MATH246H | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Clarke Safsten MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/12/2024	Safsten is a wonderful teacher. I would definitely take him again as a professor. He is able to explain complicated concepts in simple ways without losing any information. His exams are fair, and he gives you enough resources to succeed. The homework and quizzes prepare you well throughout the semester, so you don't feel like you have such a huge load you have to study for the final. He is a flexible teacher and is always willing to answer questions you may have. He makes class engaging, and he explains the applications of the concepts well. Rather than just learning the equations straightforwardly and breezing through applications of it, he makes sure you understand it. The information he teaches is very digestible. Honestly, if you do the homeworks you are pretty much set for this class. While the homework may seem a bit tedious at first, it is a great review for the quizzes, exams, and final for this class. Highly recommend him as a professor.
Clarke Safsten MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/12/2024	He was such an amazing professor! I highly recommend Safsten for any course you can take with him. He is cheerful and passionate about the material and will have plenty of fun things to talk about in class. He also does a great job at breaking down the content to make it understandable, is super open with office hours and questions, and is super accommodating in terms of meeting you. His homeworks and quizzes are very straightforward and simple as long as you pay attention in class, and he will work directly with you on any problems that you have questions on. He also grades very fairly on exams, and is very flexible about making up an missed exams. He's very personable and cares about his students, and you will not feel left behind in this class as long as you reach out to him. He really values his students and is great about making an intimidating subject feel comprehendible. It's clear he wants his students to succeed, and he is great at helping you get there.
Clarke Safsten MATH246H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/10/2024	I spent a couple of classes in Herrera and Von Petersdorff before switching into Safsten, and he is leagues better than any other diffeq professor. His exams are fair, and he runs review classes where he overviews exactly what you need to know before each exam. He also is extremely helpful in office hours, and he schedules extra office hours upon request. He is definitely one of the best professors I have had at UMD.
Guillaume Bonnet MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/21/2023	Cannot teach. At least he is nice and seems to try.
Guillaume Bonnet MATH246H Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/21/2023	Professor Bonnet sincerely wants his students to succeed. He was always very kind during office hours, and cares about his students. He does have an accent, but it doesn't interfere with understanding his lectures, and you'll get used to it pretty quickly. He's not perfect (nobody is) but in the math department it was wonderful to find a professor who is both well-versed in the content and is patient, kind, and understanding. As a class, MATH246H was very difficult, but Professor Bonnet's office hours were very helpful.
Michael Jakobson MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2023	You will end up teaching yourself. He spends the entire lecture reading off some "slides" which are actually just JPEG images he keeps on a USB and opens on MS paint on the projector. He doesn't even know how to fullscreen the window... Thick slavic accent and at times barely understandable. Never explains any of what he says, often just rambles about something that makes no sense and pretends that explanation was sufficient. Never even writes on the board or goes through practice problems, everything in the course is contained in those JPEGs. On top of that all, he grades the questions on the tests, while not particularly challenging or meant to trip you up, very harshly where the final answer is all that matters and gives very little partial credit. He regularly gives students 4-6 points on 20 point questions for minor number errors like forgetting a sign, and one time I got a 4/20 on a question for accidentally writing a t instead of an s while rewriting a step, even though I got the conceptual part correct and evaluated the integral I wrote correctly. He doesn't give + or -, so if I had gotten any lower of a score on my final I would have dropped an entire letter grade. Unless you are very confident in your math ability and self teaching, do not take Jakobson.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2022	Fantastic teacher. Very clear but moves fast (not his fault just the pace of the course). You will love him if you care about the hows and whys of math. He will not test on those deep concepts but they are a majority of the lectures' content and very valuable for good intuition. The MATLAB assignments are tedious but all of MATH246/246H have to do them. He is very friendly and extremely knowledgeable + helpful during office hours. He is also prompt in his email responses. The fast pace of the class meant that even in a 20-person class it felt just like a large class lecture but it wasn't his fault. This is definitely the hardest I've ever worked in a course but he has been extremely valuable in my A-. As for tests, he is very fair and gives tests that focus on your general understanding of concepts, not on random, useless, details. He barely takes off points for silly mistakes and couldn't care less about the right answer if your logic is right. He will, however, test you on anything covered in lecture, as is his right, but just keep that in mind.