Professor Wang is really a great instructor. He has a very deep understanding and background in machine learning, and his lecture is also engaging. He often includes intersting stories about deep learning in class, and if you do attend his lectures, you can definitely learn a lot. He is also very patient and willing to help you during office hours.
Don't take 181 with him! Professor Wang puts the least effort in teaching -- he used the slides of other professors with Chinese on them; he can't explain anything clearly; he doesn't reply to students' complains. You won't get any practice for the hard exams, however, you are expected to put a lot of effort to learn everything by yourself.
Professor Yuan-Fang Wang is the worst instructor I have ever had for anything ever. He is willing to intentionally punish the class via exam difficulty.
Take his class if you like a challenge in that you need to learn everything yourself as coming to his worthless lectures is as good as wasting time. Otherwise if you take his class you might as well be mentally challenged and my deepest condolences to you.
DO NOT take any classes taught by this professor. His lectures are full of math equations that he doesn't explain whatsoever, no one learn anything in lecture so only like 5 people show up out of 100 people. I can guarantee you will regret taking his classes.
Lectures are pointless to attend
Probably the worst engineering professor I have had at UCSB. He could literally teach PEMDAS and make it seem impossibly confusing. Gets frustrated that no one shows up to class, so rather than improving the lectures, he makes the tests intentionally punishing. TAs can't help because they don't get solutions to HW assignments. Avoid at all costs.
He curves my grade down for four levels without prior notifications. He did not say anything on the syllabus or notify us about the potential curve in class. Try to avoid him if you can.
I got an 89% in this class and that was downcurved to a C+. He didn't mention the grading scale on the syllabus or in class and it took me completely by surprise. Lectures are stolen from a course taught in Mandarin and so boring and incomprehensible that they're not worth going to.
DO NOT TAKE ANY CLASS WITH HIM. Please take this and other reviews seriously, I took him because I thought people were just whining. I was wrong. Some examples of poor teaching: - quizzes are on things barely covered - some of the slides are in Chinese, ripped straight off of a youtube video - down curves the class at the end with no warning
Even if you understand him with his accent, it wont matter because he simply cannot teach to save his life. But you still have to attend lectures because then you might miss sh*t like him telling the class that not doing his survey means an entire letter grade gets dropped. Not to mention the downcurve was so bad, a 90 was a B, and a 92 was a B+.
Lectures are completely useless (throws equations on the screen without explaining them, goes into irrelevant tangents, does not effectively communicate concepts). Be prepared to self-learn in this class. Projects and HWs were at least fun and graded pretty leniently. For exams he is a tough and unforgiving grader. Avoid at all cost.