This is by far the worst class I have taken so far. The lectures are unclear, and it seems like he doesn't understand the content when teaching. He is not confident when teaching this class and often messes up the answers, making it quite confusing when learning. I'm not saying he can't make mistakes, everyone does...but when it happens for every single problem or step, especially with signs it makes it very confusing when learning the content. The homeworks are so long ranging from 20 to over 30 problems a week. His review sessions for this class for the exams were also not helpful. He put problems on the board and then expected us to complete them. He does have 3 grading schemes which were nice, however, he does not prepare you at all for any of them. My TA taught me more content than he did. I ended up having to use the internet for studying everything since his notes and lectures are not helpful. The way he words his sentences are unclear and it is hard to comprehend what he is trying to say to the class. Do not take this class with Ocal if you can avoid it at all costs. The content is challenging so having a professor who knows the content would be nice.

Worst professor I've had so far. Pray you don't have him, or your grade will suffer, even if you know the content. Literally assigns an insane amount of homework, and tests are needlessly impossible. Also doesn't understand the idea of a curve. He tried to curve only one class's grade and not the other's, and really thought that was a good idea, so he just made the curve less and destroyed everyone's life.

DO NOT IGNORE THE REVIEWS ON HERE!!! This class was so tough. I went to every lecture and just about every ta office hour (his are not helpful), but I still heavily struggled. I felt like I was given very elementary calculus skills in lecture, then handed difficult and long-winded homework problems. I required help for many of the homework questions and my ta Zerrin was super helpful. The midterms and final were no different. There was a whole issue with the first midterm, as he curved one of his classes but not the other??? The class average was around 75 for the first and 60 for the second one and only the first was curved. The final was also very hard and realistically the average will also be probably a 60-70. Again, no curve. This class was not at all helpful for my calculus skills. Avoid Pablo if you can.

If you need the textbook I'll give it to you for $5 text me **********

Pablo is the worst teacher I have ever had. He has no clue what he is talking about during class and cannot describe an integral for the life of him. He constantly makes mistakes, confuses everyone, and just seems like he does not know what he is teaching. NEVER take this class if he is the teacher. Honestly I’m going to stop going to lectures because they are the most unhelpful, confusing aspects to this whole course. I truly do not know how or why he was hired.

This is a professor who spends only half of his class time teaching because the other half is spent on apologizing for his error. Basically, for every two lines he writes on the board, one of them would be wrong. Students have to point it out for him. He effectively makes this class more challenging than it's supposed to be because I have to identify which things he teaches are correct and which are not.
Also, no recording, so you have to attend the 9 am class. It's only the fact that he dresses so badly that convinces me the school isn't keeping his job for his looks or sth. School's just stupid in selecting its professor.

I don't think I would take a class with him again for the sole reason that he did everything from the textbook. He would copy down exactly what the textbook had for each section and solve some of the much easier example questions. The homework questions would be based off the section exercises and were of a higher difficulty. The homework was also based off correctness but no answer scheme was given after so you could never really check whether it was right and what went wrong. All the exams were supposed to be multiple choice with no partial credit (not at all helpful for math). Three days before the final he changed it to open response but each question was still worth one point so partial credit really made no difference. Office hours were also relatively short and more or less reserved for clearing doubts on the homework. His review sessions were just him writing down the names of the topics on the board. Overall, it was not a well-managed class. However, the professor was accommodative in the sense that you could drop one or two midterms and he ended up dropping 3 homeworks as well. Considering that it was his first quarter here, I think he could improve but take him only if the other professors have much worse reviews.

In response to a previous comment, he doesn’t do any problems at all during review sessions. That person must have put their review under the wrong course. Actually, the review sessions were a really disappointing part of 31B with Pablo, because he essentially used the time to outline topics we would need to know on the exam (ex. Ration test. Root test. Taylor series; nothing we wouldn’t already know.) However, he is a really solid lecturer and someone I would definitely recommend. Our textbook is fantastic and he follows it almost exactly. I will say that he basically didn’t teach us Taylor series..l had to learn the entirety of that section on my own. Unfinished lectures were quite a problem for me personally. His grading scheme is generous, but our midterms were multiple choice, no partial-credit, 10 point exams (8 questions). The final was a 24-point partial credit exam- that’s how we should have been tested during midterms. I hope he sticks with that method for future students. Overall solid, and the other 31B profs have
horrible reviews. Go with Pablo!

When they said students at UCLA were often privileged, rich kids I had a thought about it but after reading some of these reviews my eyes have been opened. If you've taken Pablo and consider him to be the worst professor you've ever had, then you should consider yourself lucky, and never take a single step in the Physics or Chemistry department (on the STEM side).

This class was far from perfect and to be honest it's probably far under UCLA standards but it wasn't absurdly difficult or incredibly confusing, at least to the degree of some other reviews. I was in Lecture 1 in the 9 am class and Pablo was fine. I attended lecture in person and it wasn't horrible. Pablo dresses like he picks his outfits from Adam Sandler's closet, blindfolded. But sometimes he is funny and is simple. The way he formats his class is pretty simple and easy to follow and he also teaches DIRECTLY out of the textbook which sometimes works in our favor since the textbook is pretty easy to understand. If you're having trouble understanding lecture, I advise that you read the appropriate textbook section maybe the night before class. Each section is maybe 3-5 pages, sometimes less, and since it's a Math textbook most sections are fairly straightforward. Pablo uploads an entire pdf file of class notes before instruction even begins so that helps sometimes as well. If you're really struggling on the material, try blackpenredpen on YouTube, he teaches Calculus 2 and Integrals excellently and it helped a lot. Some of the hardest homework problems are also directly covered in a YouTube video by him so that helps.

