Ngl based on the reviews before taking this class, I thought this class was going to be a lot worse and the tests were going to be a lot harder. But I also will say that I studied A LOT for this class and I did slightly above average on all of the tests except one. The very first quiz I did horrible but did way better on all of the other exams, but as long as you get around the average which was about 70-75%, then you'll be okay because he curved the class up to a B+.

The lectures are very unhelpful and I ended up teaching myself everything from the textbook because he basically takes the graphs and all of the content from the textbook. I will say though that there were like a few questions on the exams that he only said in lecture, but it was really minor application stuff so that was annoying. I used youtube videos to study and those basically replaced me going to lecture because those were a lot more helpful and they explain it better than Professor Pei. Also my TA's were so unhelpful omg, one of them told me the wrong answers to the test multiple times when we were going over the answers for the test. Office hours are also very unhelpful, so make some friends in this class. Also, because he doesn't release the answers to the test but luckily my TA went over the answers in class, but again some of them were wrong. Do the homeworks though, because he takes some questions that were similar to those and uses them on the test. On the final and midterm you have more than enough time, but I felt on the quizzes you are definitely racing against the clock a little bit.

Overall, the class moves fast though because it's an intro to materials, but at least for some of the tests, you just need to know surface level stuff. The content can be really interesting, I just felt like you had to know a lot and then the tests doesn't test you on too much. Try not to take this class with him, try to take it with Gorsky, I heard he's better because this class was not easy and I developed so much anxiety in this class because him and the TA's are just so unhelpful and they don't really care about you. So, he doesn't assign that much work, but you definitely have to put in a lot of work outside of this class to do well (even though he told me that if I understood the lecture slides, I would be fine) and actually understand the concepts.

Outside the class, he is a friendly and nice prof. My suggestion is to sit in the front for every lecture time, since he speaks softly and it's easier to read his writings. Other than that, I think he is not a very effective lecturer. You have to memorize every single thing in his lecture notes. If you are not a person who likes memorizing, dont take this class.