Professor
Tyler Arant
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Different teaching styles work for different students... I personally didn't love the way this professor structured the class, but I think he is actually a good teacher. You have the security of knowing that if you go to all lectures, do all the work, and stay on top of everything you will do well in his class. I prefer a class that is less structured, with less homework, and more of a work independently to learn the material environment. I think I may be the rarity in this sense, so I do think many students would enjoy having him as a professor. Be prepared for a lot of homework, but you likely also won't need to do much extra studying aside from the homework, which he grades on completion. He also had a quiz once a week and I found that the quizzes were not easy, while they do account for a large part of your grade, so be sure to study for those. He is helpful at explaining the material and especially I give him kudos for being so organized. It was very easy to navigate back through his lecture notes to find what you were looking for, which is much appreciated in the remote learning environment.
Fall 2020 - Different teaching styles work for different students... I personally didn't love the way this professor structured the class, but I think he is actually a good teacher. You have the security of knowing that if you go to all lectures, do all the work, and stay on top of everything you will do well in his class. I prefer a class that is less structured, with less homework, and more of a work independently to learn the material environment. I think I may be the rarity in this sense, so I do think many students would enjoy having him as a professor. Be prepared for a lot of homework, but you likely also won't need to do much extra studying aside from the homework, which he grades on completion. He also had a quiz once a week and I found that the quizzes were not easy, while they do account for a large part of your grade, so be sure to study for those. He is helpful at explaining the material and especially I give him kudos for being so organized. It was very easy to navigate back through his lecture notes to find what you were looking for, which is much appreciated in the remote learning environment.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - The class itself I found super dense. It is extremely theoretical and proof based, but if you take the time to memorize the proofs and the application, you will do fine. The professor was extremely helpful and clear, one of the best math professors I've had at UCLA.
Summer 2020 - The class itself I found super dense. It is extremely theoretical and proof based, but if you take the time to memorize the proofs and the application, you will do fine. The professor was extremely helpful and clear, one of the best math professors I've had at UCLA.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - The professor is incredibly talented when it comes to teaching. The best quality teacher I have had so far at UCLA. This class contains some very difficult topics and is arguably the hardest math non honors undergrad class. The professor is just really good at teaching the concepts and I give him a lot of credit for that. Additionally, he records lectures, posts lecture notes, gives good homework questions that help intuition, and gives practice problems for exams. He also posts videos explaining homework hints and exam solutions rather than just posting the PDF like other professors. The midterms were fair but definitely on the harder side. Medians on both midterms around 60%. The average on the final was the same, but I personally think it was an easier test mostly because you get much more time. The exam was definitely fair. Unfortunately with UCLA's math department, there is not a select grade distribution for each class. So your grade at the end of the day is largely influenced by the curve the professor decides. Some professors decide to create a cutoff in some way where top 30% get A's, some top 50%, some 10% etc. This professor's grade distribution is probably on the harder side compared to other professors, but he is a great teacher and would recommend. For reference, I got above the median on both midterms by about 6%, 100% on homework, and 22% above the median on the final, and I got a B. Not complaining, but take this info as you will.
Spring 2024 - The professor is incredibly talented when it comes to teaching. The best quality teacher I have had so far at UCLA. This class contains some very difficult topics and is arguably the hardest math non honors undergrad class. The professor is just really good at teaching the concepts and I give him a lot of credit for that. Additionally, he records lectures, posts lecture notes, gives good homework questions that help intuition, and gives practice problems for exams. He also posts videos explaining homework hints and exam solutions rather than just posting the PDF like other professors. The midterms were fair but definitely on the harder side. Medians on both midterms around 60%. The average on the final was the same, but I personally think it was an easier test mostly because you get much more time. The exam was definitely fair. Unfortunately with UCLA's math department, there is not a select grade distribution for each class. So your grade at the end of the day is largely influenced by the curve the professor decides. Some professors decide to create a cutoff in some way where top 30% get A's, some top 50%, some 10% etc. This professor's grade distribution is probably on the harder side compared to other professors, but he is a great teacher and would recommend. For reference, I got above the median on both midterms by about 6%, 100% on homework, and 22% above the median on the final, and I got a B. Not complaining, but take this info as you will.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2020 - Even though he seems really helpful but most of the time he tries to twist the explanation. His lecture notes are copy-paste from the book so is pointless to attend the lecture unless you have spare time to waste. Hw load is massive so be prepared to do 35-45 problems a week. Exams are pretty much same version of hw problems but he takes so many point off for small mistake even if you have the right answers (imagine you did everything right, exactly like solution manual but you gonna end up with high C) and there are typos in every exam. The only good thing about this class was the super helpful TA and the fact that final exam worths same weight as other exams so it doesn't really effect your grade at end
