nice person, below average teacher for me

Great guy, terrible teacher.

Oleg is the best STEM professor I have had at UCLA. He is really funny and a really great lecturer, especially if you like math and physics. He loves to talk about how you should learn and think, and the beauty of mathematics, and how powerful math is to apply to the world. He is very often funny, and takes care to make sure students are following his lectures (but not in a way that slows the lecture down). He really just loves math so much, and we love him too. His tests (during covid) were long but fairly easy, and the homeworks were quite long as well. My only grievance is that he made it sound like there would be a pretty nice curve for the class, but the curve was only about 1/3 of a letter grade as far as I can tell. I'll miss him.

Math 32B with Oleg happened to be one of my favorite classes I've taken at ucla (it might be because I only took this class over summer session so more time to study but still a great course).
I had him for 2 hour lectures, and he would give us the break and most of the lectures were engaging and interesting. The material is really hard so Oleg would spend a lot more time covering the more difficult parts.

Really, in order to keep up, read the textbook before class. you'll understand what's going and then learn more in class why things are happening. Takes up a good amount of time but it'd probably be harder trying to memorize everything instead of actually understanding the material.

His office hours are really helpful, especially if you have a homework question or a question with something from lecture.

He cracks the lamest Dad jokes, but theyre so bad theyre funny and it lightens up the mood during class.

The other reviews say his accent is bad, but honestly it's a Russian accent that isn't even too profound: you can understand what he's saying.

Yeah, most of the material was learned with the book, but the professor helped me understand even more on what's going on.

I was skeptical of taking him for 32B because of the previous reviews, but I figured since they're old, he might have new methods of teaching. Though he had a few interesting blurbs about math history, I realized that all the reviews had been true. Lectures were rather erratic - one day he questioned whether we knew how to add vectors, and another day, he told us that we were all electrical engineers and should be able to understand this when the second midterm scores came out low. He tended to be behind on lectures and had to do a three hour review session (which was really a three hour lecture). Final seemed to have little to none connection to what was discussed. Would not recommend.

His lectures are very straight-forward and you know exactly what you are covering. The best way to study for his tests is to go over the examples and derivations from from class and the homework. He will use the same problems or similar from what you have already covered. He does not try to trick you, he just wants to make sure you understand the information. During his lectures, if something does not click he will happily go over it again for you. He is very nice and approachable.