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Yu, Xiao-Hua

Cumulative GPA: 2.14/4.00 with 29 evaluations
Presents Material Clearly: 2.10
Recognizes Student Difficulties: 1.93

Electrical Engineering Department, Cal Poly, SLO
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EE 302 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 9:21 pm, Mar 20, 2013 Report Evaluation		So I had Professor Yu for three quarters and three classes now, 228, 328, and 302. I actually didn't think she was that bad for 228 at all. For 328 she was a little worse and letures were hard to pay attention to. For 302, the lectures were painful at times. It's not that the material itself is very hard, but...Something about Helen teaching it makes the classes a bit difficult at times. Her midterms are often just like the homework while her finals can be really difficult. She also doesn't give a lot of partial credit for work, so be careful when taking tests. It's not the end of the world if you have to take Yu, she's actually pretty nice as a person...But as a professor, good luck ya'll

EE 328 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 6:02 pm, Nov 5, 2012 Report Evaluation		"Is what?" Okay so honestly, her tests aren't too hard...but her lectures can be very frustrating to follow.

EE 228 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 11:51 pm, Jun 11, 2012 Report Evaluation		This class is an information overload. A lot of topics are covered in a short 10 weeks that have entire text books allocated to them. Yu isn't that hard to understand after a day or two of lecture, but doesn't appear to understand why students would be confused on certain subjects. She can seem impatient with student's questions in class and office hours. Despite seeming sadistic about how 'easy' she jokes the test is going to be, her tests are very reasonable. You get plenty of allowed notes for equations and the tests can be finished well before the time given is over. The problem with this class - not specifically the way Yu teaches it, this is more of a department thing - is that it grossly over emphasizes doing the algorithms as opposed to having a deeper understanding of the implications of what exactly you're doing. Don't ditch this class too often, Yu's lecture isn't so hot, but there are valuable examples to be gained for reference.

EE 228 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 11:28 pm, Dec 14, 2011 Report Evaluation		If you choose Yu, you will be screwed. Yeah she does have a heavy accent, but it's not her accent that makes her a terrible professor. If you read the material beforehand and understand the material, like I once did, you will see that she just can't teach the material. The material can be self taught though if you send lots of time reading and understanding from the textbook. Treat this class as if it was a math class. If you understand the mathematical process, you will do alright. If you come to class without knowing the material, you will just be confused and bored out of your mind the whole time. I still attended lecture because she works through examples which I like to reference back when I do the homework. The textbook examples are somewhat limited and lacking detail.

EE 228 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 4:29 pm, Nov 30, 2011 Report Evaluation		This class covers a difficult, confusing, and boring topic. That said this professor knows what she is doing. But, she is completely unable to connect with students and convey the material in an easy to follow manner. The lecture will often confuse you. Her slides come straight from the book and the examples do as well. If you get confused from lecture don't expect any help from the book. The book is extremely dry and difficult to understand. Midterm averages hover around 60% due to all the above reasons and a lack of partial credit. The only good news is the class is curved.

EE 513 Graduate Student Grade Earned: A Elective 9:57 am, May 17, 2011 Report Evaluation		The control stuff is not easy, hell lot of matrices. Dr. Yu is a good teacher and very helpful during office hours. Take notes and her slides, the textbook is more confusing. Do all the HW and you'll be fine in the exams.

EE 570 Graduate Student Grade Earned: A Elective 5:16 pm, Dec 14, 2010 Report Evaluation		The EE advanced topics course for this quarter was \"Computational Intelligence.\" Sounds interesting, doesn\'t it? That\'s what I thought, and I\'m sure I would\'ve been right if the class was taught by somebody else. Unfortunately, Yu failed miserably, especially considering she had everything going for her. The class was an elective, meaning everybody in the class had a genuine interest in the topic. The students were intelligent and experienced. And most importantly, this is Yu\'s top area of interest. Despite all of this, she was unable to keep students interested, couldn\'t motivate any reasons for learning the topic, and she was forced to take roll to get students to show up. Taking roll in a grad class is absolutely ridiculous. Yu\'s lectures focused entirely on the technical details concerning the theory of computational intelligence, and only after pleading from students did she hesitantly offer up some boring applications. This class had the potential to be great, but because of Yu\'s poor teaching skills the class was a complete failure. If this class is offered again, do yourself a favor and take something else.



