Jonathan Fernandes

This professor has taught: BIOI601, DATA100, DATA400, DATA601, MATH111, MATH140, MATH141, MATH141H, MATH214, MATH246, MATH246H, MATH401, MATH461, MSML601, SPHL610, STAT100, STAT400, STAT401, STAT410, STAT420, STAT498J, SURV410, SURV420

Sort By:

Information	Review
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/09/2024	[Taken Spring 2024] Fernandes is a decent lecturer and was very approachable, but STAT400 is not a course to slack off in. It will become your most time-consuming course (unless you're taking CMSC351 at the same time) when approaching the final because of how Fernandes writes his finals. Fernandes is a very decent teacher, with lectures being comprehensive, but his notes don't really help unless you're sick and missed a lecture. The course itself is light at the start, but becomes increasingly heavier as time goes on, with the material AFTER Exam 3 (which you had 2 weeks to learn) being very much the heaviest. Before we talk about the final, let's talk about everything else. Gradewise, you have: 10 Homeworks (20%) 10 Online Quizzes [Not anymore, it seems] (10%) 3 R-Projects (10%) 3 Midterms (35%, total) Final (25%) The homeworks were rather easy, though one of them required knowledge of what a double integral is (which you don't really need Calc 3 for in all honesty). Each homework is easy enough to figure out using online resources and Fernandes' notes, but do require thinking. The quizzes were honestly hard and eventually turned into a guessing game since you were given two attempts for each quiz. Fernandes gave small but significant curves to our total homework and quiz grades, helping students who may have hurt their grades with them. The R-Projects were the easiest but most tedious part of the class for many people, including me, especially because it didn't really help us with anything. Moving on to the exams, Fernandes gave us good practice exam problems and material that helped immensely with exams. I will say that I didn't fully use it for the first exam, leading to me getting a 51, but they were able to get me As on both exam 2 and 3. Fernandes also replaced your lowest exam with the final grade percentage if it was greater than the lowest exam's score, which is the reason I have an A in the class. However, the reason I am writing this and giving Fernandes such a low score is due to the final. First off, 50% of the final was comprised of the info we had learned in the last two weeks of the course, with the rest being cumulative. The problem with this is the final two weeks of the course contain the hardest concepts out of the entire class and the lectures for the last two weeks were the least comprehensible by far. Second, he threw a curveball question that was buried in the final practice questions and which we have done only once on quiz 2. Third, the list of exam questions he gave were so long that I couldn't even finish it after 20 hours of studying, with my peers giving up long before I had. Fourth, one of the questions we HAD only seen on the practice questions and no one knew what the hell we were supposed to do with it. All in all, this accumulated in an average final score of... 54%, the upper quartile being 68% and the lower quartile being 41%. This absolutely RUINED many people's grades. I knew a guy who walked into the exam hall with a 97% and ended with an 84% in the class after the final exam curve, which was only 20 points off of the 210 point final. I knew people who ended with a C in what should've been an A course for them. My only saving grade was me studying for so long that I pulled off an 83% (which would've been an average grade in nearly every other STAT course besides Jiang's). If you plan to take the course with Fernandes, make sure you're focusing on the final throughout the course, as impossible as that seems. [And if you're taking it right now, good luck, you'll need every bit of it.]
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2024	Jonathan's lectures don't really relate to the homework or exams. With that being said, it is not too hard to get an A in this class. The exams are very similar to the practice problems he gives, and the TAs will go over the homework in discussion. We had weekly quizzes in discussion but they weren't too hard and my TA always went over how to do the problems before the quizzes. Honestly shoutout Mengting I love you thank you for getting me through this class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B- Anonymous 11/30/2024	I understand the frustrations towards Fernandes as I did not expect to put a ton of time into his class, and admittedly, I've struggled. His lecturing is okay, but the rest of his class is generally organized. The homework is covered in discussion + weekly quizzes, but those can take a really long time. His practice problems will prepare you for the midterms, which aren't bad, but it can be easy to mix different things up or forget formulas. For some reason, we did not have any R projects this semester. I don't know if that'll stay the case. Mengting has been super helpful as a TA. Sana and Mestiyage are easier options for STAT400, but Fernandes isn't bad until the final exam. Just don't expect the class to be super easy. If you struggle or don't get the material, seek help from the TAs or Fernandes. It'll hurt your grade if you don't. LEARN Double Integration and PREPARE a lot for your final.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/27/2024	This class is the best! If you go to class and discussion, do the HWs before the quizzes, and do the study guide before the exams you are set up for success. Ask for help if you need and dont fall behind. He is also super nice and personable and could not recommend taking STAT400 with him more!!!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 11/20/2024	hes my goat everyone giving him shit deadass just has a skill issue at this point do his homeworks, study for quizes and this is the easiest A of your life
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 11/14/2024	I shouldn't have listened to everyone telling me this was a free A. No class has ever made me feel more stupid and miserable walking into every lecture after the first month and made me feel worthless as a student. I thought his teaching was ok, which is why he isn't 1 star, and the TAs covered homework problems in discussion, but I feel completely blindsided by his class. People told me only calc 1 material was used, but he uses calc 2 & 3 in his class as well. Please take someone else if you can. It's close but I'm probably going to fail because his final exam averages have been really low.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/13/2024	Awful teacher, can't teach and gives exams that don't test what we learned
