Keranen is an amazing professor. He cares about his students' learning and makes his lectures interesting for them. His tests are fair. His grading and format for assignments is fair. Very good professor and makes 30B easy to learn.

Jukka quotes:

“I love Lego. I have always loved Lego. And I will love Lego till the day I die.”

“Folks, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve got you! You’re safe now. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“That’s just a quick preview. If you don’t understand, relax. You’re stressing me out.”

“Folks, this would be the time. This would be the time to put down your drinks and put out your cigarettes and focus.”

“Practice midterms? Have you met me? You’ll have so many practice midterms you won’t know what to do with them.”

“Look. Let’s talk for a second. I feel like we never talk anymore these days.”

“Folks, have you ever been in the real world? It sucks out there! I hate the real world.”

“When you don’t do those pre-class activities sincerely, when you just plow through them, you hurt me on the inside.”

“Are you seriously playing solitaire? Come on man. Really?”

“Last time we introduced the two most important concepts of human civilization: eigenvectors and eigenvalues.”

“Equations text you in the middle of the night! They want to be your pal so badly!”

“And by the way, if you think that I’m sweating out of my gloves, you’re absolutely correct. It’s horrifying.”

If you have to take 30B, take Jukka. Although he assigns a lot of work, I found that his active learning activities helped me engage with the class material. Jukka gives weekly quizzes but you get two attempts. He goes over the questions and answers the day it is due. It is very clear that he cares about his students and is very passionate about his job. He held many review sessions before the midterm and the final, which was basically going over which types of questions would be on the tests. He offers many extra credit opportunities. Overall, this has been my favorite professor so far at UCLA!!

If you are in the Life Science 30 series, taking Jukka is a must. He is probably the most fun, engaging, and interesting professor I have had at UCLA, and college in general (I went to FSU too). Jukka really cares about the student's success, as he posts his near daily office hours meetings, lectures, and related course materials. Every night, you could expect an email from Jukka detailing the roadmap for the week and upcoming assignments that must be completed. He has two separate grading schemes, of which the one that is chosen is the one that will give you the highest grade in the class. Now, there is a lot of work to do in his class, as every week you can expect three post class activities, post class reflections, pre-class activities, and pre-class reflections, followed with a weekly homework that is fairly time consuming, and a lab that involves coding. If you take the time to complete these, which are tedious (even Jukka says this), it will help you absorb the materials even better, making the midterm and final much more manageable. Additionally, 5 minutes before our final exam, Jukka walks in the room, states that this will be a walk in the park and that we should thank him, and proceeds to leave. Although it wasn't, I still appreciated the reassurance. Overall, take Jukka, he's the best.

TAKE THIS CLASS WITH JUKKA KERANEN!!!

I took 30B with Steve Bennoun, and let me just say...30B was really difficult! This review is written on behalf of my experience with him, but by comparing my friends' experiences with jukka keranen, this man is an actual angel in disguise.

In regards to 30B, I do appreciate the TAs and lab sections but I have to be brutally honest, they are not helpful when so many students need help. Sometimes TAs and LAs are hyper-fixated on one student and by the time they get to you, they don't even really help. I can't really truly say that was the case for my lab section, only the fact that sometimes it takes a while for them to come to you. As a result, I feel that lab sections are truly not the most helpful option but they are a better resource than nothing. I don't really see coding too much in my career, but I will say that it is really cool to say that I have coding experience. I never in a million years would have EVER thought I would have to code, but here I am! I am not completely sad about it, but I would prefer it to be more like other normal discussion sections because coding in itself is insanely hard, but the material in class is SO MUCH HARDER.

There are SO many questions I have in class that I have to type on a new document because my professor (bennoun) couldn't answer all of them in the given time. Then, I have to "magically" somehow create some time in the midst of all my other responsibilities and come to office hours or even pray that a PLF session or PSS section works with my schedule (this quarter it ABSOLUTELY did not and was an absolute nightmare, I struggled so so much). In addition, The labs..The problem solving sessions... little to not helpful at all. There are too many students who need help and these TAs cannot handle all of the concerns or questions to the best of their abilities. I know whole-heartedly that many of these TAs understand the material conceptually, but when it comes to TEACHING other students, it really takes a single, one-on-one type of meeting for a student to be successful in this course with these sessions. There needs to be even more TAs available PER session. That way, one student is not stuck having to figure out the material with their hand in the air for more than 30 minutes. At this time, the student may get so frustrated, leave and never come back and deem it useless. I think these resources have amazing potential but they need to be reconstructed better, truly. Yes it is cool to see the connections for what we are learning in labs, but it is not helpful for exams AT ALL. If our final exams are going to be based on comprehension of what we are learning, then these "labs" should be tailored to that.