EE 228 Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 7:32 pm, Sep 22, 2010 Report Evaluation		Here is a list of Yu-isms I jotted down throughout the quarter that you will need to know in order to be successful in her class. Note read these in an Asian accent for them to make sense. E to the affa - E to the alpha Formulur - Formula Osisope - Oscilloscope Criterial - Criteria Omeeega - Omega Mesurd - Measured Ourder - Order Cackalation - Calculation Poperteee - Property Probrem - Problem Sinking - Thinking Wrenge - Range Eggin - Eigen Paolur - Polar Sree - Three Popper - Proper Orsaganol - Orthogonal Heeedin - Hidden Discwheat - Discrete Apoperate - Appropriate Enjoy!

EE 242 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 9:10 am, Dec 20, 2008 Report Evaluation		She was helpful in lab. If you had a problem she could find it and help you out quickly. Her pre lab instructions were a little confusing. She also has a helpful sheet of stuff she wants to see on your lab reports, so her expectations are always clear. I recommend her.

EE 242 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 9:34 am, Dec 18, 2008 Report Evaluation		Yu was a pretty good lab teacher for 242. She would demo at the beginning of every lab and then just let you go, but was always willing to help you with any problems you may have encountered during the lab. She wasn't petty with the grading of the labs like some instructors can be. My only gripe is that the final is off of the prelabs, which she doesn't give you the answers to during the quarter. Otherwise, there was nothing else to complain about.

EE 242 Junior Grade Earned: N/A Required (Major) 12:15 am, Dec 1, 2008 Report Evaluation		For EE242 Lab, Yu was very helpful. She prepared a sheet that anticipated the difficulties (or errors in the lab manual) that we would encounter, and what we should do, which made the labs run pretty smooth. She is relatively flexible with turning in prelabs and lab reports, and has an informative run-through before we start the lab--just enough to not bore you. It was also nice that she didn't take off during lab, like other profs seem to do. I would definitely take her for 242.

EE 515 Graduate Student Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 7:52 pm, Dec 3, 2006 Report Evaluation		Weeeeeeeeelllllllllll.... you may be wondering why I gave her a 'C'. Weeeelllllllllllll, she is difficult to understand and does not convey the material in a way that anticpates the difficulty her students have in comprehending it. She offers no practical or applied uses of the knowledge - just a total theoretician.

EE 228 Junior Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 9:34 am, Jan 3, 2006 Report Evaluation		She was a pretty decent professor, gives pretty good notes and is actually very very helpful in her office hours. Homework is also rather easy since she posts all the answers, but not the solutions online. Then all she did was give it to a grader, and all the grader checks for are the answers. One big gripe I have with her though: SHE DIDN'T ALLOW ANY CHEATSHEETS! Of course, there were the usual people who would be able to memorize everything and do really well on her tests, but they were way in the minority.



EE 314 5th Year Senior Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 12:28 pm, Aug 30, 2005 Report Evaluation		Take this teacher. Especially for this class. You must realize that she lectures word for word from the book, so its very easy to take notes, just underline the parts of the book she says. Tests were a healthy dose of brain work, but doable. The best part is her office hours, I get more out of those office hours and in the least amount of time spending in them than any other teacher I've had.

EE 314 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 1:16 am, Aug 6, 2005 Report Evaluation		Dr. (Helen) Yu wasn't the greatest EE professor I've ever had, but she is no where near the top of the list. Her english/presentation skills was once again definetly not the worst and not TOO hard to understand, but can be hard to hear at times. Her lectures are often about the theory, and not filled with too many numerical examples that would help you out on the homework or any of the tests. 2 midterms and a final, with homework collected just about every week. You definetly have to read the book, and by doing the homework you will get at least 1 or 2 of the problems that show up on her tests, as she likes to reference to homework problems and textbook examples. She allows 1 page (front only) of notes per test, and 1 page (front and back) on the final. There are definetly better professors out there, but she isn't the worst and is better than taking this class with Professor Britenbach who (from what I heard) gave out nothing higher than a C in his entire class.