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 10/29/2024	Took STAT420 and MATH410 at the same time, Fernandes is honestly the GOAT for any STAT class. His exams are mirror copies of the homework, and will NEVER give you anything on the exam that you haven't seen before. He spends a lot of time helping you look at the "bigger picture", and helps you solidify your understanding of the statistical process. He's great. Class is trivial.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/05/2024	Pretty bad lecturer but his exams are copy pasted from the study guides he gives. He says he acres and wants students to learn not just get a good grade but it often felt like he didn't care. Unresponsive to emails at times and can be dismissive if he does respond.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 09/01/2024	Evidently, he's gotten worse over the years, based off more recent past reviews & my experience before switching to a different professor after the first week. The last decent thing about his course (online quizzes) has been taken away in Fall '24. Instead, you have one in-person every discussion. I know that isn't so bad by itself but add that on top of the fact that he has the worst R projects and apparently a horrible final (again, see reviews from the last couple semesters). His first "homework" was actually a quiz that you complete in the first discussion instead of getting a week to do, as claimed in the syllabus. This was also the second day of the semester, so it was a truly wonderful start to the class. In addition to blindsiding us, the quiz had nothing to do with statistics, and instead included Calc 3 content. Calc 3 is not a prerequisite for this course and was not covered whatsoever in lecture. My TA wasted half the discussion time making everyone introduce themselves instead of letting us do the problems we were about to be graded on and also incorrectly stated that this quiz was not going to be graded for accuracy. Newsflash: it was. Fernandes just shrugged off how misleading and sabotaging he and this TA had been and even doubled down by claiming he was being lenient. Yikes.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 08/11/2024	The course is well laid out, if you do the work, it is easy to get the grade you want. I am saying this as someone taking statistics for the first time. The exams are hard, especially the final, and talking with other folks, this is something that has changed for Fernandes' classes over the last two years. However a practice guide was provided for all the midterms and the final (had between 20-36 questions), and he worked out EVERY problem on it in class and the review session he had right before the exams. If you came to class and kept up with the class notes this would be obvious. If you think this is going to be an easy A in an overloaded schedule, I suggest you not take this class with Fernandes.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 08/08/2024	Awful Professor, comes off as arrogant and stubborn. Makes the learning process unnecessarily hard by assigning R projects (which don't come with any supplemental resources). Often makes mistakes on quizzes, making it difficult to achieve high scores without some sort of trial and error with the multiple tries Overall this class felt like a lot of hard work but without any payoff. The homework was mostly copying down TA solutions, and he isn't the strongest lecturer. He provides handwritten notes that are written on the spot, making them disorganized and unreliable. Overall am surprised how he still has 3 stars, but recent reviews have accurately described his teaching for stat400
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/01/2024	STUDY A LOT FOR THE FINAL!! I had a 97 in the class walking into the final and walked out with a B+. HW's take a long time, but TA's go over them in discussion. My TA was bad and only went over like 2 of the problems each class so I just showed up to another TA's section. Exams are like the practice exams, but there is no answer key provided for the practices, which makes it harder. The averages for exams 1, 2, and 3 were all above 90% and then the average for the final was a 115/210 (55% - raw score). The prof only curved by 10% so the average ended up being a 115/190 (65%), on an exam worth 25% of your grade :/ Overall, midterms aren't bad, I got away with just studying the night before - but DO NOT do that for the final!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/29/2024	This class was basically a disaster. He is not a good professor but will have good reviews because his classes are easy. simple as that. you will not learn much in this class. Exams are straightforward enough, but his refusal to go through sample problems is so annoying and makes exams much harder than they could be. The final exam was an absolute disaster. Lowest average I have ever seen. This is because he makes the majority of the final consist of problems from the last few weeks of class, which were so so so much harder than the rest of the course. I cannot stress enough about how bad the final was. He curved it a lot and adding overall course curves, but this does not help the feeling of complete despair going into and during the final exam. Take him if you just want to get through this class because its required, but dont expect to learn much or feel like you ever have a good grasp of the content. Really frustrating that reviews are so high for a guy like fernandes.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/28/2024	Overrated professor who doesn't care. Makes the learning process harder than it should be
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/26/2024	i believe i should preface this by saying that i took this class during a very heavy semester, and entered with no prior knowledge of statistics. that out of the way, i think that while fernandes tries to make his class as accessible as possible (livestreamed + recorded lecture, real-time access to his notes, and quizzes being online so the discussion session can be used for going over homework), his overall approach to this class makes it frustrating. in my opinion, he's not a great lecturer; he spends most of his time lecturing about theory, and trying to make concepts "intuitive" by deriving various formulas (which i personally thought was unnecessary, since these formulas he derived were always provided for us on exams). his homework is then applications of the concepts he taught in class, and the ta's are supposed to go over them in discussion. i'm not sure if this was my ta using weird approaches to problems or just the difficulty of fernandes's homework, but many problems required rather unintuitive tricks that for me, made them more memorization based than actual knowledge based. he also didn't post answer keys for any of his homeworks; his ta's created them, but the quality of them varied (some were incomplete, were uploaded only a few days before the exam, or skipped many steps without explanation). he also provided a sample exam for each midterm (usually just homework problems with slightly different numbers) that he didn't provide answer keys for, but since most questions came from the homework, that wasn't a huge issue. it only became an issue for the final exam, which had a 50% average pre-curve and a 60% average post-curve. in the days leading up to the final, the piazza was filled with questions about different problems on the sample final exam, almost all of which were left unanswered (fernandes tends to be unresponsive via both email and piazza). besides homework and exams, we also had 3 r projects which were tedious but straightforward, and 10 online quizzes which were pretty easy (and you get 2 attempts for) all in all, if you have prior experience with stats, fernandes is a great option (he ended up curving out homework grades and quiz grades), but if stat400 will be your first stats class, i would be careful with taking him
