I took this class Fall Quarter 2025 and received an A. In comparison to the other professors teaching this course, Professor Arant is an absolute gem—you NEED to take his lecture if you want the best shot at doing well. His lectures are a bit fast-paced, and I’d sometimes fall behind on the notes, but his examples and theorem explanations were so clear that reviewing them later + watching a few YouTube videos was enough for me to fully understand the material. I didn’t take Calc BC (only AB, which I got a 5 on), and while BC students definitely have an advantage, most of the content was new to me and I still performed well.

Lectures aren’t mandatory, but people who had other professors would literally come to his lectures because he explains things so well. Homework is assigned but not mandatory—you definitely need to do it if you want to do well. If you’re ever lost in the class, he posts his notes online, there are tons of YouTube videos to help, and both he and his TAs are very helpful in office hours.

We had 5 quizzes, but they’re take-home and you have the whole day to complete them, so they’re pretty chill. There are 2 midterms and 1 final. Midterm 1 was very straightforward and the questions were all fair—class average was around 50/60. Midterm 2 was an absolute trainwreck (class average: 41/60). I got a 100 on Midterm 1 and then a 67 on Midterm 2. It was significantly harder, and some questions required really niche applications of convergence tests to get the correct answer.

This class isn’t easy, but with the right amount of work, an A is definitely achievable. Professor Arant was great and I would definitely recommend!!

Arant is one of the best math professors I have ever had. 31B isn't easy, but Arant is extremely organized, posts notes and lecture recordings, and is very clear about his expectations for his students. If you pay attention in lecture and use all of the resources he makes available, you can do really well in his class.