I received an A in the class, but not thanks to Sanchez Ocal. On youtube, there is a man named Agus Soenjaya who recorded his math 31b lectures and posted them. I watched his lectures on double speed instead of attending Mr. Sanchez Ocal's and I got an A. Pablo's lectures are completely useless, his homework is incredibly long, challenging, and is graded for accuracy; his tests I thought were difficult except for the first midterm, which was fair. Overall, if you enroll in this class I recommend not going to lecture and learning from either Professor Leonard, Agus Soenjaya on youtube, or some other outside source. Good luck.

THIS WAS THE WORST CLASS WITH THE WORST PROFESSOR EVER. do not take this class with pablo at all costs, wait for another professor to teach it. if i had one word to describe pablo, it would be CLUELESS. he can't solve basic problems and adequately answer students' questions. i had a tutor with a phd in math help me throughout this entire course, and even he said that the questions pablo would assign were completely unreasonable. i spent over 25 hours a week studying for this class and i was still barely able to get my well deserved A.

midterm 1: probably the easiest test out of all of them, but still had pretty low averages. initially he only wanted to curve the midterm for lecture 2, but after lecture 1 found out, they had to fight and argue with him in order to have him fairly curve everyones' midterm.

midterm 2: AWFUL. literally a 60% average and he refused to curve because he was mad about the whole curving situation from midterm 1. definitely way harder than any of the content he went over in class or assigned for homework.

final: probably even worse than midterm 2. such hard and long computations, and it included concepts we didn't even cover in class. mostly focuses on the content after midterm 2, but still has a few questions from midterm 1 and 2. good luck with this one, he provides no guidance or help whatsoever.

cherry on top: he lied and told us he was sick 2 days before the first midterm and that he had to cancel lecture, office hours, and the review session that many students were dependent on. come to find out, he was doing a conference at UCSD that day. extremely unprofessional and i honestly don't know why ucla is keeping him around. he's a bad name for the math department and the school as a whole.

hopefully this convinced you not to take this class, and if it didn't all i can say is good luck and you will struggle a lot :)

This man is probably the worst professor you can take for this class. He cannot teach for the life of him, often just reading the textbook like it's storytime and doing the most basic problems. The only way I can even think to explain his midterms and final are like only being taught that 1+1 is 2 and then being given problems about integration by volumes of rotation. If you have any other professor that you can take PLEASE do it and spare yourself from crying everyday over this class.

Pablo isn't THAT bad as everyone says he is. Going in, I got a B in 31A and didn't take calc BC in high school and still managed to get an A- in this class. The grading scheme is an absolute godsend which saves everyone and he drops 2-3 discussion and homework's and discussion which is an absolute godsend because that homework is graded on accuracy which is annoying as fuck. The homework is doable, only 10 problems due every 2 weeks but he will take points off for a wrong answer/ work. The midterms and final are fair in my opinion but that true false is SO HARD and missing 1 is literally -3 points, (for the final it was only -1 point) so if you want to do well on the midterms you have to get all of the true/ false correct. He posts practice midterms which are SO MUCH harder than the actual midterm. I never knew how to do any of the problems and still ended up doing fine on the midterms but the formatting sucks because there's only 5 problems (4 free response and 1 section of true/ false) so if you miss one you literally go down per letter grade. He also gives a lot of partial credit for problems so that really helped me when I didn't know how to do the problems

The final was a story of its own. He didn't print enough exams for the class and took 45 minutes to print them so 2/3 of the class had a 45 minute head start on the final than everyone else BUT that actually worked in my favor because he ended up curving it (he gave and additional 1 point for each true/ false you got correct) and Pablo never curves, but this was just an extreme circumstance so don't bank on any curve because he does not curve. Everyone says the final is so much harder than the midterms, but the final itself was not that bad. It was all multiple choice except for writing the actual answer with 1 or 2 fill in the blank questions and 2 select all that apply questions. I guessed on so many of the questions and got them right. He posts a practice final which is the same format as the final so make sure you really study that if you want to do well. I didn't do that and regret it

Overall this class is so doable because you can bomb both midterms and still get an A.

Doesn't teach and doesn't care. What a horrible professor

What a horrible dreadful man. Don’t trust him. Pablo if you’re reading this, I know what you did.

Don't take a class with this professor, period.

Worst professor I’ve ever had. It’s so clear he has no idea what he’s talking about and he basically teaches us nothing. He then proceeds to assign the hardest homework problems graded solely for accuracy, which is kind of hard to do considering that you’ve learned nothing from his lectures. He then gives you midterms with averages of 60% and 50%, but doesn’t think this is worth a curve. His final is something as hard as the worst upper div I have ever taken and even then, they still let us use cheat sheets. Honestly, how hard could it be to give us a notecard and let us write. DO NOT take him under any circumstances, unless you want to make your life hell. I hope for the life of us he reads these reviews and takes at least some part of what his students are saying into consideration. I do not know how he got hired and I hope the department takes a closer look at his class soon and realizes he’s not fit to be a professor.

all the reviews should basically give u an idea. i hesitantly took the class even after seeing his bruinwalk reviews, because it was required for my major and he was the only available professor. however, he is SUCH A BAD PROFESSOR that i literally wish i just skipped the class and took it next quarter instead, even if it put me "behind". yes, math 31b is gonna be hard, but honestly, the class shouldn't be as hard as he made it. i did all my studying outside the class (watching the entirety of Prof Leonard's Calc 2 playlist, which was hours and hours), and the tests were still difficult. it was frustrating how i genuinely know the material through my own studying but i can't prove myself on the tests because of how they are the weirdest/hardest examples from the textbooks. overall, this class simply didn't have to be this way, so i would stay away if possible

I went to lecture for the first few weeks, but it turned out to just be Pablo reading the textbook and then confusing everyone with his constant tangents and incessant mistakes. He blows off questions for the most part or will continue to confuse people. Once, he was unable to trace back his steps for a basic product rule/chain rule derivative. The quality of his Zoom lectures is horrible and the board is illegible (it's only slightly more legible in person), but he does not care and will ignore those comments, too. His homework problems and practice tests were way harder than both midterms, but nowhere near good enough to prepare for the difficulty of the final. He did not feel that a 60% average on the second midterm was something that should be curved. His review sessions were awful and demonstrated just how little his LA's know. I would hold off on taking this class if you can (I only took it because 2 of my classes for this quarter were dependent on it). All in all, Pablo is laughably bad at teaching and is not a good representative of UCLA.