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/16/2022	Right off the bat, Francisco is a great guy. While a little quiet at times, you can tell he cares about his students, especially given that I had him for his first semester here. While he mainly reads off of the online notes, he summarizes it well in a way that will expose you to the material. Keep in mind I said “expose you to” and not “make you understand.” This class is far from easy; if you want to succeed you have to do a LOT of practice problems. Thankfully, Francisco makes it easy to access the online notes and practice problems (each practice problem has answers directly under it which helped me the most when it comes to understanding). The only issue I had, which is the main reason why I ended with a B-, is that I only started looking at the practice problems right before the exams. My main words of advice: look at the practice problems on a lesson-to-lesson basis. It will help. When it comes to exams and grading, Francisco makes his own exams and makes them generally easier than the other professors. For example, my class’ final exam was a lot easier than any other exam he assigned and it had no MATLAB question (keep in mind, there are a lot of MATLAB based homeworks that aren’t too difficult but can be time consuming especially if, like me, you have no prior coding experience. That being said, there are solutions for every MATLAB assignment somewhere online and people with coding experience are usually willing to help… don’t be afraid to get tutoring for it too, that’s something I wish I did more. In addition, the lowest graded MATLAB assignment is dropped so I just skipped the last one and took the excused 0). His grading isn’t always fair since he never takes off half a point (there were multiple instances where I got one or two points off of a 25 point exam from sign errors) but if you go into his office hours to review the exam and ask for extra points (specifically on questions where you made small errors) he will likely give you an extra point or two (I have a 100% success rate of doing this). Everything being said, I highly recommend taking differential equations with Francisco. Compared to the reviews I’ve heard of the other MATH246 professors he is the best one.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2022	Great guy, very chill. Will help if asked. However, teaches directly from Levermore notes with few examples. Grading is rough, with 80% of your grade being midterms and the final, with only 3 midterms. No curve.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/15/2022	Great teacher in my opinion, especially as a new post-doc. He teaches directly from Levermore's notes, which means that notes are available online for any missed classes. I will admit though, to understand the beauty of his teaching, you do need to appreciate math pretty deeply. The MATLAB assignments are long, but are mostly found online, and he drops your lowest MATLAB grade. His grading is very fair, and does an excellent job of testing you only on whether you remember the concept/methodology or not. Small syntatical errors don't matter as much in the class as much as more overarching concepts and general ideas.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Anonymous 12/15/2022	Reads directly off Levermore's notes, doesn't go over many example questions, strict grader as he never takes off half points (exams are 25 points). Also your grade is dependent on matlab (extremely tedious) and exams, thats it
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2022	Great dude love this guy!
Kendall Williams MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2022	Dr. Williams was a great professor, great lecturer. His exams were fair and were the same level of difficulty as the example problems we did in class, and if you do the suggested problems he assigns you should be fine. I felt very prepared for the final as he covered all the topics (I talked to some students from Long's class and he had not taught them a couple of the topics that showed up on the final). Homeworks are a bit hard but if you can do them you can definitely do the problems on the exam. His grading system is also generous, the midterms are weighted the same as the homework and MATLABs, so even if you do poorly on the midterms your grade is not at complete loss. He also drops your lowest midterm (since there are 4).
Kendall Williams MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2022	Professor Williams gave good lectures that effectively communicated the course material. My section had no discussion, so he had to squeeze in as many practice problems into lecture classes as he could. The homeworks were pretty short, so they don't have enough problems to really practice the material. I recommend doing the practice problems; they really help with studying for the exams and classes don't have enough time for practice. I was able to prepare myself for exams by going through lecture notes and doing the practice problems. Good professor, did his best in the time he had.
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting a C Anonymous 01/23/2022	Professor Zickert's MATH246H was a nightmare class. He's one of those professors that's too smart for his own good. His tests are much harder than you would expect given his homework and quizzes. But, in spite of the difficulty, he is a nice person and will give you help and credit if you show effort and improve.
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/20/2021	makes the class wayyyy harder than it needs to be. handwriting is pretty bad and he assumes the students know much more than they actually should. MATLAB projects are just busy work and take an insane amount of time. exams are also very challenging and nothing like the examples he goes over in class. that being said, i still got an A but I had to put in a lot of work
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting a C- Anonymous 10/25/2021	Zickerts teaching style just did not work for me and it might not work for you. You know what kind of class it’s gonna be when, on the first day, the professor goes straight into the content. He has terrible writing and his classes consist of him lecturing about theory without many worked out examples. I also found that the midterms were much harder than the homework he assigns and the matlabs are nothing more than busy work for an extra assignment in the grade book. Lastly, the content that he said will be covered in class on the syllabus did not match with what he taught and was on the exams. With all that being said, he is very smart and passionate about math. However, I would not recommend this professor if you aren’t a math protege and want a good grade.
Zehua Zhao MATH246H Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/18/2021	Prof. Zhao was not the best at teaching the content - he just read off of Professor Levermore's notes while teaching (which were pretty abstract and confusing). Frankly, I did not learn much from the class but the class was fairly easy in that the tests were all take-homes with plenty of times and the MATLAB projects were graded leniently. Be prepared to learn on your own.
Xuemiao Chen MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 11/12/2020	While Chen was not necessarily the best lecturer, he was fun to be around. His exams in an online environment will take you all day. However, I appreciated that he was reasonable with our exam durations and all. In person, his quizzes and exams were fair and reasonable, and so long as you read the book and do practice, you will do well. He also had a generous curve.
