Worst professor ever... not approachable at all and shouts at students for no reason... teaching style is ineffective

this is for math 173A, couldnt find the class from the list.
this class is for actuary exam C. material is not so hard, comparing with MLC. Like other said, he has his own teaching style, which is unique. He spent more time on definitions and concepts (about 10%,for other classes like 172A and 174A maybe just 5% lol)
grading:
Two Mid-term exam 45%

Final exam 45%
Quizzes, Attendance,
Participation 10%
(like all his classes, another extra 5%)

Let me just start off by saying that I'm not rating Kong based on his overall effectiveness as a college lecturer, but rather based on how effective he is at helping you pass the FM exam. First of all, this guy doesn't lecture; he spends five to ten minutes at most talking about a new topic (five minutes on bonds, five minutes on amortization, and so forth). After his brief talk, he passes out a stack of questions from the FM exams, and solves them one by one, again with very little explanation beyond the basic steps. That was pretty much the structure of the entire class up until the last two weeks, when he spent a lot of time showing us Excel sheets/graphs about call/put options, and interest rate swaps. (However, he still never really talked about what swaps and options are beyond the basic definitions and ideas.) Knowing that, the obvious strategy you should adopt when taking his class is to read about the underlying topics outside of lecture, and use the lecture ONLY for problem solving strategies. Getting back to my first point, if I were to evaluate him as a typical college professor, then he would be average at best, because students clearly have to spend a lot of time in addition to the lectures to get all the concepts. However, let me remind you that any young actuary will say that the rule of thumb is 100 hours of studying per 1 hour of test time (that's 300 hours of studying for the FM). After taking Kong's class, I'm relatively confident that the time I spent on his class throughout the quarter (less than a hundred hours) plus a few extra hours will be thoroughly enough to pass the exam. In fact I know of people who already passed the exam after taking Kong's class, having studied no where near the recommended number of hours. This is because Kong provided so many tricks to help approach all the different kinds of questions, and whether he explains each of his brilliant tricks or not (he doesn't), you will have all the tricks on your notebook at the end of the quarter. That is why in the end, I still must say he is a good professor, because he does what he is suppose to do, which is help students pass the actuary exams.

A quick summary of the grading scheme of the actual class: 20% quizzes, participation, attendance, and project (5% each), 30% midterm, 50% final. His tests (10 questions each) are conceptual on par or perhaps easier (but longer) than FM exam questions. He tells students the exact topic(s) each of the questions will be on before the test. His midterm average was 56%, and I dare say the final average was no better (because it was slightly harder). In conclusion, if you want a typical upper division math class, then run far far away with your proofs tucked between your legs. But if you truly are interested in being an actuary, and you want to get a taste of what studying for the SOA exams are like, then there's nothing quite as good as a Kong quarter.

Kong has a unique teaching style that you must adapt to. He really cares about the students though. He learned all of our names and faces by the first week or two. He also asked us to send him questions by email and he would respond to the whole class so everyone could get help.
He likes to challenge his students, and you must put in the effort to do well. Do extra practice and make sure to do the homework assignments (not collected). He always makes his test questions harder than what he gives in class- you really have to apply your knowledge.

He is a nice guy. Definitely challenging. But, if you put in the effort, you will learn a lot.

This class was a true nightmare. I'd say 1/3 of the class was getting 100% in the class while the rest of us had NO clue what was going on. When more than one person is getting 199% on the midterms but the rest of the class is failing, something is wrong. The book was useless because he refused to use the equations in the book. This class if not for people who want to learn new material, it is for people who already know the material and want to get an easy A