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/24/2024	Just bad in every way. If you actually want to learn something, don't waste your time.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 05/22/2024	Fernandes made this class harder than it should have been. He was also very unresponsive to students, not enough office hours, you did not learn anything from the hws as the Tas just gave you the answers. While the exam distribution was good I would not recommend taking him. The final exam had 34 questions to review, way too long. Average on the final was like a 60. Take someone else. Trust me.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/22/2024	I'm very conflicted about my reflection on Dr. Fernandes. On one hand, overall, the course was pretty fair all things considered. On another, of all the classes I took this semester (3rd year comp e major credit-wise, so I'm not exactly taking trivial courses), this one was the one to seem never-ending. Ultimately, my rating leans slightly more positively, though it doesn't necessarily correspond with a recommendation. First of the good in this class, this course is not one to hide class material. Lectures are recorded, lecture notes are readily available, and TA's practically give away some homework answers during discussion. Of these, I only really utilized the lecture notes, as I didn't find the lectures to be very useful, and I wasn't going to my 8 AM discussion if I didn't need to. I mostly learn by struggling anyways, so this may have been to my personal benefit, though I do recommend getting a discussion time you'll actually go to if you have the choice of time (I didn't). The three semester exams were pretty easy all things considered. There's built-in leniency on the exams, which led to fairly high grade distributions, especially for the first two exams. The exams may have been a bit too easy in hindsight, especially compared to the final. On top of that, we were given a review sheet for each exam, in which 80% of the questions on the actual exam were slightly modified versions of the review sheet questions. Finally, we were curved a fairly decent amount in the end of the semester. Originally, total homework and quiz scores were capped at 95%, and after the final, they were further capped to 92%. If you did better on the final than your lowest semester exam, your final score replaced that exam. The final was originally capped at 200 points, but it was further capped to 190. This is among some of the most generous curving I've been made aware of in any of my classes. Now, after all that, this class probably seems great. I have three major reasons why my fairly positive rating doesn't come with an emphatic recommendation. We had 3 R projects throughout the semester, with 1 being due each month starting in the middle of March. All of these are miserable. It doesn't help that R is my least favorite language to write, but even disregarding that, the assignments are overly long and didn't help me understand the content of this course in the slightest. I do think that simulation is an important part of understanding statistics, but I got infinitely more out of making crude Python scripts to verify my homework answers than I ever did doing the R projects. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's because most of the assignments were so mindless. When they weren't mindless, it's because I was trying to make the plots not look like garbage, as the plotting functions are horrendous to use, and the default plotting behavior generates unappealing results. In short, when I had to think, it was entirely on the wrong thing. Since the assignments were so long, only these frustrations really stuck out in my head, and everything else faded out of my brain as soon as I was done each R assignment. Speaking of that, the assignment distribution throughout the semester made the class seem never-ending. Most weeks, a homework was due Thursday, and a quiz on ELMS took place on Friday. The first R project was due on the Wednesday before spring break, the second one was due the Thursday after the second exam, and the third one was due on the last day of classes. This assignment structure was a pain throughout the entire semester, particularly in the beginning and end. In the beginning, the assignments took unreasonably long for no reason, especially considering that I had taken CMSC250 before this class, and the first third of this class's content is a repeat of the last third of that class. In the end, I was just about ready to be done, but the assignments just kept coming, culminating in both the last homework and the last R project being due on the last day of classes (this homework was the only one on estimators, which is a problem I'll cover shortly). There was never a break. For a majority of the semester, we didn't know that our total homework score would be capped at all, so for all we knew there was no leniency to slack on a single one. It probably doesn't sound that bad here, and it probably isn't if you're sane. However, I took 15 credits of STEM classes this semester, and this is one of two classes which kept me tired across the entire semester. Finally, the final. Oh boy the final. We were actually given the most resources to study from, with a supplied review sheet and the Fall 2023 final exam. I didn't find either of these very helpful, since the former was far too long given that I had 4 other finals and a project due during finals week, and neither were given answer keys to let us know if we were in the right direction. None of the past review sheets had answer keys, but that was mostly fine, as it was pretty easy to check whether we were doing things right for the content in those exams. Meanwhile, much of the final was on estimators, which we already didn't have much practice with, so I found that I didn't really know much of what I was doing with regards to the overall topic going into the final. I was mostly able to do the problems relating to homework 10, but there was a question on the final on something I literally haven't seen before the moment I was taking it. Some of it I was figuring out literally while taking the final, and frankly it was miracle I got the score I got. The rest of the class wasn't so lucky, as the mean was 60% even after the point cap was lowered from 200 to 190. Overall, know what you're getting into when taking Dr. Fernandes for STAT400. While things are overall pretty fair, the class nearly drove me mad this semester.
