Reviews of professor Xiangnan Kong

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
The class had virtually no overlap with the course description. Course content was either full of irrelevant material (e.g. a video on Facebook corporate culture, an Apple Face ID ad, a clip from the film "Moneyball", etc.), poorly explained with too many simplistic examples, or so niche as to be useless. I stopped showing up and still got an A.

Rating: 5.0/5, difficulty: 2.0/5
Prof. Kong is one of the great professor in WPI. Even though his example is simple, his homework are considerably quite challenging but not so challenging that it is impossible to do. He is very knowledgeable on his expertise and if you have any question, he will answer it right away. Prepare for a lot of movie memes and funny video.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Professor Kong is a friendly professor, but he's the worst lecturer I ever had at WPI. I was unable to follow most of the lectures, even on toics I already knew about. He tried to explain everything TOO clearly (which made the lectures impossible to follow), but still leaves out important details on how everything fits together.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
You'll pass easily, but you'll learn nothing unless you put in the time to teach yourself, which is necessary for neither the homeworks nor the quizzes. In some cases, the homework doesn't help at all topic, because it's so specific to one part of the topic. This is the class that made me realize I'd prefer a hard class to a bad one.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
The course is graded on short, remote quizzes and weekly assignments. The quizzes reflect the lectures/powerpoints. Expect to learn a lot outside of class and go to every office hour to get the assignments done. None of the assignments or quizzes have deadlines except that you submit them by the last day of the term, which is helpful.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 1.0/5
Professor Kong is by far the worst professor I've had at WPI. He's very friendly and willing to work with students, but that fact that this course is a 4000 level CS class is a joke. I learned very little. I stopped going to class and easily got an A.