Xuemiao Chen MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 10/18/2020	i'm not good at math at all, but he's so helpful in office hours & is so patient when he explains things. diffeq is a difficult class, but i'd take him again if i needed to. this was for spring2020, but he transitioned to online classes very well :)
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 08/17/2019	Great professor, he really enjoys teaching the material and tries to pass on his love of math to the students. The material is hard but he teaches it well.
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting an A+ StardustGogeta 06/09/2019	Professor Zickert is fantastic. He is able to answer any and all questions you have about the material and is clearly extremely passionate about mathematics. He is friendly and hilarious, and it is impossible not to love his class. (Be warned, his handwriting might take some getting used to.)
Sarah Yeakel MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2019	Very nice and gave fair exams. Went quickly, but that was part of the course.
Javier Morales Delgado MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/24/2019	The class at first was very difficult to understand, but if you devote a lot of time to this class as well as go to a lot of office hours, you will do well because he is very willing to help the students. The goal of his class was to make everyone pass as well as make everyone do exceptionally well in the finals. He offers a lot of extra credit which is extremely helpful.
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 04/05/2019	Took this with him last semester. Really nice guy with very fair exams, he provided a past exam for each of the 3 exams to study from. Solid lecturer and was always willing to answer questions during class. Prepared you well for final exam.
Christian Zickert MATH246H Expecting a B lilym 12/15/2018	The MATLABs for this course are actually impossible, but Zickert is a very passionate professor and you can tell he loves math. He goes pretty fast in lectures but will openly answer any questions you have in office hours. He also teaches straight from the online book which makes going back over the notes a breeze. (the online book is basically a compilation of PDFs and practice problems) Make sure to do the best you can on quizzes and other graded assignments throughout the course because the Midterms are killer. As long as you study and keep up with the material, you should earn an A or B.
Richard Wentworth MATH246H Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/16/2011	I recommend against taking him if at all possible! He makes things much more complicated than they need to be by speaking and writing in very formal math language. He is not helpful at all in office hours either. He often will lose his train of thought and stand in front of the class and think to himself for several minutes, obviously wasting everyone's time. Makes many small mistakes when doing examples, and is no generous at all giving partial credit on exams and quizzes. If you don't get the correct final answer, you won't get much credit. He is just overall not a good lecturer, and doesn't seem to want students to succeed.
Michael Jakobson MATH246H Anonymous 08/18/2011	Hands down the worst math professor on campus. He blatantly does not care one bit about the material he is teaching or about his students. He avoids students when they're trying to reach him for help. He makes absolutely no effort to explain anything, his handwriting is terrible and narrated in useless comments that emphasize irrelevant or unimportant aspects while failing to build any sort of understanding. The homework he assigns often doesn't cover what's on the exam. If you have him, switch out immediately. I've had him twice for MATH246 - failed the first time and will likely fail again. He was listed as "Staff" so I didn't know what I was signing up for the second time around - I should have dropped the class the moment I saw him walk through the door.
David Hamilton MATH246H Expecting an A mreese 12/16/2010	This review is for David Hamilton, the math professor. As much as I want to say Dr. Hamilton is an inefficient lecturer, it was probably not his fault that students in 246H had to do a lot of self-study to do well in the class, as there is no discussion and tests are biweekly. Hamilton moved fairly quickly through theory, and spent a good amount of time doing example problems which illustrated concepts well and were good practice. The reason I am rating Hamilton poorly is that he did not treat students equally with respect. I wasn't doing extremely well in the first half of the course (B exam average), and whenever I asked him a question he would dismiss it by discussing something completely unrelated as if to humiliate me. On one occasion he loudly remarked that I did "not so good" on an exam when I got 85% and the average was 50%. In the second half of the course I got perfect scores on the exams and Hamilton suddenly cared about the questions I was asking. There were a couple other students whom for whatever reasons he did not favor, which he made quite clear. I'm not sure why he disliked me, because I wasn't even doing poorly. Hamilton is a decent teacher, but I do not find his behavior towards me acceptable. About the class itself: The first three Matlab assignments are longer than the ones given to the regular sections. These Matlab assignments are not at all like those assigned in Math241 (those are trivially easy compared to these). It is also quite difficult grade-wise to get an A in the class. You can mess up on one test (of 6) since the lowest is dropped, but there is no curve otherwise, and the final is weighted heavily (40%). The class average on the final was 83%. About half the class received an A for the semester.
Tobias von Petersdorff MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 05/16/2010	His exams are very straightforward, and he goes over the material on the review days before the exam. He's a very good professor and always tells you whats relevant. If you go to class you probably wont even have to study for the exams. He will also drop and exam if you need it
Michael Jakobson MATH246H Expecting an A fiddlerkrt 01/22/2009	Tests and quizzes aren't very difficult as long as you know what you are doing. Lectures are extremely boring and the matlab assignments are pretty time consuming. The class overall is not too bad. You should have no trouble getting an A or a B.