Jonathan Fernandes DATA400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/21/2024	He is very nice and generous, but his curriculum and notes could be structured better.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/20/2024	As a person, this guy cares about his students and tries his best to make sure everybody succeeds. He deserves two stars solely based on his teaching, but I gave +1 because I failed the final but passed the class with a B- lol, generous curve. As a professor, explains topics pretty poorly/confusingly. Hard to follow at times. Exams are usually fair, practice exams are very (very!) helpful.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A- DenialWhammy 05/19/2024	Very interesting and funny professor in class! I really enjoyed his jokes, and he made the content quite interesting. I do wish he spent a little less time working on STAT410 material in the beginning of the semester, but other than that, I don't really see many problems with this professor!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2024	Incredibly mediocre. I appreciate how flexible with the course structure he is (Live Zoom recordings is great) but man this guy cannot organize a class for his life. It is genuinely so painful taking STAT420 with him since every homework or R project had numerous errors on them that were fixed a day before the deadline. He also just does not keep his word on anything. For the last 7 weeks of the semester, he kept talking about how he was going to release quizzes and then just forgot to and never did. He also honestly doesn't seem that familiar with the material himself and as a result does not teach this material in a way that is easily understood. Almost everyone in the class genuinely had almost no idea what he was talking about towards the end of the semester. The saving grace for him is the fact that his exams are so ridiculously easy. If you can do the homework and devote time to memorizing the solutions before the exams you're pretty much guaranteed an A in this class. I would take Fernandes again if you don't really care about the material and just want an easy finish to your math degree. Otherwise, if you're looking to get an easy A, this is probably as easy as it gets for your 1-year sequence in your math degree.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/14/2024	Wasn't interested in the material so this class was boring and tedious. Homeworks were long and required much more work than I had expected for this class. However Fernandes is extremely generous with grading.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT100 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Makes a simple gen-ed class for mostly non-STEM majors as hard as possible. He curves exams by 5 points, but it is not enough. A LOT of homework, with crazy deadlines (due 2 days after assigning). We had 3-4 homework a week. He also makes you learn a programming language called R, but doesn't let you use R for the exams. He has the curse of knowledge, he lectures like students have the same understanding of statistic as him, a PhD. This class was unnecessarily stressful. He also sends out exam reviews that look nothing like the exams, he loves to throw curveballs. You will have to heavily rely on TAs to understand concepts. He did allow students to do missing assignments on Pearson, so that one nice thing he did.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Lectures were barely useful and slow paced. The home works and weekly quizzes had questions of which there were no examples gone over in class. He gives broad strokes of a concept and then expects you to figure out hard questions. In general he takes this class way too seriously for just a major requirement. Disclaimer: writing this review because I wasn't allowed to turn in a homework late, so I am a bit mad, keep that in mind.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT100 Expecting an A- Terpgrader_ 05/10/2024	Let me start this by saying Prof. Fernandes is a great guy, super chill, mildly funny, and jerky like most math professors can come off as. With that being said... based off his teaching style and behavior during content dissemination, it became clear to me that he has never taught a 100 level course before, which makes sense as most of his previous reviews were of his STAT400 level courses. STAT400 and STAT100 are not the same thing, one is a early intro class and another has students that know what their doing, because he has only ever taught in that environment he reflects that in his teaching of STAT100. He's not bad but you'll definitely have to take advantage of your resources.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2024	Pros: 1) Lenient grading 2) Exam questions are mostly from homeworks and quizzes. 3) He's funny in lectures, and you can see that he's passionate about teaching. 4) Records lectures, and also hosts them live on Zoom. 5) Has lots of office hours. Cons: 1) If you can't do a problem on one homework, you're kinda screwed because he keeps asking you that for the rest of the course. So be sure to go to office hour and clarify it. 2) Extremely disorganized about uploading assignments. Made most of them due in the last few weeks which made it very stressful. Arrived late to class for most of the semester. 3) Speedran through some of the big topics of the course towards the end of the semester while spending a good chunk at the beginning reviewing Stat 410 material. 4)
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 05/07/2024	Much of the content that he goes over during lecture has nothing to do with the homework and exams. His TA's do a lot of the teaching. He has no empathy for his students and puts a facade that he really knows what he is doing when in reality he doesn't know at all.
Jonathan Fernandes DATA100 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/07/2024	Learned more in discussion then I did in lectures. Take it if you need it but be prepared to teach yourself the material essentially.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT100 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/02/2024	This class would be fine with a different professor. Content-wise it's not that bad if you study. However, Fernandez was really hard to understand and never wears his microphone so it was impossible to hear him in lecture. Everyone stopped showing up halfway through the semester. Not an easy A, but manageable.
Jonathan Fernandes DATA400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/01/2024	The class is so free– he gives 90% of the test material in the study guides for the test. Has a tendency to overexplain. Homeworks are challenging but help to prepare you for the test. Quizzes are bullshit but they're online and you have multiple attempts. Also, this guy does not respond to emails
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/26/2024	His lectures do not cover much of the material on the homework at all. The TA's explain most of the material. I learn more from the TA's than the actual professor in this class. Whenever I try to contact Fernandes through email he is always unresponsive, and when I ask about it in person he acknowledges that he saw the email and asks to meet during office hours. A simple reply email would have resolved my questions. Leading up to exams, the procedures are always unclear, the TA's cancel office hours often, and just a very non-empathetic professor overall. It does not feel like I am being taught statistics, I am just being taught material that would help me pass the class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/04/2024	Super funny and nice guy, who cares about students learning the material well. Understand how to do the homeworks and examples from class and you will be fine for exams. One thing is he is not very responsive on Piazza or by email, but other than that he is great.
