Not a helpful professor and hw takes a while, but like it's doable

Overall, I think the professor was good. I found that he was very good at explaining the topics and that he is a lenient grader (if you find that a homework was accidentally graded wrong, talk to him and he will give you points back where it is due). However, during lectures, he can get pretty theoretical. He will often prove important conjectures in linear algebra and his proofs can get pretty confusing. I would advise to not worry about these proofs too much and to simply focus on the big picture. My main suggestion to anyone taking the class is to really practice. Don't rely solely on his lectures. Go in the textbook and do the problems in the back.

About the exams, there is a true and false section that is worth a large part of the total score. I feel that this is the hardest part of the exam. While some of these questions are trivial, some of them require a deep conceptual understanding. If you run into a tricky true and false, try to make up your own matrices and see what happens (This has greatly helped on both the midterm and the final).

This class was rough but somehow I ended with an A-. I attended every lecture even though most of the time I was pretty lost. As an example / step-by-step learner the theoretical nature of this class was not the best for me. I bombed the midterm after relying on the lectures alone, however, I learned for the midterm how to study better. The key to this class for me was the lecture notes provided by the professor. I would suggest going to lecture just to listen and then to take notes later based on the lecture notes in the files. Utilize the practice midterm/final for they were similar to the exams. All in all you're going to be required to self study but this class is definitely doable with some time put in.

Grading scheme:
40% Homework (4x10% each - none dropped)
25% Midterm + 35% final
OR 60% final (dropped midterm)

This class was a real wakeup call. Some people say 32B is the hardest lower division math course, some say it was 33A, taking both in the same quarter I can say that affirmatively my experience with 33A was FAR worse than 32B. Some people are saying to skip lecture and just rely on the book: To that I disagree because honestly the book is not that great of a resource, and isn't that good at explaining things either. I would honestly OPT OUT of the book because you never even use it in the class. For people who want to rely on the recorded lectures, about half of his lectures had a microphone or camera issue, making them unwatchable. Honestly though, if you just looked at his notes you would be fine, because in lectures he would talk really fast while you were still writing and use a lot of theoretical math which would basically confuse you in two ways, with no time to process. I wouldn't suggest going to his office hours if you are totally confused either, because he explains things in the same manner, and I know it wasn't his intention, but I often left those more confused. DO GO if you have like a clarification issue or something because he is helpful if you have some grasp of the concept, as long as you explain it with a strong understanding and an anticipation of the answer, otherwise he won't really get what you are asking.
Some pros: There are only 4 homework assignments, which together are 40% of your grade which is HUGE, so don't skip out on those. Definitely suggest working with other people to check answers and stuff, he posts it pretty early and you can work through it through the two weeks. The graders for these are honestly pretty harsh imo, so it helps to have someone check the little things with, because if not you lose a lot of points.
There is only one midterm! For some, that may be a blessing, for me, partially due to the timing of it, I absolutely BOMBED it like legitimate failed it. It is really easy to get caught up in all the concepts when the explanation doesn't make sense, so again I cannot emphasize enough to get outside sources to help your studying. Luckily, he made a change in the scheme my quarter that if you did well enough in the final, it would overtake the weight of the midterm as well, thus your final score would be worth 60% of your grade, which I was able to salvage through with. USE PIAZZA or email, because Professor Tongyou responds EXTREMELY FAST. For midterm and final, honestly I suggest doing the homework again, the practices, (KEEP IN MIND unlike other classes, the final and midterm ARE NOT duplicates with differing numbers, they're completely different) and any outside work you can get, ESPECIALLY THE TRUE AND FALSE. They will get you for sure if you don't understand the concepts.
This is not the worst class in the world. You will manage with the workload and if you put time outside of class to get it. Good luck to you all!

overall i liked this class! yang is a very nice professor and responds so fast. i won’t lie and say there wasn’t a decent amount of studying involved but that’s only because i never went to lectures (i could never wake up). lectures were bruincasted but i mainly relied on the lecture notes posted after every class, which were concise and clear. they gave thorough examples and helped a lot. this quarter, if you did better on the final than the midterm, then he let the final replace your midterm grade. also, the final was nearly a copy paste of the concepts mentioned in the practice exam so if you understand and do the homeworks and practice exams, you’ll be completely fine!

HELP! Math 33a is notoriously known for being a relatively nice lower div math class at ucla, HOWEVER THIS IS NOT THE CASE with Tongou. While he seems like a sweet person, you can tell this is his first year teaching. As a math major with only 33a being the last lower div math class (and having previously learned half the content in this class from 33B), I unfortunately still had no clue what was going on in this class. He is a very theoretical teacher, who focuses more on definitions and propositions rather than how to compute (especially when it comes to examples). While the homework does provide a good cushion in his grading scheme (40%), he only has one midterm where the 5 true or false question were worth 25% of the midterm grade alone!!!! Additionally, after many lectures, he sends out emails to his students saying that he messed up the in person notes and that we need to fix them in our notes. Tongou, when lecturing, often will give a definition, and then realize that he forgot to define certain terms in the original definition, backtracking the class and making it extremely confusing to follow along (not to mention that he writes and talks extremely fast so trying to get everything down during lecture is very difficult). If you find yourself enrolled in his class, UNENROLL, but if you're stuck like I was, all you need to do is read the textbook, as this man does not have the imagination or teaching abilities to stray from it.

yang is a very precise lecturer and his grading scheme is very fair (40% hw 25% midterm 35% final,, drop 1 hw). the workload is very manageable, with only 4 assignments the whole quarter and they help tremendously on the exams.

Respectfully Yang is not the best professor to say the least, try to avoid taking 33A with him at all costs. The exams are not that bad but there is only one midterm which screwed a lot of people over. I had a great time teaching myself linear algebra through Khan Academy though. He speaks in corollaries, propositions, and definitions. Could have really used some more example-based learning and an explanation of what things mean in 3D terms rather than just stating definitions and moving on. I feel like I didn't learn anything and rather just memorized his lectured notes.