Clarke Safsten
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/12/2024

Safsten is a wonderful teacher. I would definitely take him again as a professor. He is able to explain complicated concepts in simple ways without losing any information. His exams are fair, and he gives you enough resources to succeed. The homework and quizzes prepare you well throughout the semester, so you don't feel like you have such a huge load you have to study for the final. He is a flexible teacher and is always willing to answer questions you may have. He makes class engaging, and he explains the applications of the concepts well. Rather than just learning the equations straightforwardly and breezing through applications of it, he makes sure you understand it. The information he teaches is very digestible. Honestly, if you do the homeworks you are pretty much set for this class. While the homework may seem a bit tedious at first, it is a great review for the quizzes, exams, and final for this class. Highly recommend him as a professor.

Clarke Safsten
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/12/2024

He was such an amazing professor! I highly recommend Safsten for any course you can take with him. He is cheerful and passionate about the material and will have plenty of fun things to talk about in class. He also does a great job at breaking down the content to make it understandable, is super open with office hours and questions, and is super accommodating in terms of meeting you. His homeworks and quizzes are very straightforward and simple as long as you pay attention in class, and he will work directly with you on any problems that you have questions on. He also grades very fairly on exams, and is very flexible about making up an missed exams. He's very personable and cares about his students, and you will not feel left behind in this class as long as you reach out to him. He really values his students and is great about making an intimidating subject feel comprehendible. It's clear he wants his students to succeed, and he is great at helping you get there.

Clarke Safsten
MATH246H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/10/2024

I spent a couple of classes in Herrera and Von Petersdorff before switching into Safsten, and he is leagues better than any other diffeq professor. His exams are fair, and he runs review classes where he overviews exactly what you need to know before each exam. He also is extremely helpful in office hours, and he schedules extra office hours upon request. He is definitely one of the best professors I have had at UMD.

Guillaume Bonnet
MATH246H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/21/2023

Cannot teach. At least he is nice and seems to try.

Guillaume Bonnet
MATH246H

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/21/2023

Professor Bonnet sincerely wants his students to succeed. He was always very kind during office hours, and cares about his students. He does have an accent, but it doesn't interfere with understanding his lectures, and you'll get used to it pretty quickly. He's not perfect (nobody is) but in the math department it was wonderful to find a professor who is both well-versed in the content and is patient, kind, and understanding. As a class, MATH246H was very difficult, but Professor Bonnet's office hours were very helpful.