Jonathan Fernandes Anonymous 03/29/2024	He often makes mistakes in his work and it’s genuinely hard to understand him. He’s not good at explaining things and the lack of empathy for his students…
Jonathan Fernandes STAT401 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/29/2024	He doesn't explain the big topics very clearly sometimes, especially the derivations for type 2 errors. He wants to explain things intuitively, but sometimes, his explanations aren't very intuitive. And because of this, I don't have an as deep of an understanding on certain topics as I would like. I think the class could also benefit from more in-class concrete examples on how concepts are applied (we were taught concepts with no examples, which was very difficult for me), and it would also be helpful if he spent less time in the beginning of class reviewing what we did the prior class (it would occasionally take 18 minutes out of the 50 minute class). But some of the positives to his class are that he lets us have cheat sheets during exams which are extremely helpful because I think memorizing all the formulas is trivial, he records all of the lectures which is tremendously helpful, and Fernandes is also the nicest guy who genuinely cares that his students and he emphasizes prioritizing learning over grades. He also tells occasion stories that I find interesting and he also connects to you on a deeper human level occasionally when he talks about the privileges of education that we have and how we shouldn't take it for granted. I have a lot of respect for him as a person and as a teacher, but there are some aspects of the class that he could improve on while continuing to teach this class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/16/2024	Excellent Teacher! Truly cares about his students. He provides plenty of review before exams and provides us with all the necessary materials in order to succeed his class. Yes, the exams are difficult, but Fernandes expects a level of hard work, especially when he is providing all of the materials to succeed in his class. His review exams were basically 80% of the actual exam, which was a huge plus! Overall, great teacher, great person! Recommend!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/07/2024	Boring AF, explains poorly, HW hella long, gives identical practice exams to real exams (but they are HELLA long, esp practice final had like 36 problems). Literally got carried by TA's who did parts of the homework for us, parts of the practice exam, and explained the content in 1 hr a week. He had to curve final exam by ~10%, . His curves make the final statistics look good, but this was harder than CMSC330 and CMSC351. TA's came in clutch, and the class was survivable, but it was by no means a free A.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT401 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/06/2024	His class requires a lot of work, and the weekly quizzes that open and close on the same Friday were particularly inconvenient. His homeworks are the most difficult parts of his classes, so getting hints from discussion is important. His lecture style also was hard for me to follow, personally, and I found that skimming the textbook helped me grasp the content better than any of his notes. However, he did allow cheat sheets on his exams this semester, and doing well in his course was overall manageable as most of it was a matter of applying the correct formulas/hypothesis tests to the correct problems. As a person, he is nice and fair, and this class as a whole was rather tedious and full of busywork but not too demanding or difficult, so I would probably take him again if given the choice.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2023	Execllent professor! Generous curves on each assignment and even exams. He listens to his students and is very open-minded!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2023	Excellent Professor! He teaches clearly, records lectures, and does everything to make a comfortable environment for his students. We had two midterms which were 105 points worth of questions, but he entered the final grade out of 100, effectively giving a 5-point curve. He made the final exam with 210 points worth of questions; he was going to enter our final scores out of 200, but upon further reflection and request from students, he made the final out of 180 points, effectively giving a 30-point curve on the biggest portion of our grade! Also, he provided a sample exam before each major exam in this class, and 80% of the content from the sample exams was put on the final exams, with minor modifications. Admittedly, this class is difficult and does require a couple of hours of your time every week, but Jonathan does expect a level of hard work from his students. Homework: Homework is a bit difficult, but the TAs basically show you how to solve each problem in discussion, so it is important to attend discussion. Quizzes: We also get weekly quizzes on Friday, but they are online and you are given one attempt to retake it, which is pretty nice. R Projects: We were also given 4 R Projects across the semester, which are pretty easy, but tedious. However, TAs are very lenient with grading and this should be an easy 100 if you do the assignment and submit it on time. Overall, I think Jonathan provides all the necessary tools to succeed in his class. Yes, there is some work and some difficulty in the class, but Jonathan has an expectation from his students and expects them to meet it tox succeed in his class. If you do the work and study well for exams with the sample exams, you should be fine. He is very open-minded and will provide many opportunities for his students to achieve the best grades possible. At the end of the semester, we received additional curves on all of our assignments (Quizzes, Homework, R-Projects), another indication of Jonathan's generosity and willingness to help. Overall, if you work hard enough, you will succeed.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/22/2023	hes a great teacher. doesnt record his lectures, but hes taught stat400 online so he has a bunch of youtube vids you can just catch up with. he runs a scribbl notebook for lecture notes. very understanding professor and will accommodate as needed. online quizzes and homeworks are kinda timed weirdly, so weekly homeworks are due at noon on wednesdays, and online quizzes are available between noon and midnight on fridays. DONT GET VIBE CHECKED. IT SAYS 11:59 AM, NOT PM. also, hes super super super nice. during the week that the stadium suicide happened, he extended homework and project deadlines by a full day and made a public scribbl for people to write encouraging thoughts. massive W. so why the 4 star and not the 5 star? well, his exams are very fair, but whereas some other stat400 profs allow student-made cheat sheets, he provides u with a single formula sheet with the bare essentials. plus, exam questions are homework/quiz/practice exam questions with the numbers or details changed. ok, not too bad. what's wrong? well, for our final, he released a 36-question practice exam. sure, a lot of great review material. the problem: the exam, made of 9 questions (he announced there would be 7 or more beforehand) was almost half based on content covered in the last 2 weeks before the final (he said there would be 2 or more questions on this material). ok, not the worst, right? because all those questions were on the practice exam? no! the exam was mostly made of the HARDEST variants of the HARDEST questions on the practice final. i have never seen so many people look defeated after an exam. the entire class flunked this final SO BADLY that not only was the final exam grade curved 10%, the frikin final grade distribution was curved by at least 4% (i know, because i passed with a 66%). so, minus a star for giving me a heart attack, jesus christ wtf (apparently he was really busy and the TAs may have had more of a hand in the exam than he did)