Summer 2020 - Even though he seems really helpful but most of the time he tries to twist the explanation. His lecture notes are copy-paste from the book so is pointless to attend the lecture unless you have spare time to waste. Hw load is massive so be prepared to do 35-45 problems a week. Exams are pretty much same version of hw problems but he takes so many point off for small mistake even if you have the right answers (imagine you did everything right, exactly like solution manual but you gonna end up with high C) and there are typos in every exam. The only good thing about this class was the super helpful TA and the fact that final exam worths same weight as other exams so it doesn't really effect your grade at end
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - I’ve taken 2 classes now with Professor Arant (142 in Winter 2020 and 135 in Spring 2020), and spent more time in his office hours than in lecture by this point probably, so I feel qualified to review him. Because he’s young, he was also really approachable and easy to ask for help in Office Hours. However, this is where my one issue with this professor comes up. When someone asked him for help with a problem, a good amount of the time he seemed to not want to actually go over the problem very often, and just talk a bunch of math at you, and when he’s done, you’re just kind of pressured into saying “yeah that makes sense” but when you’re actually doing the homework, you still have no idea what to do. In that case you should just ask a friend (if you’re lucky enough to have one) or the TA (if you have one that’s helpful). I think this really just stems from the ever common symptom many really smart math professors here have, where they are so smart that they kind of just leave you in the dust and don’t really slow down in the explanations. Other than that though, his office hours are really helpful and fun simply because he’s easier to approach and talk to than older and more Boomer professors; I know my jokes will actually land with him. If you have strong feelings about this kind of thing, you might want to steer away from this course if he ever teaches it again, but something else I noticed is the fact that there was no MatLAB used at all in this course. Now I don’t really care because I’m a math major just because I like math, I don’t really care that I didn’t learn those skills of doing things like pandemic modeling with a computer simulation or other programming methods. However, I know those definitely are the skills that many applied math majors are expecting to get out of this course. The root of this stems from the fact that Professor Arant is a VERY pure mathematician, studying computability theory and logic stuff, so he approaches modeling from a very theoretical and, well, pure perspective. If you’re like me and don’t really care, then this is a completely fine class to take. If you’re not, then you might wanna steer clear. Other than that, I guess I can just end with the fact that exams are very fair and well written, so that isn’t something to worry about. All in all, it’s very clear that he really does care about his students' learning, and puts a lot of thought into his teaching because of it. Just for that I can definitely recommend this professor in this class.
Winter 2020 - I’ve taken 2 classes now with Professor Arant (142 in Winter 2020 and 135 in Spring 2020), and spent more time in his office hours than in lecture by this point probably, so I feel qualified to review him. Because he’s young, he was also really approachable and easy to ask for help in Office Hours. However, this is where my one issue with this professor comes up. When someone asked him for help with a problem, a good amount of the time he seemed to not want to actually go over the problem very often, and just talk a bunch of math at you, and when he’s done, you’re just kind of pressured into saying “yeah that makes sense” but when you’re actually doing the homework, you still have no idea what to do. In that case you should just ask a friend (if you’re lucky enough to have one) or the TA (if you have one that’s helpful). I think this really just stems from the ever common symptom many really smart math professors here have, where they are so smart that they kind of just leave you in the dust and don’t really slow down in the explanations. Other than that though, his office hours are really helpful and fun simply because he’s easier to approach and talk to than older and more Boomer professors; I know my jokes will actually land with him. If you have strong feelings about this kind of thing, you might want to steer away from this course if he ever teaches it again, but something else I noticed is the fact that there was no MatLAB used at all in this course. Now I don’t really care because I’m a math major just because I like math, I don’t really care that I didn’t learn those skills of doing things like pandemic modeling with a computer simulation or other programming methods. However, I know those definitely are the skills that many applied math majors are expecting to get out of this course. The root of this stems from the fact that Professor Arant is a VERY pure mathematician, studying computability theory and logic stuff, so he approaches modeling from a very theoretical and, well, pure perspective. If you’re like me and don’t really care, then this is a completely fine class to take. If you’re not, then you might wanna steer clear. Other than that, I guess I can just end with the fact that exams are very fair and well written, so that isn’t something to worry about. All in all, it’s very clear that he really does care about his students' learning, and puts a lot of thought into his teaching because of it. Just for that I can definitely recommend this professor in this class.
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