Michael Jakobson
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/14/2023

You will end up teaching yourself. He spends the entire lecture reading off some "slides" which are actually just JPEG images he keeps on a USB and opens on MS paint on the projector. He doesn't even know how to fullscreen the window... Thick slavic accent and at times barely understandable. Never explains any of what he says, often just rambles about something that makes no sense and pretends that explanation was sufficient. Never even writes on the board or goes through practice problems, everything in the course is contained in those JPEGs. On top of that all, he grades the questions on the tests, while not particularly challenging or meant to trip you up, very harshly where the final answer is all that matters and gives very little partial credit. He regularly gives students 4-6 points on 20 point questions for minor number errors like forgetting a sign, and one time I got a 4/20 on a question for accidentally writing a t instead of an s while rewriting a step, even though I got the conceptual part correct and evaluated the integral I wrote correctly. He doesn't give + or -, so if I had gotten any lower of a score on my final I would have dropped an entire letter grade. Unless you are very confident in your math ability and self teaching, do not take Jakobson.

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/18/2022

Fantastic teacher. Very clear but moves fast (not his fault just the pace of the course). You will love him if you care about the hows and whys of math. He will not test on those deep concepts but they are a majority of the lectures' content and very valuable for good intuition. The MATLAB assignments are tedious but all of MATH246/246H have to do them. He is very friendly and extremely knowledgeable + helpful during office hours. He is also prompt in his email responses. The fast pace of the class meant that even in a 20-person class it felt just like a large class lecture but it wasn't his fault. This is definitely the hardest I've ever worked in a course but he has been extremely valuable in my A-. As for tests, he is very fair and gives tests that focus on your general understanding of concepts, not on random, useless, details. He barely takes off points for silly mistakes and couldn't care less about the right answer if your logic is right. He will, however, test you on anything covered in lecture, as is his right, but just keep that in mind.

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/16/2022

Right off the bat, Francisco is a great guy. While a little quiet at times, you can tell he cares about his students, especially given that I had him for his first semester here. While he mainly reads off of the online notes, he summarizes it well in a way that will expose you to the material. Keep in mind I said “expose you to” and not “make you understand.” This class is far from easy; if you want to succeed you have to do a LOT of practice problems. Thankfully, Francisco makes it easy to access the online notes and practice problems (each practice problem has answers directly under it which helped me the most when it comes to understanding). The only issue I had, which is the main reason why I ended with a B-, is that I only started looking at the practice problems right before the exams. My main words of advice: look at the practice problems on a lesson-to-lesson basis. It will help. When it comes to exams and grading, Francisco makes his own exams and makes them generally easier than the other professors. For example, my class’ final exam was a lot easier than any other exam he assigned and it had no MATLAB question (keep in mind, there are a lot of MATLAB based homeworks that aren’t too difficult but can be time consuming especially if, like me, you have no prior coding experience. That being said, there are solutions for every MATLAB assignment somewhere online and people with coding experience are usually willing to help… don’t be afraid to get tutoring for it too, that’s something I wish I did more. In addition, the lowest graded MATLAB assignment is dropped so I just skipped the last one and took the excused 0). His grading isn’t always fair since he never takes off half a point (there were multiple instances where I got one or two points off of a 25 point exam from sign errors) but if you go into his office hours to review the exam and ask for extra points (specifically on questions where you made small errors) he will likely give you an extra point or two (I have a 100% success rate of doing this). Everything being said, I highly recommend taking differential equations with Francisco. Compared to the reviews I’ve heard of the other MATH246 professors he is the best one.

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/16/2022

Great guy, very chill. Will help if asked. However, teaches directly from Levermore notes with few examples. Grading is rough, with 80% of your grade being midterms and the final, with only 3 midterms. No curve.

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/15/2022

Great teacher in my opinion, especially as a new post-doc. He teaches directly from Levermore's notes, which means that notes are available online for any missed classes. I will admit though, to understand the beauty of his teaching, you do need to appreciate math pretty deeply. The MATLAB assignments are long, but are mostly found online, and he drops your lowest MATLAB grade. His grading is very fair, and does an excellent job of testing you only on whether you remember the concept/methodology or not. Small syntatical errors don't matter as much in the class as much as more overarching concepts and general ideas.