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/21/2023	A great guy who runs a decent class. His homework starts out pretty easy but progressively gets pretty difficult. The R projects are just modifications of old ones you can find if you look hard enough. His exams are okay, they're very similar to the practice problems. His final, however, was god-awful. He gave 36 practice problems for the final, only maybe 20 of which had some solution (somewhere). They were compiled from various homeworks and he refused to post a collective solutions document leading to students scrambling to find them and ultimately having to band together and make a collective solutions document. While this was incredibly annoying and made studying much more painful that was nothing compared to his final. His final was longer than he told us it would be, far more weighted towards the newest material than he promised. Within 15 minutes after the final about 40 people were begging for a curve (which he did give) on piazza. He later also lowered cutoffs. Something should be said about how nice of a person he is outside of writing exams. He often made funny parallels to how the material could be applied in the real world, gave motivational speeches, and genuinely seemed to care about our mental health and well-being. Take stat with him but do not underestimate his exams.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT401 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/21/2023	Stat400 and Stat401 have changed in difficulty with Jonathan. If you are reading the reviews about his practice exams being exactly the same as his actual exams, that is not the case anymore (for Stat401 at least). So if that is the reason why you want to take him, then it's not gonna fly in Stat401. He is a really great professor though and the homeworks are done by the TA in discussion. I will say that the first part of the course up to midterm 1 will be a little daunting but once you get through all of that and really study the notes and do the homework, it will get better and you don't really have to worry that much about all the things in the beginning of the course once you get to Hypothesis testing, ANOVA, and Linear regression (Although if you didn't understand anything from the first part then you're gonna be lost on some topics that will be considered trivial by then). Content wise, this class was much more interesting than Stat400. I really enjoyed learning the content because it was really applicable whereas in Stat400 it was "Here's a bunch of distributions and find the cdf". I really didn't understand what a majority of the concepts and symbols in Stat400 were used for until taking Stat401 when that actually had to be used for something. His exams sometimes have poor wording which is pretty stressful in a timed environment. However, if you study the notes and understand them and make a good note sheet for the exam, then you should be okay and you'll figure out what's being asked. If you are studying last minute and not putting time into this class thinking you can do the practice exam and be good then you're taking a big risk. There are conceptual questions on the exams that you'll only really know if you study the notes and pay attention to things he emphasizes in lecture. The TA this semester was not very good so I ended up using ChatGPT as my personal TA who could answer a majority of my conceptual questions so I didn't have to deal with her. Also, argue points back on exams if you think the TA took points off for wrong reasons. Jonathan will give you the points back, especially when the answers that were marked wrong are word for word quotations from what he said in lecture. So if you were ever wondering what the point of all these jargon terms like "CDF, Chi-Square Distribution, Degrees of Freedom, etc.. " are used for, you'll learn in Stat401. It'll show that Statistics is a pretty interesting field of study.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2023	Jonathan is a nice guy. He curves quite a bit, and he is open to feedback. My only problem is his lecturing style, since I feel like he says a lot of nothing half the time, though to be fair there isn't much to teach in this course. The TA was very helpful as well. She made some of the more difficult HW problems much more manageable. Overall, the first half of the course in my opinion is harder than the second, but it was still pretty easy as long as you put in enough effort.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/20/2023	Nice guy with a generous grading scheme, but lectures are not engaging and notes are hard to follow. The midterms were fair and representative of what we learned, but the final was unnecessarily difficult and was mostly based on content that was taught in the last few weeks and not very thoroughly. The average on the final was 120/205 total points but the score ceiling was lowered to 180, still an average of a D. To be fair he gave us a sample exam that was representative of the real thing, but even though there was a collective student effort to make an answer key there were some questions that nobody came up with an answer to.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/20/2023	He is a genuine guy who cares about his students. His exams, quizzes, and homeworks are not meant to trick you just test your understanding. A great professor and guy all around, its worth getting to know him because he is so passionate about teaching and getting students to understand/ grasp the material. 100% recommend
Jonathan Fernandes STAT498J Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2023	This course is actually really interesting, primarily covering topics such as hierarchical models, markov chains, samplers, and poisson processes. Fernandes's lectures were pretty good in explaining the concepts in each of these topics. During the semester, he was also very flexible with due dates and exams (asked us when we wanted the midterm and when we want to turn in the take home final). Homeworks in this class weren't too bad, although Fernandes would sometimes put typos on his homeworks that would make them impossible to solve (he addressed this on elms or in class however). There are R projects and a final project in this course, both of which basically ask you to write code to simulate a concept learned in class. Overall, I'd recommend this course, but it does have room for improvement since its Fernandes's first time teaching it.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2023	Awful teacher
