Been here for a couple of years and this guy is easily one of the worst professors I've ever had.

I have never in my life taken a course where attendance is mandated and there are punishments for not doing so on your grade, including the threat of not receiving the recorded lectures (it was on zoom). in other words, you can not work/intern (which almost everyone does) during the summer, he even says NO accommodations for internships in the syllabus which I found to be unnecessary. There are polls, clickers, etc to make sure you are there haha.

There are also 3 exams and no alternative grading schemes for a low exam score/missed exam, so If you have an emergency, you are out of luck as missing an exam is worth 23% of your grade. Taken from the syllabus, "No makeups will be given on a different day, unless negotiated at least ONE WEEK in advance, no matter what the reason." So only if you know you'll have an emergency a week in advance is when you'll be able to reschedule an exam haha. He also says in the syllabus "Please do not try to negotiate, make deals, or get me to promise anything in private that is not on the syllabus." Who says please don't negotiate with me or try to make deals but then says only negotiate with me if it is a week in advance. Just sounds incredibly lazy and a weird use of the word negotiate in a school setting, its not a business. Maybe say in cases of DOCUMENTED emergencies we can reschedule a test, some common sense. Giving people an out a week in advance if they just plan it accordingly lets people with other plans outside of the course get their own way rather than accommodating for those with real documented emergency situations, doesn't make sense to me.

This is also a 6 week course, so it is very short, but 20+ questions every week is insane. Most of these questions have very many parts to them and include drawing up many graphs/heavy computations as well so it takes essentially the whole week to complete them. I don't see how he can say that because it is 6 weeks you have to write up 50+ pages of work every week, I get that its condensed but its still insane. He also warns to only take this course and nothing else at the same time (should've noticed this red flag) because I assume he knows you'll be glued to a desk. Also no solutions which makes the experience so much more fun! maybe make a solution set for all future 134 courses? it would help the students solidify the HW material AFTER they have already turned it in and will only be reviewing it at that point. I would complete the HW and did not know if I was correct at all since the HW was usually graded after the correlated exam was completed, so I essentially went in blind most of the time. I get that we can go to office hours but he is not reviewing the 50+ pages of work to ensure it is correct. so awesome

His lecturing is okay, but to complete the HW you'll have to read the textbook regardless or seek other sources as much of the HW can't be completed with just the lectures, but you'll still have to sit through the meeting and make sure there aren't any polls to answer.

You'll get that he tries to come off as a no BS guy but he isn't a very good one. you can be strict with students (as every professor should be) but also offer an alternative grading scheme for missed exams/one poor performance and a regular amount of HW problems that include solutions to verify correctness of all the work. At the end of the day, he offered a slightly altered grading scheme for the course where a missed or poor performance on an exam would be worth around half of the usual 23% per exam (still crazy to me but whatever). Not sure why he did this, maybe lots of students did poorly/complained or just trying to score points with students but this could've just been applied to the syllabus from the start. I imagine this is how most of his classes go: he pulls out this grading scheme out of thin air and (slightly) saves the day. The class size by end of the course was around half or less than half of the original size but why would anyone want to leave this wonderful course?

I would just take it during the year as I believe he only teaches during the summer and works at a different school during the year. There are other amazing 134 instructors that offer some leeway, attendance freedom, and regular sized HW assignments which are all conducive to a good learning experience. I did not get this from this class unfortunately. Just take someone else.

DO NOT TAKE OVER THE SUMMER. Horrible professor, the hw takes hours upon hours. The exam are hard asf, average is 70. The final was terrible. I had better professors.

this class was one of the wildest math classes i've taken at ucla as an incoming fourth year math major. the class content itself is really interesting, (in my opinion) and i found the content to be engaging and enjoyable primarily when i was reviewing lectures on my own or in discussion (TA was indeed the goat). what made this class really *interesting* was the professor. my first impressions were that he was just a very candid, sharp spoken professor, kind of a no-bs guy. i joined the class late and he was pretty nice and accommodating. however as the short 6 weeks went on, i'd have to unfortunately the quality of the class went down significantly.
- so much homework; granted its a 6 week summer course but still has to be commented on. took me multiple days to finish one homework
- pace of the class was literally insane: combined with the huge amount of homework, you had to put in WORK to keep up. but since there was so much homework, didn't really need to study a lot for exams.

i have to start a new paragraph for the professor. i have nothing personal against him (i know you read these, so hello!!) but i really did feel uncomfortable at times with the way he talked to his students. there was one particular student that i guess really got on his nerves often. i can see why the professor got frustrated at times, but it got to a point where the professor would make really unprofessional and straight up mean comments, like "stop arguing with me" and "you just want to make things hard for yourself" or "stop talking". and i don't know that's kind of crazy for a professor to say to a student?? i don't know the student personally, but i did respect him for consistently asking questions and trying to understand the material. and i think the professor could've handled it way better, but honestly at some point it felt like a humiliation ritual for the poor student. i felt so bad and so shaken by how he talked to the student which is why i'm here. it kind of begs the question of why this professor decided to teach if this is how he was going to talk to some students.

to generalize that experience/observation, he does have a really sharp(?) tone? can come off very sarcastic/demeaning. i didn't really bother asking him any questions and just asked my TA/other sources.

if you're looking to take 134, i'd highly recommend the class, just not with this professor unless you love a challenge in every way possible. i'm glad i took it as a math major, but as a human being, idk it just rubbed me the wrong way.

I do think this class is very doable and not too extremely difficult DEPENDING on your TA. I had Joseph Solheid and he was genuinely one of the best TAs I've ever had and made everything seem very easy and clear. He also was very lenient on the due dates for HW which was honestly so necessary given the load. That being said, if you have no intention with asking questions in class and can learn by reading the book and just doing problems, this class is honestly not too bad. The amount of homework we received was kinda horrid (hours upon hours of work. took me days) BUT I didn't do much studying outside of the homework and the practice exams he provided us and I did really well on the exams.

Now...I have PERSONALLY nothing against Dr. Sprouse, but from an outside perspective he was one of the rudest professors I've ever met. Any question during class was met with attitude and sometimes he would even laugh at them for how "silly" the question was. It made it really difficult to ask questions because he would honestly just make fun of you for doing so. Also, anytime he made a mistake he had a MASSIVE potty mouth. Which is whatever, but felt very unprofessional because he did it OFTEN. He was very nice over emails (at least to me) when I asked questions, so honestly I wouldn't bother asking questions in class unless you had iron skin.

just pray for a nice TA do hw and practice tests and class should be an easy A.

First, I want to say I have nothing personal against professor Sprouse and I wish him well. This is simply a honest opinion on class. Avoid this class. Below average lectures where the professor often makes mistakes. Most likely, you will just find yourself trying to copy down what the professor writes as fast as possible without a good grasp of the material. On top of that the professor seems to occasionally have an attitude, raising his voice, and talking down to students when asked a question regarding the material. In my opinion, this is highly unprofessional and should be basic common sense for anybody teaching a class. However, the worst part about this class is the homework. Homeworks are usually ~20 questions, most questions contain multiple parts: part a, b, c, d, e, f) and often contain questions that range in difficulty beyond the lecture. Expect to take 10+ hours on each of them if you were to actually to do each problem fully yourself. I don't have too much to say about the tests since I dropped the class right after the first midterm, but his grading is not generous.

The bright spot about this class was TA Jackson Solheid who in my opinion is the best TA I've had at UCLA so far! Thank you!