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Anonymous
12/15/2022

Reads directly off Levermore's notes, doesn't go over many example questions, strict grader as he never takes off half points (exams are 25 points). Also your grade is dependent on matlab (extremely tedious) and exams, thats it

Francisco Arana Herrera
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/06/2022

Great dude love this guy!

Kendall Williams
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/21/2022

Dr. Williams was a great professor, great lecturer. His exams were fair and were the same level of difficulty as the example problems we did in class, and if you do the suggested problems he assigns you should be fine. I felt very prepared for the final as he covered all the topics (I talked to some students from Long's class and he had not taught them a couple of the topics that showed up on the final). Homeworks are a bit hard but if you can do them you can definitely do the problems on the exam. His grading system is also generous, the midterms are weighted the same as the homework and MATLABs, so even if you do poorly on the midterms your grade is not at complete loss. He also drops your lowest midterm (since there are 4).

Kendall Williams
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/10/2022

Professor Williams gave good lectures that effectively communicated the course material. My section had no discussion, so he had to squeeze in as many practice problems into lecture classes as he could. The homeworks were pretty short, so they don't have enough problems to really practice the material. I recommend doing the practice problems; they really help with studying for the exams and classes don't have enough time for practice. I was able to prepare myself for exams by going through lecture notes and doing the practice problems. Good professor, did his best in the time he had.

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting a C
Anonymous
01/23/2022

Professor Zickert's MATH246H was a nightmare class. He's one of those professors that's too smart for his own good. His tests are much harder than you would expect given his homework and quizzes. But, in spite of the difficulty, he is a nice person and will give you help and credit if you show effort and improve.

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/20/2021

makes the class wayyyy harder than it needs to be. handwriting is pretty bad and he assumes the students know much more than they actually should. MATLAB projects are just busy work and take an insane amount of time. exams are also very challenging and nothing like the examples he goes over in class. that being said, i still got an A but I had to put in a lot of work

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
10/25/2021

Zickerts teaching style just did not work for me and it might not work for you. You know what kind of class it’s gonna be when, on the first day, the professor goes straight into the content. He has terrible writing and his classes consist of him lecturing about theory without many worked out examples. I also found that the midterms were much harder than the homework he assigns and the matlabs are nothing more than busy work for an extra assignment in the grade book. Lastly, the content that he said will be covered in class on the syllabus did not match with what he taught and was on the exams. With all that being said, he is very smart and passionate about math. However, I would not recommend this professor if you aren’t a math protege and want a good grade.

Zehua Zhao
MATH246H

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
05/18/2021

Prof. Zhao was not the best at teaching the content - he just read off of Professor Levermore's notes while teaching (which were pretty abstract and confusing). Frankly, I did not learn much from the class but the class was fairly easy in that the tests were all take-homes with plenty of times and the MATLAB projects were graded leniently. Be prepared to learn on your own.

Xuemiao Chen
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
11/12/2020

While Chen was not necessarily the best lecturer, he was fun to be around. His exams in an online environment will take you all day. However, I appreciated that he was reasonable with our exam durations and all. In person, his quizzes and exams were fair and reasonable, and so long as you read the book and do practice, you will do well. He also had a generous curve.

Xuemiao Chen
MATH246H

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
10/18/2020

i'm not good at math at all, but he's so helpful in office hours & is so patient when he explains things. diffeq is a difficult class, but i'd take him again if i needed to. this was for spring2020, but he transitioned to online classes very well :)

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/17/2019

Great professor, he really enjoys teaching the material and tries to pass on his love of math to the students. The material is hard but he teaches it well.

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting an A+
StardustGogeta
06/09/2019

Professor Zickert is fantastic. He is able to answer any and all questions you have about the material and is clearly extremely passionate about mathematics. He is friendly and hilarious, and it is impossible not to love his class. (Be warned, his handwriting might take some getting used to.)

Sarah Yeakel
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/25/2019

Very nice and gave fair exams. Went quickly, but that was part of the course.