Jonathan Fernandes DATA400 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/18/2023	The first half of the semester really deceived me. Homework was doable, and the first exam was genuinely copy and paste the sample exam, even though we did not have access to a calculator. But then things suddenly shifted once the second exam came around. For the first exam, he went over the entire sample exam in class and discussion, for the second one, he only went over a few in class and the rest were just in the air. Mind you, these questions are a lot harder and it's tough to conceptualize without seeing an example of it. I had to go on a scavenger hunt to find answers, some were in lecture notes and others were found in homework answers. I even had to scan through answers from PREVIOUS YEARS to find close answers. The worst part is the second exam was not simply a copy and paste from the sample. Now here comes finals, he posts a sample exam with 36 QUESTIONS!!! and does the same thing he did for the second exam. He expects us to find answers & examples through his lecture notes and homework and all over. Overall a very frustrating exam experience. Knowing that his exams are derived from his samples (he even tells us this), it is all the more important to have some sort of answer sheet explaining some of these questions. The questions are typically one of a kind and were only mentioned once or twice on homework or lecture so often times students don't have a full grasp on how to apply their knowledge to such problems. He is overrated simply because he curves, but do not expect this class to be easy (don't let people fool you like they fooled me) TAKE MESTIYAGE, HE ALLOWS A CHEAT SHEET AND CALCULATOR!!!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/01/2023	1. Homework: First questions of hwks are easy, but the last ones are medium to medium-high difficulty. Make sure you reference his Scribbl notes, and attend discussions to ask questions to TA. Most likely TAs will give you hints or go over "practice problems" which are extremely helpful. 2. Exams: 80% of the exam comes from sample exams. Questions on the exam tend to be simpler (IMO) than the sample exam. If you want to get a good grade on the exam, *DO THE SAMPLE EXAM AND GO OVER THE QUIZZES AS WELL*. Most likely he will draw T/F or conceptual short answer questions from the QUIZ. 3. R Projects: R1 was a bit work, but for later projects, professor gave us sample code that you can just copy and paste from. Check out his shared google drive for guidance on R. Overall: Prof Fernandes is pretty chill; he is graceful on hwk/prj extensions. His scribbl notes are step by step organized and helpful to understand and tackle hwk problems. But I have to say my grade hugely relied on my TA who helped students during discussions.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 09/23/2023	He is great.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 07/25/2023	Jonathan is perfect I would say. He posts all the lecture videos and notes in elms. He had one worksheet for a week that we were to submit online. So no need to appear in the discussions. But I recommend going there because TAs (Garrett) are helpful. They will make you walk along with the professor. Exams are fair enough. Just do worksheets and previous exams, and you will be fine. Exams will be way easier than worksheets though. He curves a lot, so don't worry about grades at all.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/10/2023	Jonathan is a great guy but a not-so-great professor. His lectures are disorganized and often confusing, and I recommend not going to them since they're recorded. My TA was amazing, which helped a lot. Worksheets were due at the end of the week and could be done anytime within that timeframe. Exams were slightly curved, and the lowest exam score was replaced with the final score if it was better. He even curved the worksheets and the webassigns. Its easy to get an A in his class so long as you have a good TA.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 07/06/2023	Great, reliable professor. As far as UMD math professors go, I think he's one of the best options. Homework was manageable, exams were pretty much exactly like the practice exams, and he gave a lot of resources. I had a horrible professor for MATH140, and I went into this class with the same expectations but was pleasantly surprised. I definitely fumbled on the 4th exam and the final, but had it not been for those exams, I would've easily gotten an A in the class.
Jonathan Fernandes Anonymous 06/22/2023	He is great, his lectures are not the best but his amazing TAs make up for it so does the exam review lectures because they set you up well for the exam. His exams are far more doable than some others I have seen. If you practice and utilize the time you get with TAs it's possible to do really well.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/01/2023	He is a super chill professor and really wants you to succeed. He added a three-point curve to all our exams and curved more if necessary. My lowest midterm grade was a 98, without taking math140 first semester. This was truly just due to doing the practice exams and the additional practice questions the TA's sent out. If you go to discussion and ask questions, you'll be fine. I was scared of taking this class, but Fernandes made it completely digestible. Definitely go to office TA hours though!
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/24/2023	Jonathan is pretty middle-of-the road as far as UMD math profs go; you could do better and you could do worse. I got an A and I’m not exactly a math genius, so that’s saying something. Pros: worksheets and WebAssign homeworks are a relatively large portion of your grade, and get curved. Also, you can take worksheets home with you and submit them online at the end of the week, so you don’t need to rush during discussion. All midterms have a 3-point curve, and he gave an additional curve on one exam because he accidentally included a problem that was way too hard. Cons: tends to arrive at lecture late and run over time, so leave yourself some wiggle room. Sometimes as he is doing problems he scrolls away from something immediately after writing it, so you have to write fast or have a friend you can copy from if you miss something. He also doesn’t always get through the entire content of the lecture. The worksheet problems are usually different/harder than the lecture problems so you have to hope your TA will explain everything.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/22/2023	Not the greatest instructor but makes it very easy to succeed in the class by making everything easy, midterms were the same as the practice exams he provided just with different numbers. Also has a lot of questions in those midterms straight out of either the textbook or the worksheets he provides. Never went to the lectures as they were very hard to follow along, but the discussions were very helpful. I mostly learned from youtube/ textbook, and those were more than enough to succeed. He made the worksheets and the web assigns out of a 92, so if you had more than a 92% of either of those categories you were given a 100%. This was really helpful as they make up for 40% of your total grade. He is literally your best bet if you want to get a good grade in this class.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/18/2023	Seems like a great guy. Not a great teacher. I started skipping lectures a month into the semester because I realized I wasn't getting anything out of them. He was going too fast for me to understand, and my notes were getting so messy that they weren't even useful. My TA was very helpful though. Last time he taught 141, I heard he dropped their lowest exam. This semester, he replaced our lowest exam score with our final exam score if it was higher. Just so you're aware.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Guest 05/18/2023	Professor Fernandes is a great professor, and like those who share the sentiment, he's definitely one of the better MATH 141 professors. His instruction from the beginning of the semester started out strong, and so the first exam was relatively easy if you pay attention to class. However, as we shifted to more difficult content, the quality in instruction deteriorated. I became more reliant on my TA for help on topics, and because of their incredible response rates, it was easier for me to contact them than Professor Fernandes. It is known that he's unresponsive to emails and such, so to get the best opportunity to speak with him, stay in the lecture hall after class. Now, he doesn't use any chalkboard, rather his iPads. This makes for good and bad things. It's great because he's able tor record lectures, even broadcast them live on Zoom. Moreover, it's fairly easy to go back to content discussed in lecture. However, it makes for keeping up with him in lecture incredibly difficult as he scrolls away quickly. I spent hours upon hours on web assigns (homework), and he curves these at the end. Moreover, we're assigned weekly worksheets, which are also curved at the end. The exams were fair, and practice exams will help you.