Discussion sections were whatever, TAs like usual at UCLA are very disconnected from the class and overestimate what students know. Mine went through the topics of the week but went over example problems in the most complicated way, but we had an LA as well and they're always down to Earth with us Bruins so that's nice. The good thing is that Discussions are optional minus a selected problem that you have to submit onto Gradescope for "Discussion credit" (you don't even have to get it right).

Exams were something else. Pablo emailed us at midnight, nine hours prior to Midterm 1, talking about what exactly we needed to know and memorize for the exam. Telling hundreds of college students a the night before an exam that they need to memorize tens of identities isn't nice but whatever. The memorization isn't even difficult; if he had told us prior, I really wouldn't have cared, so use this as a lesson and memorize every trig derivative, integral, and equation needed for some problems such as Surface Area about the x-axis. Pablo hosts review sessions that assign extra problems from the textbook, but you don't get the answers so it's a waste of time plus I've heard the room gets so crowded some students had to sit on the floor. Your best bet is to study the more difficult homework problems that are assigned and get a grip on the topic of the section and you should be okay. His exams are pretty confusing but they aren't any harder than the most difficult problems of the textbook sections in my opinion. On his exams, you get a T/F section (this is basically a dice roll, pray that you remember what he says in lecture; stuff like what region is this derivative valid for, etc.), and the rest is short answer.

The people talking about the massive amount of homework must've done it the night before. Pablo assigns anywhere from 8 ish to 20 ish problems per week, and they're due the Friday after, i.e. Week 2 homework is due Friday of Week 3. It's very lenient but don't let yourself fall behind. Doing the appropriate section of homework the day that you learn the section in lecture is probably your best bet. He grades homework by grading 3 random problems for accuracy and the rest on completeness so just try your best and you should be fine since he drops the lowest homework & discussion grade automatically. Some duration into the quarter he'll announce an opportunity to drop another lowest assignment, maybe by filling out an evaluation or course survey.

Pablo is kind of a jerk though. He curved one class simply for doing worse on Midterm 1, and when students complained he threw a fit. I don't know what he expected since he's literally feeding the other lecture simply for being worse but oh well. He also takes forever to respond to emails, at least he has for me, but some students have had different experiences. After the final he sent an email saying the Final Exam average was about 77 and the median final grade in the class was 88 ish so take that as you will. If you're taking his class, good luck, just try your best.

Pablo is an evil human being with wicked intentions. His goal is not to teach you. His goal is to morally degrade you and make it clear that whatever you do in life, you will never succeed and will always end up being a burden to society and a disgrace to the human race. He is unhelpful. Anytime a student asks a question, Pablo gives the most inhumane, vile, degenerate, morally corrupt response known to mankind. His lectures are nothing like the homeworks. The homeworks are nothing like the midterms. And the midterms and the homeworks and the review sessions and the review problems are NOTHING like the final exam. He INTENTIONALLY screws you over. He wants to see you fail. It makes him happy, it brings him JOY to see his students SUFFER in front of his very own eyes when they spent a whole month studying for the final, reviewing questions and homeworks only for him to ask questions WE'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. Pablo hates it when you succeed. He gets ANGRY. It ENRAGES him if you're a happy human being. Nobody with a functioning brain and a will to live in this world should want ANYTHING to do with this guy.

This content of this course isn't easy. Professor Ocal definitely did try to teach well, but sometimes he fell flat. Often, he would make little mistakes in lectures as he was working out problems, and he seemed to be the kind to easily lose his train of thought. However, it was obvious that he was knowledgeable about the course. Nonetheless, I wouldn't rely on his lectures to learn the content. He did easy intro problems in class that did not compare to the very long, difficult homework problems that were assigned weekly.

Our homework (worth 25% of your grade) was mostly graded on completeness but you could've lost about 20-30% of a homework grade for getting a few randomly selected problems wrong, Oh and discussion problems (worth 15% of your grade) were taken from homework problem sets and graded for accuracy. He drops the lowest score from both categories though.

There were three grading schemes, which allowed a saving grace if you bombed a midterm or two. First midterm was fair with an 80% average. Second midterm got a 60% average. He said it was expected and said he wouldn't curve that test. Average grade on the final was around 70%. Problems on the tests took a long time to solve and were sometimes just difficult to solve by the complexity of the numbers he chose. We were never allowed cheat sheets and were expected to memorize: trig derivatives, inverse trig derivatives, hyperbolic inverse trig identities and derivatives, all convergence tests, error bound formulas, surface area/volume integration formulas, etc. Truthfully, I could have easily gotten a whole problem wrong once if I hadn't remembered the derivative of hyperbolic inverse cosine. An index card would've made things so much better.

I wouldn't say he was mean or oblivious like other commenters; he did ask us to tell him if we understood or if we wanted him to slow down during lectures often. He only ever got angry when people cheated on tests, which is understandable.

Overall, take this class with the intention to learn material through external resources and be prepared to memorize a lot. If you study and do all your work, you will probably pass. Go to discussions and ask your T.A. for help with the homework and discussions. Read the book; that helped me understand a lot more. Attempt every problem on the exams; there's decent partial credit. Good luck.