Professor Jukka Keranen is a gift from god sent directly to humanity (and I’m literally an atheist so this means so much coming from me). Honestly, this class was a bit difficult for me because I had no previous calculus experience, but I still managed to do well because of how amazing he taught. He gives so much extra credit and help, but the course has a bit of a heavy workload, which is actually super manageable! So many things in my life went downhill this quarter, but because Jukka was such an understanding and kind person, he helped us through everything and went above and beyond his means to ensure every student was successful. There’s one midterm and one final for this class, and it helps to do the practice exam. They consist of three parts are graded super fairly. TA Qi Wu was phenomenal and honestly very good looking haha. The lab component got difficult as we progressed, but it was doable and you work with a group of 4 along with LAs to help you understand the material more! The entire learning team for this class is just amazing, I promise no one will ever disappoint you. Jukka always makes the funniest jokes, remarks, and honestly I was excited to go to class and lab everyday. Definitely a great course and super applicable. One last thing, the professor literally wants you to be a better person and use the course material to HELP people. If that doesn’t say what an amazing human being he is, I don’t know what does. It was a pleasure with Jukka, I was honored to have him as a professor.

*COVID Edition*

Professor Jukka is AWESOME. I detest mathematics, but somehow I always looked forward to attending his lectures. He is passionate about what he teaches, and genuinely cares about his students and their learning.

I don't know how different it will be when we're back on campus, but this is how it was for Fall 2020.

Learning Teams:
This quarter, we had a learning team where you are grouped with three other classmates. These are the people you work with on labs and the group portions of the midterm and final. With it being COVID, the learning teams were a great way to get to know other people, and the collaboration helped greatly on doing well on assignments and exams!

Lectures/Participation:
Lectures weren't mandatory, but it is better to attend them live so that you are kept accountable. Participation was graded based on completing clicker questions from lecture on CCLE up to a week after the lecture took place. Slides are posted every week. Easy points!

Homework:
Graded half on accuracy and half on effort/completion. The number of problems varies from 15-30 questions, and some weeks were more difficult than others (do NOT procrastinate because it WILL come back to bite you), but 2 of the lowest homework assignments were dropped, so that was nice.

Labs:
I had some difficulty with the labs later on in the course, but overall they weren't too bad. You can collaborate with other classmates on lab assignments and you can reach out to your TA about it. Our lowest lab was dropped.

Quizzes:
Weekly quizzes on the weekend. Super short, like 4-5 questions. Sometimes a little difficult because the questions can be super conceptual, but as long as you paid attention in lecture and went through the slides, you could do well. About halfway through the course, Jukka let us have two attempts on the quizzes and took the average of the attempts as our grade. The lowest quiz is dropped.

Midterm and Final:
Both were similar in terms of structure. There were 3 stages:

Stage 1) Composed a study guide with our Learning Teams
Stage 2) Individual exam on CCLE
Stage 3) Group exam consisting of 3 questions that were more in-depth and built upon questions from Stage 2

Stage 1 is basically a good chunk of free points as long as you thoroughly complete the study guide and have all of the components!

My advice for success on these exams is to look at the Practice Midterm/Final Template, and do the corresponding problems, which are pulled from homework assignments or the several practice midterms and finals he gives out. They are more or less like the problems you will encounter on the exams. Additionally, Jukka holds a couple of exam review sessions on the weekend before the midterm or final, which were super helpful in further clarification and he provided more guidance with what to focus on, so go to those!

Almost everything is recorded for your convenience, but interact with him when you can/if you feel comfortable!

As a general note, Jukka's dedication, warmth, humor, and grace makes this class bearable, and the content is much less daunting when you have him as a professor. If you have any concerns, you can rest assured that he will listen and find a solution. You have a voice in this class, so don't be afraid to use it! Go to his office hours when he will usually go through homework problems, and go to at least one of his social hours, when he talks about anything and everything besides actual course content. He is not only a great professor, but also an interesting, warm human being who has great stories and insight to share! You should 100% take this class with Jukka (and Flippy & Puffers) if you can!

I took Jukka during covid and I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed the class! He is literally so understanding, willing to help, and clearly cares a lot about his students. Some good things about the class: attendance is NOT mandatory since he records his lectures, he has an anonymous suggestion box, the weekly quizzes were averaged based on two attempts, and the book (which you don’t have to buy since it is provided to you) is actually helpful.

