Reviews of professor Yiyan Shou

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
DO NOT TAKE MATH232 WITH HIM! I took this class in SS1 and he never really taught us HOW to do the math or what the process was of solving a problem. Lectures left me confused and I had to teach myself w/ YouTube videos the whole session. Sometimes he told us to simply "look at the problem" and figure it out. Didn't seem to care about our success.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Calc 2 is a hard class anywhere. Taking AND teaching it in an online format adds another layer of challenges. When I took MATH 232, it was Yiyan's first time teaching this class. So I empathize with the issues that were presented throughout SS1. However, his exams were quite tough. And homeworks were rigorous. But he was helpful during office hours

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Discrete math is DIFFICULT and I wouldn't recommend taking it over the summer bc there just wasn't time to absorb everything. However, if you have to, Yiyan is a great choice. He is very patient and helpful in office hours and explains concepts well. There's a lot of HW tho so i felt like i never had time to study for the exams.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Professor Shou should be teaching a higher level of math than this one because many times his examples would not make sense or he would explain the theory behind the math which would make things more complicated. You are probably going to need to watch lectures from other professors to understand certain subjects in the class

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Discrete was good cause of him. Lots of lecture, but manageable. The textbook is only really ever used to take homework questions out of but you can read it for more help, although I (and other people I know in the class) didn't need that.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
He always built connections between profound theories and real-life examples. I will choose his class next semester. I believe that student who provided low scores to him hoped to play down our respectful professor.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Overall a pretty good professor, his lectures can be dry, but he does a great job explaining concepts, and he's also very helpful during office hours. He teaches straight out of the textbook and only assigns 10-15 problems of HW each week. Tests are difficult, but he grades according to the class performance.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
I don't know if it's the teaching or if I just enjoy discrete math (unlikely), but this has been the most fun I've had in a math class in a very long time. Everything seems difficult on the surface but simply makes sense given time and lectures. Professor Shou really helped me appreciate the class and math as a whole.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Math 381 over summer is hard but with Yiyan it felt so much harder. That class median for test was consistently around the 50s. And the curve(still hasnt been added) isnt added until the class is finished so you are always in constant stress. Graders can be frustrating for only grading 2 problems on HW and getting no reasoning for losing points.