CPE 229 Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 4:07 pm, Jan 7, 2005 Report Evaluation		Very nice woman with good intentions. She is a little difficult to understand. The homework was very straightforward and easy. She often did parts of it in class. She is very helpful in lab and made them go smoothly. The tests were for the most part not very difficult. She is helpful in office hours.

EE 151 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 11:59 am, Jan 3, 2005 Report Evaluation		She isn't a bad teacher, she is just really hard to follow and understand. She doesn't clarify when you ask questions, and unless you know some really interesting math, chances are the final isn't going to be very easy. The fact is, she tries to help and I suspect if you are willing to go to office hours, her class would be far easier. The homework is incredibly simple, and the requirements aren't hard to achieve, just visit her office and maybe have her explain the math. Good luck...

EE 219 Sophomore Grade Earned: A Required (Major) 11:39 am, Aug 13, 2003 Report Evaluation		She was great and had a lot of passion for the students, but office hours are an absolute must to understand the class.

EE 301 Senior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:56 pm, Jan 23, 2003 Report Evaluation		301 is one hard class. With that said, Professor Yu did an excellent job teaching the course. The homework assignments were pretty hard because they were straight from the book, but the day they were due, she answered any questions we had about the assignment and pretty much worked them out with us. The tests were straight-forward, if you did well on the hw, you did well on the tests. Overall, she wants to help students understand the topics and she deserves good ratings.



CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: D Required (Major) 3:07 pm, Jun 26, 2002 Report Evaluation		I though Yu was an all right teacher. The beginning of the course was really simple. She covered everything that we needed to learn. However, I'd have to admit that she was difficult to understand at times. Sometimes she'd talk low and she also has an accent. I have trouble understanding people with accents so I had a lot of trouble understanding it. The lectures were really boring and fell asleep a couple of times. I did bad in the class because I was distracted with other things so it wasn't entirely her fault for my bad grade. I felt that her grading scale was fairly difficult. The was she did her percentages made it so that every point you missed in a quiz or test was already one percentage off your total grade. However, I hear she's better than the other teachers for this class.

CPE 219 Junior Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 12:22 pm, Jun 21, 2002 Report Evaluation		Helen Yu's class was interesting. The first half was really easy. Binary, Logic Circuits. It's all kid stuff, and I think it'd be kinda hard to teach that and students to have major trouble with it. However, the last half of the class, she tended to make major mistakes on the board. I'll forgive that though - after all, if I were up in front of 40 students or so, I'd probably make dumb mistakes too. Helen's voice is also a little on the light side, but she's loud enough to be coherent. Her accent isn't a problem at all - but a lot of people use it as an excuse to complain. My biggest problem with her class were the tests. She graded them really anally, and took HUGE points off if you didn't label your circuits (like adders) according to her standards. I could do the problem wrong, and I'd get more credit taken off for labelling it wrong. Other than that though, it was an average class. Two quizzes worth 10% of your grade each, a 25% miderm, and a 40% final, with homework due every Friday. It was a fairly easy class, and it sounded a lot easier than with some of the other professors. Overall, she's an all right professor, and I'd probably take the class with her again, if I had to.

CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 5:39 pm, Jun 20, 2002 Report Evaluation		Dr. Yu presents material clearly (more or less) but doesn't do it with any feeling. Her voice is monotone making it really easily to fall asleep. She started to stumble with the material at the end of the quarter making frequent mistakes on the board. Her grading system is irritating (i.e; midterm worth 25% of your grade with only 25 possible points or final worth 40% with exactly 40 multiple-choice questions). It had me worrying that I wouldn't pass the class with all the scores tallied up.

CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:29 pm, Jun 19, 2002 Report Evaluation		everything i learned in 219 i learned from lab and from saghri's notes. Yu takes notes from sandige's book, and systematically covers chapters 1 thru 6 on the board, talking about 'zelos and ones', and 'carraoutofsignbeetposeetion', etc etc. but then again, you dont have many good choices for 219 do you? chinichian, yu and saghri... whoever you pick, get saghri's notes from someone who's taken the class.

CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 2:40 am, Jun 9, 2002 Report Evaluation		Yu is a sub-par instructer when she gets to the end of the material. In the beginning she was doing alright, of course the material was very simple in the beginning. She is quiet and has an accent which makes it hard to understand her unless you are in one of the front rows. She assigns homework every week usually takes bout 30 minutes to an hour. Her final is multiple choice and the tests and quizes are fairly simple.

CPE 219 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 10:41 pm, Apr 22, 2002 Report Evaluation		Dr. Yu has an accent, yes, but you can understand everything she says after about 20 minutes of listening to her. She presents the material clear enough and gives fair tests. She is what I call a standard professor. She is not horrible like some I have had but there is nothing special about her (like being extremely easy or very funny or something like that).



CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 10:46 am, Apr 4, 2002 Report Evaluation		I've had teachers with bad accents before and i've been able to still learn alot. But this prof. is just ignorant. She has no clue what she is lecturing about so it makes it real hard to ask questions. She lectures non-stop for 50 minutes with no humor no stories just circuits. Her exams are crazy too, they arent that hard but they are 25% or ur grade and only 25 points, so for all u math majors each point is a percent of your grade, the final is also 40% of your grade and thats only 40 questions multiple choice! I had to learn everything from the book ( which is pretty shitty in its own right ). If u have to take this class stay away from this prof. You will be wasting a lot of time if u do decide to take it.

CPE 219 Freshman Grade Earned: B Required (Major) 3:25 pm, Mar 28, 2002 Report Evaluation		Never again will I be able to hear the words "we talk about" and think of them the same way? How come? Because those were probably the only words out of Prof. Yu's mouth I could understand - or even hear - the entire quarter. Her English is incredibley hard to understand (where do they FIND these people), she reads directly from a set of notes every lecture - notes which OBVIOUSLY come directley from the book, as I read from the book every day during lecture - and makes simple mistakes when showing examples on the board which take her MUCH too long to correct. The worst part about taking 219 with Prof. Yu is that the book is much too poorly written to learn successfully from, and Prof. Yu is much to hard to understand and seems too unknowledgable to learn from, so you're basically screwed either way. Avoid her at all costs.

CPE 219 Sophomore Grade Earned: C Required (Major) 12:18 am, Mar 28, 2002 Report Evaluation		The first thing you'll realize about Dr. Yu is that she's not a good lecturer. She has no control over her class and speaks in a very soft voice, so if anyone is being remotely loud nobody can hear anything. As if her volume wasn't bad enough, she doesn't speak English clearly and talks into the chalkboard. When drawing circuit diagrams, she frequently makes mistakes that students catch. Even worse, she often makes mistakes grading tests. There's always a line of people at her table during the break on a test return day. You will feel quite cheated when she marks you off for small mistakes, considering how often she makes big ones during lecture (perhaps that's part of the reason you made them in the first place? Hmm...) About the only good thing I can say about Dr. Yu is that she does give a 5-min. break in the period every day, so you can slip out the door and read the book instead. As awful as the text is, it often does a better job of explaining the concepts than she does.

EE 112 Sophomore Grade Earned: B Elective 12:58 am, Mar 6, 2002 Report Evaluation		First off Helen Yu is the best EE teacher I have had here at Cal Poly. Though she isnt too fluent in english and seems a little out of it she odes present the material well. Its structured into easy note fashion. Dr. Yu has a tendenc y to present too much information in class but its ok since she can actually present it in understandable fashion. Her tests are fair though you need to check her grading. Sometimes she messes up on test grading but if you see it she will raise your grade. Overall a good teacher.

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