You better read your book, cuz whatever he says that you can understand won't help you much. Likes to yell into his microphone. Goes nuts on the chalkboard as if he were beating it to death. Take someone else if you can.

He speaks English with a VERY STRONG accent, so if you don't concentrate really hard on what he's saying, it'll pass by like he was speaking Mandarin. He seems like a nice guy though, has good manners unlike most professors.

This guy blows, he doesn't know how to teach, exams were a joke, don't take this class or this professor!

exams are theoretical MC and 100% algebra, no actual numbers. talks quickly w/ thick accent, alternates between board and PPT slides, i'm unable to copy and understand at the same time. later in the lecture he modifies previous eqns on blackboard and you get to figure out what applies at that moment. would not recommend--i stopped going to lecture.

Lets just say when the class average on the second exam was a 51, his response was "i no understand why you no understand. do you no study?"

Pretty much the worst prof ive had. Has a strong accent and when the class average on the first exam was a 51%, his response was "why you no study? why you no understand?"

I studied about 15 hours a week, and still got a C. I relied mostly on my T.A. to explain everything.

Do not take the class with this guy. U will not be able to understand a thing he says. U will have to teach yourself everything. Worst professor I have ever taken

Language=bad. Lecture=bad. I didn't learn anything from him, thank god for my TA and semi-doable exams.

From Pan: In particular, I will not consider arguments such as: --- "For some/any reasons I **need** a particular grade level." --- "The multiple-choice type exams are not fair by nature." --- "I have had too many other obligations." --- "My grade did not reflect my efforts."

Memorize the homework questions and you'll be able to slip by with little/no effort. Going to class was more funny than helpful. Yibin has a heavy accent, is poor at explaining, and is very unorganized. Avoid unless you never plan to use physics.

Lectures are a joke, you just go in and laugh at him getting confused with himself and doing his funny demos The exams are filled with trick questions that make you feel stupid I taught myself the whole course

The only reason to go to class is to watch an old chinese dude spinning around on a wheel. Otherwise just get an extra sleep and skip lecture.

Another professor that is hard to understand. Tests aren't too bad, but he does a terrible job lecturing.

Awful class. The lectures are not thorough enough as compared to what is on the exams. Not a class where I learned physics just learned how to take timed mcq by memorizing the homework(which I think are super unfair because how can you grade calculations without giving partial credit?) You will do bad if you are not good at physics coming into this

He's really hard to understand to the point where I didn't even go to lectures. Honestly just read the lecture slides and you'll get the same thing out as attending lecture.

Yibin is the worst professor I have had here. His lectures are not well structured and you will likely be confused on the material if you don't prepare before lectures. I would recommend going to tutoring hours. Yibin's office hours are the LAST place you want to go! His exams are tricky and will become your worst nightmare bc no partial credit!

Somehow this class made me worse at math and physics. Yibin would just throw equations at you without explaining them and you had to figure them out basically on your own. The tests were all 20 multiple choice questions with e) non of the above as an answer for each one. The only reason I passed this class was because of my TA.

All tests are multiple choice and only test you on how good you are at guessing between options. Came in with a great curiosity to learn physics but ended up wanting to leave the class half the time.

First of all you can't understand him half the time, even though his lectures don't make sense to begin with. He did not adjust to online classes well, and clearly is oblivious to what is going on outside of his lectures. Just pray you don't have a bad TA like mine who just hands us impossible worksheets every discussion and doesn't teach

He is NOT interested in student success. Not approachable AT ALL; will be rude and make you feel bad for asking questions and gets frustrated if you don't understand concepts he as already explained. Lectures are not cohesive and hard to follow. Please, please, please, if you are not a physics major avoid taking a class with Pan at all costs.

Do not take this professor. He can't speak English or teach any physics. The only word you hear is "calculation". Take another professor with whom you can learn it. He has a terrible attitude. UW-Madison shouldn't let such professors teach. I regret I paid Non-resident tuition for this horrible class. The quality of instruction is extremely poor.

One of the worst classes I have taken. I do not know why other people said Yibin Pan is caring because he certainly is not. He is rude to students who ask questions and doesn't realize that 90% of the time a student is asking a questions is because he didn't explain clearly. Online tests are also extremely hard and poorly made.

He is careless about the course in general and it is evident from his poor organization. The slides are all over the place and are very difficult to read. The exams are conceptually difficult which adds onto the fact that your exam grades are based off of the answer you got rather than your written work (which is much more important in physics).

Dr. Pan is an absolute joke of a professor. His lectures are terrible. He gives the minimal amount of examples and the ones that are given are so basic they are totally useless in preparing you for the exams. Get ready to learn on your own because his attitude and effort put into this class are abysmal.

I believe this is Dr. Pan's first semester teaching 202, but other reviews apply. I've never seen such a lazy professor. Lecture is low-effort conceptual examples and he pulls test questions from the homework problems he didn't make. No attempt was made to adapt the in-person labs do something of value in an online setting.

Dr. Pan's course Physics 201 course is subpar. He's too lazy to put proper derivations on lectures and makes us look for it on our own time. He makes tons of caught and unnoticed mistakes during his lectures which makes them confusing and pointless. The exams are bad because they are exclusively on webassign so you basically get not partial credit.

As someone with no background in physics this "introductory course" is heavily reading based and lectures barely help you understand anything as they are rushed and lack thorough description of content, based on the fact that your already supposed to understand what you're being taught? Also the adjustment to online instruction is disorganized.

Professor Pan: *Spends barely any time on lecture slides and turned off chat so nobody could ask questions *Doesn't respond to his email quickly, if at all *Is generally not helpful to understanding course material *Labs are confusing, stressful, pointless *Exams are unfair, but curved This course was the worst academic experience I ever had.

