This class is a prime example of UCLA classes that develop trust issues. I honestly do not understand why tests that are given out are so easy, yet come finals there is a gigantic difficulty spike ultimately determining your final grade. This is a word of warning to any one who takes her class: the final will kick your ass. Do not let your guard down with the easy midterms and homework. She is lying to your face when she says as long as you understand the homework and midterms fairly well you get an A because that is for sure not the case. Overall, would've been a better professor if she didn't try to let your guard down. It just goes to show you cannot trust most professors at UCLA.

Professor Sherry Gong is the closest thing to a perfect professor you can ask for. She made a relatively difficult class way easier to understand while not sacrificing the fundamental concepts. She tries very hard to make sure the class really understands what she is teaching by taking questions and never turning down a question because it's "obvious". Her exams are pretty easy but she does spend a considerable amount of effort curating the extra credit problems.

I had to take the final amid a viral pandemic and she sent out so many emails reassuring us that we will do fine through the final and answered the tsunami of emails flooding to her in due time. I don't think I've ever seen a professor work so hard for their students. I've heard horror stories from my other friends taking other professors that made me really appreciate what a great professor I had.

To be frank, although she's a nice person, Professor Gong was not a very good lecturer. She was super confusing and her lectures were all over the place, and with abstract algebra that was pretty much a death sentence given how difficult it is to grasp normally. She went out of her way to help as much as she could in office hours which was nice, but her lectures to the class were so hard to follow that she made a class that should have been decently easy (light workload, straightforward exams) into a class that I and a lot of my friends in the class really struggled to understand and do well in. She also went WAY too fast to follow, and we ended up finishing in like 6 weeks and spent the rest of the time going over stuff from 110B when none of us understood the stuff we were supposed to learn in the actual class we were in. I hate to give her such a bad review because she seems like she's trying really hard and I'm sure with time her lectures will be much more clear and rehearsed, but for now I would recommend choosing another professor if you have the option because unless you're a math genius you'll have a hard time self teaching enough from the book to do well in the class.
Professor Gong (or anyone from the department) if you're reading this, thank you for doing your best, I appreciate your effort and help during the quarter even if it was hard for the class to follow. For the future I would recommend preparing your lectures more thoroughly and making/following lesson plans strictly- I think if you had more clarity in what you were trying to teach us and an organized, structured plan on how to do so you'd be a lot more successful getting your students to understand algebra!

Sherry is the arguably the best professor I have had at UCLA. All quarter she was incredibly helpful and only wanted all her students to learn the material the best that they could. She always asked for input and was incredibly helpful in her office hours. When the coronavirus changed how finals were done, she was incredibly fair and understanding. She is an incredibly good professor and good person. Absolutely take 131A with her.

GONG IS A QUEEN!!!! I took 31B in fall and barely passed so coming into 32A I thought id experience the same trauma. GONG was absolutely amazing, you just have to do the weekly hw and thats basically your midterm. DO GREAT on the midterms (38+/40) and just try your best for the final.

As a professor, Sherry Gong is one of the most understanding instructors I've ever had.
During lecture, although she tends to talk fairly quickly, she always makes sure to stop after a chunk and wait a good amount of time to ask the class if there are any questions, and if there are, she will explain them thoroughly, even to the point where if she felt as if she didn't explain it well enough in class, she would send emails later that day updating the class.
Her midterms were super fair, though not as easy as the previous year had. Our averages for both midterms were around 85%, which are still high, but definitely fair. They are just like the homework and she sends a detailed email a couple days leading up to the exam about what to expect. There were never any surprises.
As for the final exam, although I took this class amid the whole coronavirus pandemic, Sherry Gong handled the whole situation beautifully. She was constantly sending us emails updating us on how we were going to approach the last two lectures and the final, and she was actively searching for ways she could help us prepare, hosting zoom office hours for us. She makes it a priority for her to balance fairness and equity as well as learning. Not only did she make the final exam COLLABORATIVE (which I know many other professors were very adamant against cheating), but she said she was open to emails herself DURING the actual final for those who may not have as many friends in the class, AND she sent out an email regarding a group chat for all of us to discuss the final in, which SHE JOINED HERSELF to clarify some misconceptions about certain problems on the practice final, which was pretty much identical to the actual final.
She obviously cares a lot about her students. In one of her emails regarding collaboration on the final, her reasoning was that "This is because I would like it if, even despite this whole stressful situation, people were still learning, at least a little." That melts my heart.
Also, she definitely reads bruinwalk and the UCLA subreddit. If you're reading this, just know that your entire Winter 2020 class wants to thank you for being so awesome.

