Do not take Math 70 with professor Butson. His exams are simple, but his personality, as well as his teaching methodology was very undesirable. His constant condescending attitude towards students when prompted questions or comments is absurd and his tardiness and lack of care, in general, should be enough to worry if your tuition money is going into a worthwhile class. The topics covered in this class, given a standard/beginner background in calculus or probability, should be simple and quite interesting, to be frank, so if there are other math professors to choose from, I would avoid the headache that comes with taking Butson. He would describe himself as a 'sarcastic' person but I'm sure he just says that to make an excuse for whatever backhanded comment he makes to the class. Also, he curves by percentage, so there is a chance that you may be curved downward, even if you score well in his exams.

I personally didn't have too many issues with the professor, but I can definitely see why someone wouldn't like him. He's condescending in a way that comes off like he's trying to be funny, but it just doesn't hit at all. This attitude would also translate over to the people in the class to where it felt like you couldn't ask any questions since he deems a lot of them 'stupid'. His lectures also SUCK for this class. Maybe it's common, but he'll go over a lot of conceptual stuff in lectures and have exam problems strictly be easy, concrete examples of the concepts. Your time would be better spent skipping lectures and watching videos/using online resources to figure out how to solve the types of questions. Despite that, I think the professor is a generally nice guy who's just condescending and sarcastic to a fault. I would only recommend taking him if this class is either required or if you're not looking to be super active in participation.

This professor is probably one of the nicest ones I've had at UCLA (what they say about Canadians is true) BUT he is a bad lecturer. His lectures are super boring and he does not do a good job of breaking down probability/the class materials. His exams are super easy but the HWs/lectures were very confusing. If the exams were as hard as the HWs, many ppl would have not done well. However, 60%+ of the class got an A- or better given how the exams were generally the easiest HW problem out there for a given concept. I'm sure he's changed as a professor but that is how my experience with Professor Butson was during his quarter here in his Math 70 class.