Personally, I found the professor to be a lot better than the reviews made him out to be; Hood makes himself available to his students and genuinely cares about our learning. I do agree that his lectures are hard to follow, but he accounts for that by taking the time to address any concerns in his office after class or fielding questions on Campuswire. As for the exams, they are harder than the homework and practice exams, and aren't written to be finished in 50 minutes, but he is aware of this and takes that into consideration with the curving. Like others have said, I would advise that you go to his review sessions because what he goes over will better reflect what will appear on the midterms and final. If you have him as a professor, know that you will probably need to put in some extra work, but he definitely isn't someone you need to avoid.

A lot of people are flaming this man and honestly I don't super know why? Like yes he can be a bit disorganized, and he makes dumb mistakes like 1+1=3 or derivative of sine is sine. But he truly is a nice man and wants everyone to do well. For example, though there are often errors in answer keys, as soon as someone points it out he immediately corrects it and thanks the student. He promptly responds to concerns on campuswire as well. Grading scheme is either 10% HW, 25% M1, 25% M2, 40% final or 10% HW, 30% best midterm, 60% final; he chooses the better of the two as your final grade. So clearly this man wants you to succeed. And this quarter 63.4% had an A- or better, so grading is pretty light. Honestly, I think he graded things to be pretty easy (on the first midterm, an 80%+ was a flat A). So in general I feel like this an is definitely on your side, loves math, and pretty chill. Homework was a bit hard because he would assign homework on Friday that would have material from the lectures that following M, W, and F, and it would be due that Friday, which obviously is problematic. But homework I didn't find all that bad, though it might be useful to collaborate with some peers. I think the tests were certainly quite fair too, as the practice tests were very similar. Like I didn't really think there were ever curveballs on tests -- if you think you genuinely know a concept, you will be fine on the test. Anyway basically overall very nice guy, approachable, a bit eccentric and would go on tangents about bureaucracy and stuff (he went to UC Berkeley) but I don't have any actual complaints.

I don't believe the rating for this class is accurate (3.3 at the time of writing this) because honestly, it's not that bad. Although the content in this class is difficult at times, earning a high grade is absolutely doable. I have broken down my review below:

Exams: The exams for this class are tough, don't get me wrong. There are 2 midterms and a final that make up 90% of your grade. You will need to study hard for these exams, but trust me, you'll do fine, here's why. Prof Chatham releases practice exams a week or so prior to the actual exam that are *very* similar to the real thing. If you can master everything on the practice exam then you will do just fine come judgment day. Most of the prompts on the exams are things you have already seen either on past HW assignments or in the practice, so don't be worried about any surprises. The grading for these exams is very lenient. The grade boundaries are forgiving and Chatham awards partial credit and error follow-through points.

Homework: There is 1 HW assignment due every week. These take about 2 hours to complete and are graded mostly on completion with very few based on accuracy. I highly recommend going to office hours if you get stuck.

Lectures: Prof Chatham is not a good lecturer, he goes fast, is often unclear, and writes in chalk that is often hard to read from afar. However, he does post his lecture notes prior to the lecture which definitely come in clutch. I would normally read and take notes on his lecture notes prior to the actual lecture so that I can just sit through the lecture and try my best to absorb everything he is saying.

Tips: GO TO OFFICE HOURS. Prof Chatham's OH are super helpful and are the reason I was able to do well in this class. He usually works through tough HW problems and practice exams during this time. I would usually go to OH even if I didn't have any questions to ask because I would almost always walk out having learned something useful. My second tip is to use your resources. The textbook for this class is not required. however, is pretty helpful. I recommend reading the textbook and all its explanations and going through the examples because they for sure help develop a strong intuition of the content. I know this sounds like a silly monotonous task, but trust me, it's worth it. Also, Khan academy and the Organic Chemistry Tutor on youtube are handy. My last tip is to give Chatham a chance. When I first started this class I heard a lot of people complaining about Chatham and saying negative things about him, but if you come prepared to the lectures and show up to OH, you will come to appreciate Chatham a lot more and actually learn something in the process.

Professor Chatham is a very friendly person, and he always sounds very animated and excited in his lectures. He is not the best at explaining topics, but that is also because math 32A is quite abstract compared to single variable calculus/AP Calc. Nonetheless, he's a kind guy and you can tell that he's passionate for the subject. He makes miscalculations during lectures and on practice exam keys often though. His exams are quite challenging, but the practice midterms he posts before the exam often contain questions nearly identical to those on the actual test. His final was a killer (for me), and it's best to pay attention to your mistakes and be ready to tackle challenging questions on a topic that may seem simple. Homework is rather light in this class, but he does assign even-numbered questions to which there are no answer keys to. Overall, I am not entirely sure if I would take this class again, but I do indeed like Chatham's personality. He always seems happy.

I took this class in Hood's first quarter teaching at UCLA. His inexperience showed in the first couple weeks of class as he was a bit unclear and disorganized at first, but his lectures improved significantly as the quarter progressed. The two midterms and one final were very similar to (though more difficult than) the practice exams he sent out. Since this was the first quarter back in-person, the math department itself was a mess logistically, so Hood wasn't even given an office or regularly scheduled office hours for several weeks. Despite these bureaucratic delays, I thought he did an amazing job communicating with students on when and where we could find him.

My one major problem with this class, however, was that the homework was very unhelpful and amounted to busy work. Hood didn't really lecture out of the textbook but all the homework was taken from it, which often resulted in us having to do many problems that weren't very relevant to the course. Homework was also graded by some arbitrary mix of completion and accuracy, which I guess is a department-wide thing but seems really stupid to me, as it essentially became a take-home open-book open-note open-Internet quiz where only an arbitrary half of the questions actually count.

Hood was very unclear in his lectures so it's hard to understand the concepts and it's very boring, to be honest. I basically self-studied throughout the whole quarter. He gave practice midterms and finals beforehand, but his tests weren't hard in terms of the concept, it's the calculations that screw people up. He didn't give us enough time to finish the tests and sometimes it's really hard to simplify the answers. Also, he said he would curve the tests, but he didn't at all. I wouldn't take this class again with this professor.

Professor Chatham was a new professor to UCLA this quarter, and in the first few lectures it definitely showed. Lectures were full of mistakes and very sloppy in general. However, the professor was genuinely trying his best and lectures were much better by the end of the quarter. In terms of grades, partial credit on tests was generous but you definitely have to put in some elbow grease to get an A. I'd say tests were challenging but definitely did not demand anything completely unreasonable.

1. 10% homework + 30% best midterm grade + 60% final exam
2. 10% homework + 25% Midterm 1 + 25% Midterm 2 + 40% final exam

One extra credit assignment was given worth one hw assignment in the 10% homework category.

Weekly hw assignments due Friday with approximately 30 math problems.

The professor gave us practice midterms/final that were structured basically the same as the actual midterms/final along with very similar questions. The solutions to the practice midterms/final were often filled with mistakes though.

The first midterm was at the end of week 3 and the second was during week 7.

Tests are graded by the TAs, and they can be harsh if you're unlucky. A lot of the mistakes I made were not thoroughly understanding the midterm solutions and also making simple calculation errors.

I went into this class having already learned the material so I won't speak on the difficulty of it. I personally am indifferent about this professor but I'm not against taking another class taught by him.

Hope this helped!