30B can be a very enjoyable and interesting course if these structural issues can be fixed, so that you don't have students overwhelmed and struggling with these exams. I have really bad test anxiety and it is so frustrating that it takes a mountain of students to complain before accommodations are considered (not to talk of the IMMENSE amount of material we needed to somehow memorize for the final). The material conceptually is not hard, but I have to be honest, it is TOO MUCH. It is way too much material covered in a short amount of time, and we as students are not even aware of what exactly it is that we need to study for specifically. There is no guide, nothing. “Figure it out yourself”, or magically “create time” to seek answers or help for topics on the exam that we BRIEFLY or even NEVER went over in lecture. Truly, it is not impossible to do well in this course, but the instructors have to realize that this is not the ONLY course that students have to worry about. The time it takes to master these concepts does not come naturally to everyone, especially those students that did not have a good foundational background in AP Calculus. I took AP Calculus, and man did I still struggle not because the material was hard to understand conceptually, but because of the poor way the lectures are worded, the poor way the classes are structured, and the immense amount of material we basically memorize for the exam. It's really sad because I can only imagine just how many students were overwhelmed by this. For me personally, the stress was so bad that I needed to schedule a CAPS appointment. Please consider doing something next quarter and even for many years after this year.

The labs..The problem solving sessions... little to not helpful at all. There are too many students who need help and these TAs cannot handle all of the concerns or questions to the best of their abilities. I know whole-heartedly that many of these TAs understand the material conceptually, but when it comes to TEACHING other students, it really takes a single, one-on-one type of meeting for a student to be successful in this course with these sessions. There needs to be even more TAs available PER session. That way, one student is not stuck having to figure out the material with their hand in the air for more than 30 minutes. At this time, the student may get so frustrated, leave and never come back and deem it useless. I think these resources have amazing potential but they need to be reconstructed better, truly.

Jukka is THE GOAT HOLY MOLY he is legit the best professor I ever had. The 30 series for math is very weird because it touches on several topics that are somehow related to each other rather than focusing on one topic like calculus or linear algebra does. 30B in particular can be tricky without prior knowledge of linear algebra. The course is half a continuation of the concepts learned in 30A, and then the other half is linear algebra. However, Jukka is an inccredible professor. Winter quarter for me was difficult for a multitude of personal reasons and I often did not have the motivation to go to my classes, but Jukka always made his lectures feel worthwhile. I would miss a couple of weeks, but immediately catch up after attending a single lecture. I of course recommend going to each of his lectures, but in case you fall behind, Jukka makes it very easy to catch up. I wound up learning a lot in this class and doing well on his tests, despite how rough my winter quarter was. When he lectures, he speaks with a lot of enthusiasm that can honetsly convince anybody to care about the course material. Dude has to be one of the most charismatic people I have ever seen. 1000% recommend taking this class with Jukka (30 series is also easier than calculus, guaranteed)

If you’re debating whether to take Bennoun or Jukka, without a doubt choose Jukka. Every other student I know who chooses Bennoun over Jukka always regrets it. Bennoun is a lot more boring and keeps the same tone throughout lectures, while professor Jukka is super funny, super engaging, and presents the energy to students that makes them want to show up to class. Highly recommend this class, and he hosts office hours nearly every day. Funniest and most engaging professor I’ve had at UCLA yet. I didn’t do so hot on the midterm but I got a B+ on the final, this was because of a mental experience at the time. Anyone can get an A- in this class with effort minimum

I took LS30A during my summer quarter and waited to take the LS30B until my winter quarter. At the beginning of the class, I was very nervous because I was not able to recall all the information that I had learned in LS30A, but since the first day, Professor Jukka was helpful and understanding by providing practice problems that would refresh my memory in case you could not remember all the information in LS30A. I believe that the reason I enjoyed this class so much despite it being a math class was due to Jukka's teaching style, he always found a way to make the topics easy to understand. At the beginning of every lecture, he would set time aside to revive the information from the lecture before, this way making it easier to understand the connection between each lecture. Overall he is a great professor and if you have to take this class, you better try to take it with him. His midterms and Finals are challenging but fair, there is nothing in the final that he did not go over in greater detail, besides he often hosts review sessions before the midterm and final to make sure that all his students are on track to get an A. It is clear by the way that he teaches that he actually cares about the education of his students and wants us to succeed

No because the way before I took this class I thought the reviews were weirdly obsessed with Jukka but GUYS I'm telling you he's such a good professor. This class is so so manageable to get an A in, he explains everything so well and so thoroughly that the only way you don't get one is if you slack off (like me..). Anyways! I will say there is a lot of busy work and you probably will forget an assignment here and there because of how much there is—3 classes a week, and per class, there's a pre-class activity, pre-class reflection, and post-class reflection. Luckily each one is worth so little of your grade and you can have late submissions. If there's one thing I can recommend DO THE PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES. It's not like LS 7 where the readings and Achieve is so annoying—no these are actually pretty short and so so helpful, so take the time to do it. It makes lecture so much easier. Each lecture was only 50 minutes for us but somehow he covered a substantial amount of material each class without it ever feeling like too much or overwhelming. I also sobbed in a bush for 3 hours after the final because I studied the entire quarter's worth of material the week before finals and didn't have enough time to review everything, but I still somehow ended up with an A- because he grades super generously. Plus the capstone project is literally worth free points it's so easy. I also loved my TA Lucy she was the best. This class is a slay and you should take it with Jukka 100%

If you are a life science student stuck in the 30 series, take Jukka's class. He is the best. The class is challenging, but he provides excellent lecture materials and is engaging (and often funny). His assignments and homework are clearly related to the topics we're learning and are excellent prep for exams. He also has many extra office hours, where he goes over homework problems and weekly quiz answers, and review sessions for the midterm and the final. He was one of my best teachers at this school.