I am not a math person but his teaching and clarity made me want to attend lectures. The material will get confusing, but he will answer any questions during his very valuable office hours. The midterm and finals other people have gone into depth about so I won’t do that and just say that there is three parts, two of which you can collaborate with your group so your individual score can’t weigh your overall grade too much. In conclusion, TAKE PROFESSOR JUKKA IF YOU CAN!!! He is literally the best and I’m so sad I didn’t get him for 30B.

Overall this class is graded very easily, but that is probably the only upside to it. The whole class is fake math that is really inapplicable to real life sciences. Jukka’s lectures were okay overall, sometimes he made no sense but sometimes he did. There was a lot of homework and sometimes the labs were tedious and difficult, but it’s all doable and not too hard. The only reason the class performed well on exams was because Jukka tells you EXACTLY what’s on the exam at his review sessions, and gives good study guides. He cares a lot about us getting good grades, but he just wasn’t a very clear lecturer and gave a lot of work.

I have never felt more degraded and horrible in a class. The Professor would insinuate that we were "retarded" by saying, AND I QUOTE: "If you do not understand this, you are probably retarded."
Way to be encouraging :)
I understand that he is just being sarcastic, BUT some people genuinely struggled in this class and it was always so discouraging to hear him say this hurtful things. It was always very intimidating to seek help from him during office hours or after class.
Worst experience hands down. I would not want my worst enemy to take this course with this rude and conceded professor.

I love Jukka! He's very funny and approachable and also reviews the course material at such a great pace. He gives out excellent previous finals and midterms to study off of and puts in so much effort into his slides. I would 10/10 take his class again just for his neon backpack.

This class was a slight step up from 30A, but overall very doable. Exams were modeled very much like the practice exam, and Jukka posts the answers to those well in advance of midterm/final so you have time to practice and prepare. Also, he goes through the whole process of how to do certain problems on the homework during office hours which is extremely helpful as he will also sometimes give hints during those as to what might be a good question for a test. He explains concepts clearly but the material itself can be challenging to understand at times. I usually got confusion cleared up during office hours, though. Overall, Jukka is a great professor to have for 30B.

I feel like the other reviews are such a misrepresentation of this class. He was a quirky guy with a quirky sense of humour. These people clearly have no idea what a proper math class is supposed to be like cuz they’re spoiled with their dumbed down bio math courses. He did everything he was supposed to do, taught it like a real math course, and the material and exams were perfectly reasonable. If you approach him during office hours, he would be very happy to help you. He can be a little sarcastic at times, but only to get people’s attention because they are not interested and are being disrespectful. It’s not his fault that the whole classroom environment was so stale due to the amount of people who were irresponsible and clearly didn’t wanna be there. Also, the classroom lighting was very bad and I think that contributed to part of the reason why it was very hard to focus. Nevertheless, it wasn’t even THAT hard of a course, unlike what some of these other comments claim.

Juuka Keranen is easily the best professor I've had at UCLA so far. He clearly cares for his students in a way that goes beyond just teaching. He's incredibly kind, approachable, and funny. In terms of the class itself, the material was slightly more challenging than that of LS30A, but it's definitely manageable and easy to understand if you put in the work. The midterm was straightforward and modeled after the study material he provides, so there should be no surprises there. Labs (coding), are still as annoying as they were in LS30A but they aren't graded hard and are a small part of your grade, and there's no lab exam! As the class reached the second half the material definitely became more conceptual but as long as you go to class, read the lecture slides, and pay attention to clicker questions, you'll be fine. If not, go to his office hours, they help a lot in understanding the material and going over homework problems. Juuka's teaching style is a bit formal and may sometimes confuse some with its notation but trust me, it's very very doable. The textbook wasn't as helpful in understanding the course as the lecture slides were. I didn't know what was going on in the class until 3 days before the final, but I just went over his lecture slides, attended his (amazing) review sessions and study material and came out with an A+. Take Juuka for LS30B if you want to learn, have a fun time, and get a good grade in a math class.

Possibly one of the worst classes I have ever taken. Lectures were very boring, unclear, and too fast to grasp anything. Professor had a condescending personality that made it difficult to approach him for help. I found this class unreasonably hard. Despite my poor experience, I was able to get a very good grade in this class, but I would definitely not recommend this class with this professor at all.