The other reviews pretty much sum him up well. This class is really, really hard, but I don’t think anyone else in the department can teach it better than him. So, I’d highly reccommend

A fantastic class with an outstanding professor. Kao is literally the goat of EE department at the moment. The class is genuinely one of the toughest one I will take at UCLA but Kao tries the best to make it easy to understand using intuition. Using intuition is the most important part of his class and you must learn his way to better grasp the concepts.

Attending his lectures are so worth it. I never missed a single lecture because I knew its impossible to learn the same way online in his recordings. Make good notes and cheat sheet for the exam. You should attend Rakshith's discussions and office hours if you are ever struggling. Trust me in the coming years he's gonna have a big name in EE TAs. Hes the most kind and respectful and works beyond his hours to teach you more about the content.

The exams are tough. Make sure you practice from the previous years papers to be better prepared. If you mess in the midterms, Kao allows replacing it with final upon a better performance. Take this class and you will actually fall in love with the title "Systems and signals". Good Luck :D

This class is difficult, but you learn a lot from the class. This is one of the "make or break" classes for the major, with a touch of shared suffering, but ultimately is very rewarding. The professors and TAs are very helpful, and is the key reason why a lot of us was successful in the class. The professors and TAs care for our success, are readily available in their office hours and discussions, but you still need to put effort in to get a good grade in the class. Kao posts clear lecture notes for the class, and all past exams (with solutions) from previous years onto the class page. The TAs host 3+ hour long review sessions before the midterm and final and goes in depth on what would be on the exams. The homework assignments would consist of 4 to 5 problems (in the first half of the course, the fifth problem is a Python problem). This class provided me an excellent foundation, and showed me a different toolkit to solve problems as you understand from a high level about signals and learn about the frequency domain.

Kao is an amazing professor with a kind and open heart. Him and his TAs will lead you through the tough patches. But don't be fooled, this class is difficult. If you fall behind make sure you catch up ASAP because each lecture builds on the next and if you don't pace yourself you will end up breaking yourself.

Out of all the classes I've taken, Professor Kao is 100% the best lecturer in the department. While the class is pretty difficult, he is able to break down the intuition required to understand the material. He also gives plenty of extra material to practice, releasing exams from previous years, original and annotated lecture notes, etc. This class does require a lot of time to do well in as you are assigned 7 HW assignments, each of which take multiple hours to complete. Professor Kao is really approachable and really cares about teaching. The exams are difficult, but because he teaches the material well, have pretty high medians/averages. The TAs for the class were also amazing.

I was not going to take this class, but I sat in on his first lecture and was captivated by him. He is genuinely a great lecturer, and it shows in his ratings. He and the TAs work really hard to make this class easy to understand and give you a solid foundation that other professors might not provide. There is no one better to take this class with.

If you can, would absolutely recommend taking the class with Kao - he is hands down the best lecturer I've had at UCLA until now! His lectures are clear and interesting, and have a good balance between presenting new content and doing examples, leading to you actually understanding complex stuff like convolution. If you're still confused, he has office hours multiple times a week and is responsive on email.

As other reviews said, the class material itself isn't easy. Homeworks take hours, which he warns you about. The difficulty helps you learn and prepares you for the exams, and all other aspects of the class support you. The exams themselves are fine and had high averages - spend some time reviewing the review sessions the TAs host, which almost mirror the actual exams.

Overall, would VERY highly recommend! Thanks Professor Kao and Rakshith!

Professor Kao is great. His lectures are very clear and he works through problems carefully on the board, which makes it easy to follow. He is nice and approachable. He answers questions directly and clearly in class.

The material of the class is tough. The homework will take a long time, but the lectures, discussions, and office hours will help guide you through them. Everything is well organized online and all the resources (including previous tests) were given to us. The final exam was fair and overrode the midterm grade, which was tougher our quarter.

The only complaint I have is of the TAs. They were pretty good, but they each had their faults. Siyou was kind but unclear with her work. Sometimes I couldn't understand how she arrived to her answer because she would not write down much. Still, her grading was much more organized and gave lots of partial credit. Tonmoy was very clear and wrote down great notes from his discussions, which were informative and easy to follow. The issue I had with Tonmoy was that he was harsh. He did not have enough patience with students and would snap at them if they did not understand the material. His grading was often all or nothing. For such a math-heavy class, this seemed excessively harsh.

All the instructors were well-intentioned and the class was a good experience overall. I learned a lot and I would definitely recommend this professor.

This guy is the ABSOLUTE GOAT. Don't hesitate to take this class. He is one of the best lecturers I've ever seen and he knows how to really make you interested in the material. Office hours are super helpful and the TAs were also great for my quarter. Grading is extremely fair and often times quite generous. You can tell he really cares about his students. Homework is worth doing, not only because it is a fair chunk of your grade, but because the homework problems are interesting, engaging, and not at all tedious. Overall, I recommend Kao more than any other professor I've had yet.

Professor Kao is a great lecturer and one of the best professors I've had in the ECE department. This lectures were clear and the homework really aided in understanding the concepts covered in class. The midterm and final were difficult but reasonable, and I would highly recommend taking Kao for 102.