Sherry is the sweetest, knowledgeable, and most helpful Math professor at UCLA. Thank you!

Dr Gong is a pretty decent lecturer and really tries to explain her concepts well. She goes over a lot of examples on each topic which helps a lot. However, there have a number of times where she rushes through a concept and doesn't really explain it, especially towards the end of class, which can be quite confusing.
The midterms were pretty easy and straightforward and were fairly similar to the problems in the textbook.

PROS:
- The homework workload is not bad at all
- The homework problems correlate with the lectures very well, so you are not expected to do things that aren't discussed in the lecture
- The midterms were not hard. There might be one section where you are tested on theoretical concepts, but the rest are calculations. You are also given a formula sheet. As long as you do the homework and studied somewhat, you should do fine.
- I heard that the final is much harder than the midterms. Of course, the coronavirus could've changed things a bit, but the final was about the same as the midterm for me.
- During the lecture, she gives you a lot of examples.
- Most importantly, she is a very helpful and nice professor. When the coronavirus thing happened, she sent us dozens of emails telling us what her plans are and what to do to prepare for the final. During the final, she joined our class gc and cleared up any confusion.

CONS:
- Sometimes the lectures can be disorganized. She can be in the middle of a problem and then switch gears to talk about something that should've been covered earlier. This tends to lead to some confusion.
- This is a very calculation-based class and a lot of the lecture covers examples. She is very good at providing examples but sometimes her explanations of concepts can be vague. Her examples help with homework, but reading the summary of the end of sections provides clearer concept explanations.

OVERALL: Take my impressions with a grain of salt given the coronavirus situation, but I definitely recommend Professor Gong and will take her again if possible.

SHERRY I LOVE YOU WITH MY ENTIRE SOUL!
So obviously I took this class in the midst of a global pandemic, so our last week of the class was thrown for a loop, but I'll talk about how beautifully Professor Gong handled that later in this review.
I hated 31B with every fiber of my being, so I was nervous coming into this class. Professor Gong's lectures are so clear and easy to follow - something I've noticed with a lot of math professors is that they are SUPER insanely smart but suck at passing that smartness onto us and explaining how their brains approach the problems. Sherry is literally a genius but she made this class understandable, approachable, and just generally a very level playing ground. I've never liked math before but her lectures broke down multivariable calculus into manageable bites of info that were easy to absorb and easy to link together into a picture that made sense. She made me like math and see the beauty in math. Freaking legend.
Homework is super easy to complete - a very fair number of questions that, if you pay attention in lecture, you should have no problems finishing. Homework is graded partially on accuracy and partially on completion. But they aren't brain-splittingly hard problems so you should be okay.
I do wanna quickly add that my TA was useless. I believe there were 3 TA's in the quarter that I took it. One of the TA's was my previous TA from 31B, who I didn't enjoy very much (Tambe), but I ended up with Thorton and OH MY GOD discussion was such a waste of time. I truly think I lost brain cells but hey I still went every week. Even with a mind-numbing section experience, I still learned well enough from Gong's lectures that I felt okay.
The midterms both were very fair - problems just like the homework ones and examples she does in class. The formula sheets were helpful and the class isn't memorization heavy - you just gotta know your stuff and understand how to apply equations, which Sherry made very easy to understand.
Our final was a fiasco, but Professor Gong was honestly an angel through it all. I was hearing horror stories of math professors making their finals extremely hard to make up for the fact that they were open note and online, but instead of using the pandemic to hurt us and our grades, Professor Gong was accomodating, making the final super fair in terms of questions and offering to help us out with them and giving us the opportunity to collaborate. Yes, the class ended up being easy to get an A in because of this unexpected change, but I still feel like I learned something. I still feel like I really absorbed the material and learned calculus rather than just sitting there, learning it all for the quarter, and then purging my brain of all the math. This is my last math class at UCLA, but I'm so thankful that it was not only a great experience, but also left a good taste in my mouth of mathematics as a whole. Thank you Professor Gong for a great quarter.