on topics covered. Highly recommended!

I enjoyed Xiong a lot more than my past 2 math teachers here. There were two different grading schemes and he used whichever one was higher for your grade. The first one was 15% homework, 20% each midterm, and 45% final. The second one was 15% homework, 35% highest midterm, 55% final. There were 7 homework assignments and he gave us some of the problems for the homework after the lectures so we could start early and practice right after we received the material. The assignments were manageable and usually 8 problems maximum. The first midterm was almost exactly like the practice midterm and pretty easy and the second was similar to the practice but harder with a class average of 66%. The final was pretty difficult and consisted of true/false and free responses. I liked how he did review sessions in class before the exams instead of still giving us new material the lecture before the exam. And the lectures were recorded which was a plus. Overall I thought this class was manageable and would recommend Xiong over another 31B teacher. And if you have the option try for Cecelia as a TA! Literally a human calculator the best TA I've ever had.

Lectures are relatable to the content. All of his midterm/final questions can be traced back to concepts discussed in the HW and lectures. His midterms are similar to the practice midterms, but the 2nd midterm is harder than the first one. You can drop your lowest midterm, it will just add on more weight to the final. The final was tough, but doable if you prepare for it well. He curves the class up at the end. Xiong is the best you're gonna get here for at UCLA for Math 31B so I would recommend taking him.

Honestly, you are just teaching yourself everything. The professor reads and explains very poorly actually he does not explain. The exams he makes are very complicated and include things that he does not even go over, which is very frustrating. When the class does badly, he writes a message to the students about how badly we did. I took him last quarter too for 31 AL and he said "I went through this and suffered now it is your time to suffer" just to show that he does not care.