Online class for physics 201 with Yibin Pan has been awful. He has no clue what he is doing most of the time when it comes to technology. For exams, his approach to fair grading includes no partial credit. Scores are based purely on answer. If I could only say one thing about this professor it would be STAY AWAY.

Grades all semester were unknown as the tests weren't weighted correctly in the grade book. I had this class and another final on the same day at the same exact time and Yibin Pan refused to allow me the alternate time after not responding to my original request sent a month before the final and well before his cut-off final exam conflict date.

I can't imagine how UW-Madison can hire such professors who have no idea what they do and do not care how their students do. No motivation for physics and he has no clue how to explain. The worst physics professor in the department. He covers the lectures and puts up different questions on the exams. Not recommended with a little curve.

I would not recommend this class to my worst enemy. He is awful at explaining what is going on and takes forever to get back to your emails. I know this is a mandatory class for a lot of people just try and not take it with him.

Do not take this professor if you want a good grade. The language barrier makes it difficult to understand what he is saying during lectures. His class is curved which shows he can't make good tests with most of the test problems being HW prb with numbers changed.I missed the final exam because of the hospital, and he didn't give me a make-up exam.

Class lacked any form of infrastructure and little to no support was offered to students. I went into this with little experience of physics and it was definitely very painful. Lectures were incredibly boring and lacked proper demos and homework took hours. Very hard to learn from. Maybe in-person it would've been better, but beware.

Bad explanations. Takes forever to reply to emails. Doesn't care and understand his students at all. I felt like he didn't put in a lot of effort into this class. Maybe it might be better in person but I doubt it. The grade shown on Canvas is not accurate, which made me think I was doing relatively well until a couple of weeks before the exam.

The class was completely self-taught from the book and the lectures pointless. He just read off slides and skipped every step saying its just basic algebra. Grade on canvas wasnt weighted so a 95% ended up destroying my gpa. Didnt help that most of the people in this class were cheating which screwed all of us who did not. Very poorly ran.

Maybe Yibin was a lot better before COVID. But he is definitely the worst-adapted professor to online learning that I've ever seen. Doesn't know how to respond to emails. All he does is assign online textbook readings and assignments through WebAssign. I learned 100% of the material for this class through the textbook, not him. Just a bad professor

The semester started with another professor, and then Yibin took over the class about half way through and my understanding plummeted. In comparison he doesn't discuss the process of diagrams or demos and merely just tells you what is occurring. If you can avoid taking class with him, you will likely understand much more of the class.

Lazy professor with bad class setup

The hardest class I've ever taken. The only time I learned anything was from the textbook, taking notes by myself, or from my TA in discussion. Lectures are confusing and most of the learning is on you. Worked super hard in this class and still worried I won't pass.

this guy has no clue how to teach. overly confusing lectures and relatively simple high school physics with impossible curves and tests

He does not appear to put thought into his lectures. The concepts are overly confusing. Worthless labs and worthless discussion sheets. This class exists to demotivate engineers with its stupidity which leads to difficulty

This man derives joy from torturing students. The class is curved competitively, with only the top 20% of the class being able to get an A. The lectures are entirely useless, since on top of hating students, Pan is entirely incompetent at teaching. The tests are riddled with mistakes -- the second midterm had an unsolvable problem.

Prof. Pan is a horrible teacher. Very nice guy and is willing to work with students to discuss and solve problems/concerns about exam grades, but his lecture slides are dense, ugly, and move way too fast. Reading the book is a necessity to gain all of the relevant information. Amazing that he's allowed to teach such a central course.

Yibin Pan is an embarrassment to the Physics department and the university. He routinely berates his students for "stupid" questions and is not conducive to a productive learning environment. When taking his course, the one phrase you will learn to hear most is "it is trivial" and "this is easy," this class is anything but. Avoid him at all costs.

Pan is not the best professor because he always modifies the slides to his liking before lectures and never uploads them early. As a result, when he goes too fast (which he often does), keeping up with his lecture is often hard.

Took Physics 201. Very hard to reach, especially in online format. Wouldn't respond to key emails(on tests, submissions, etc) until 1.5-2 weeks later. And on those replies, all tried to gaslight the student on being in the wrong. Appears that he is also hard to reach through TAs, as multiple times it wasn't until friday our TA would get an answer.

I took the Pan/Sherafati combo for physics 201 and regret it. Pan is absolutely god-awful at teaching. Everything is too "easy" or too "simple" and does not deserve an explanation in his mind, even though this is an introductory course. The tests were full of errors, and the last two were ridiculously difficult. Avoid these professors if you can.

Lectures with Pan were nothing more than him calling concepts "trivial" even if they were new or complicated concepts. He assigned lengthy multistep questions for homework that was nothing like the lecture examples or the textbook. Going to his lectures is about as much use as throwing a cup of water into the ocean to raise the sea level.

I don't think I learned a single thing from any of his lectures. He did not often explain things, even when answering questions. Seemed to just hate teaching. Not at all accommodating, never answered a single one of my emails, least clear grading criteria to date, exams were just terrible.

Professor Pan's lectures were extremely fast and hard to follow. The first few topics were fine since the contents overlapped with what I learned from high school, but it started going downhill from there. My advice for future students would be to avoid him if possible, trust the negative reviews from this website, and be prepared to self study.

The class format he has made is very dumb. Since everyone gets nearly a 100% on all of the non-exam content, your grade is entirely decided based on exam performance, which is 20 multiple choice questions per exam. Each exam you make a notesheet and try to put every formula you can find on it, since the exams are just plugging in numbers to them.

Lectures were lazy and were just slideshows with definitions and formulas. He expected everyone to just know everything because we were physics majors, so he would never explain anything he deemed simple. When asked a question, he would start answering a different, unrelated question, so it was impossible to ask meaningful questions in lecture.