Math 131A (Winter 2026)
Instructor: Professor Peter Xu
Discussion Section Location: Kaufman 101
TA Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:00-4:00 PM in MS 6118
You can find a course description through UCLA’s registrar. Official course materials are available on BruinLearn.
In calculus, we’re taught about a slurry of terms that have very intuitive meanings. There are continuous functions, there are limits, there are infinite series, etc., and each of them play an important role in the general theory of calculus. However intuitive these may be, describing these concepts with mathematical precision is quite difficult.
That’s the goal of this course: to provide the mathematically rigorous foundations for “real analysis”, a study of infinites and infinitesimals, starting with the real numbers and working our way up and out. Discussions will aim to provide examples, techniques, and practise with proofs and computations involving these concepts.
I may experiment with pedagogical techniques this quarter, but I’ll be posting notes of what I aim to cover after class on this page. I’ve taught this class once before, and you may find those past resources helpful.