Javier Morales Delgado
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/24/2019

The class at first was very difficult to understand, but if you devote a lot of time to this class as well as go to a lot of office hours, you will do well because he is very willing to help the students. The goal of his class was to make everyone pass as well as make everyone do exceptionally well in the finals. He offers a lot of extra credit which is extremely helpful.

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
04/05/2019

Took this with him last semester. Really nice guy with very fair exams, he provided a past exam for each of the 3 exams to study from. Solid lecturer and was always willing to answer questions during class. Prepared you well for final exam.

Christian Zickert
MATH246H

Expecting a B
lilym
12/15/2018

The MATLABs for this course are actually impossible, but Zickert is a very passionate professor and you can tell he loves math. He goes pretty fast in lectures but will openly answer any questions you have in office hours. He also teaches straight from the online book which makes going back over the notes a breeze. (the online book is basically a compilation of PDFs and practice problems) Make sure to do the best you can on quizzes and other graded assignments throughout the course because the Midterms are killer. As long as you study and keep up with the material, you should earn an A or B.

Richard Wentworth
MATH246H

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/16/2011

I recommend against taking him if at all possible! He makes things much more complicated than they need to be by speaking and writing in very formal math language. He is not helpful at all in office hours either. He often will lose his train of thought and stand in front of the class and think to himself for several minutes, obviously wasting everyone's time. Makes many small mistakes when doing examples, and is no generous at all giving partial credit on exams and quizzes. If you don't get the correct final answer, you won't get much credit. He is just overall not a good lecturer, and doesn't seem to want students to succeed.

Michael Jakobson
MATH246H

Anonymous
08/18/2011

Hands down the worst math professor on campus. He blatantly does not care one bit about the material he is teaching or about his students. He avoids students when they're trying to reach him for help. He makes absolutely no effort to explain anything, his handwriting is terrible and narrated in useless comments that emphasize irrelevant or unimportant aspects while failing to build any sort of understanding. The homework he assigns often doesn't cover what's on the exam. If you have him, switch out immediately. I've had him twice for MATH246 - failed the first time and will likely fail again. He was listed as "Staff" so I didn't know what I was signing up for the second time around - I should have dropped the class the moment I saw him walk through the door.

David Hamilton
MATH246H

Expecting an A
mreese
12/16/2010

This review is for David Hamilton, the math professor. As much as I want to say Dr. Hamilton is an inefficient lecturer, it was probably not his fault that students in 246H had to do a lot of self-study to do well in the class, as there is no discussion and tests are biweekly. Hamilton moved fairly quickly through theory, and spent a good amount of time doing example problems which illustrated concepts well and were good practice. The reason I am rating Hamilton poorly is that he did not treat students equally with respect. I wasn't doing extremely well in the first half of the course (B exam average), and whenever I asked him a question he would dismiss it by discussing something completely unrelated as if to humiliate me. On one occasion he loudly remarked that I did "not so good" on an exam when I got 85% and the average was 50%. In the second half of the course I got perfect scores on the exams and Hamilton suddenly cared about the questions I was asking. There were a couple other students whom for whatever reasons he did not favor, which he made quite clear. I'm not sure why he disliked me, because I wasn't even doing poorly. Hamilton is a decent teacher, but I do not find his behavior towards me acceptable. About the class itself: The first three Matlab assignments are longer than the ones given to the regular sections. These Matlab assignments are not at all like those assigned in Math241 (those are trivially easy compared to these). It is also quite difficult grade-wise to get an A in the class. You can mess up on one test (of 6) since the lowest is dropped, but there is no curve otherwise, and the final is weighted heavily (40%). The class average on the final was 83%. About half the class received an A for the semester.

Tobias von Petersdorff
MATH246H

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/16/2010

His exams are very straightforward, and he goes over the material on the review days before the exam. He's a very good professor and always tells you whats relevant. If you go to class you probably wont even have to study for the exams. He will also drop and exam if you need it

Michael Jakobson
MATH246H

Expecting an A
fiddlerkrt
01/22/2009

Tests and quizzes aren't very difficult as long as you know what you are doing. Lectures are extremely boring and the matlab assignments are pretty time consuming. The class overall is not too bad. You should have no trouble getting an A or a B.

Reviews for MATH246H