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/11/2023	From hearing from other professors, Fernandes seems to be the best option available and I would generally agree with this. He records lectures and posts his lecture work for every single one which is very nice. I had Mackall for 140 and Fernandes was a major improvement for me and I'm glad I switched. He is just overall better and more accommodating professor. I actually didn't feel like Fernandes was actively out to make me fail his class which is different than the other professors. I'll discuss the content of the course now. Fernandes has weekly worksheets (that he made himself) that are due every Friday that generally take some time to do but aren't impossible like Mackall's worksheets that have to be done by the end of the discussion. This leaves the discussion either to be your TA actually teach the content of the course or just go over the worksheet answers for you so your mileage may vary. The grade distribution for this semester was: Webassign 15%, Worksheets 25%, Mid-term Exam 35%, Final Exam 25% Fernandes exams are very similar between years so all of his practice/previous exams will give you a GREAT idea of what will be on the exam. Honestly just overall, Fernandes gives you the resources to succeed if you try hard enough. No matter what professor you get, you will struggle in the class so in my opinion Fernades is your best way to succeed in the course
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/08/2023	TAKE HIM HES LITERALLY MY FATHER, he literally made the class so easy Grade distribution was fire: Worksheets: 25% WebAssign: 15% Exams: 35% Final Exam: 25% 4 Midterms and 1 Final Lowest midterm grade replaced with your final exam grade if you did better percentage wise.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/07/2023	I did all the practice exams, homework's, quizzes (he gives 2 to 3 chances to retake quizzes to get best score), went to every discussion (except 1) and made an effort to go to every lecture and ask questions on the spot when I felt confused. We are given all the tools to pass this class and do well on exams, given the exams are nearly identical to practice exams he gives as hw assignments prior to the exam day. It just depends on how much effort you are personally willing to put in (outside of class) and probably who your TA is. TA explains the little caveats necessary to complete the hw's, so go to discussion! I had to work really hard outside of class to make sure I was understanding but nothing was really too big of a surprise/stretch to me because I have already taken a statistics class (that wasnt calc based), completed calc 1,2,3, dif eqs and lin alg. My strong math background definitely helped.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/02/2023	Dr. Fernandes is definitely one of the better calc 2 professors to take from what I've heard, but definitely would not take him again. I took Chadwick first semester and Fernandes second, so here is my comparison of the two: Overall, I learned a lot more from Chadwick than I did with Fernandes, and his teaching style worked a lot better for me. Chadwick writes on the chalkboard and goes over everything you need for every homework and classwork assignment. Fernandes, on the other hand, writes on his ipad and scrolls immediately when he is writing notes on the board, making it really hard to follow and write in time. Chadwick's exams are decently hard (I averaged an 87 for all 4) and Fernandes' exams were easier at first, but the last exam was very hard and was a curveball to all of us (the average for the class was a 68). The first 3 exams for Fernandes were extremely similar to the practice exam, so if you study the practice exam, you're good. Fernandes does teach too much theory in my opinion and misses the important stuff a lot. If you don't have a good TA, don't even bother taking Fernandes. My TA carried us this semester and I also found myself reading the textbook, watching videos, and attending office hours weekly. Fernandes consistently shows up late to class, and he never gets through everything we need for the homework that night, leaving us to fend for ourselves. At first, he was fine, but the second we got to more difficult material he would get confused or say our TAs are gonna teach us--but keep in mind we also had to do a worksheet during discussion so we don't have time for our TAs to lecture. The one thing I like more about Fernandes is that worksheets are due friday night, so there's less pressure to turn them in at the end of discussion. Finally, Fernandes does not offer a curve on exams at all, he does not even drop the lowest exam to half, so you really have to self study for this class. He considers an A+ anything over a 99, so you also have to score extremely high for that. All in all, do everything that you can to take Dr. Chadwick. He is a great professor and explains concepts really well. Definitely do not take Fernandes unless you have to.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B FozzyBear1 05/01/2023	For the disaster of a class that is Math 141, Fernandes is probably your best bet. A lot of my problems with him probably come from the fact that Calc 2 is an artificially hard weed-out class that is designed specifically to destroy the soul of the students taking it. Fernandes however, turned the rat poison that is Math 141 into Coors light. It still tastes like shit, but at least it won't kill you. The lectures started out well. Even though they focused heavily on theory (35 minutes of theory to maybe 10 minutes of examples), I felt like they were effective in helping me succeed on the problems we did in the discussion and the exam. However, Chapter 8 (Integration Techniques) and ESPECIALLY Chapter 9 (Series) were a nightmare. We fell behind quickly in lecture, leading us to focus almost entirely on complex theory with no time for examples. In fact, we didn't even cover in the lecture how to find the roots of a complex number, something that ended up being worth ~10% of our grade for Exam 4. This meant that our poor TAs had to teach us how to do all the practice problems. Luckily, despite the mess that was the lectures, the tests were incredibly easy because they were literally just copy-pasted from the already fairly easy practice exam he gave us to study. This caused the test averages for all of the tests to float around the 80% mark, which is great considering the averages for all the other professors floated around 60-65%. I looked at Pilachowski's Exam 4 and it looked WAY harder than what was on our test. He also is a really nice guy. Despite the class having 200 people in it, he would make an effort before every lecture to ask us all how we are doing. Overall, Fernandes is awesome if you just want to get a good grade in Math141. If you actually want to learn the content well from lectures, however, Chadwick would be better for you (although his tests are WAY harder so I'm not sure that trade-off is worth it). I'm giving him 4 stars because my grade is better than it would be with other professors, and I believe that most of my complaints come from the design of the course itself.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 04/08/2023	He is a nice professor, but his course is a mess. Starting with homework, he assigns homework with extreme difficulty with no relevance to lecture/quizzes/exams. Although we would take time to look at homework during discussion, it would only be enough to do 1-2 problems. So, when you go to complete the rest of the problems it is impossible unless you have a TA's help because there are no examples/resources available to help with said problems. When time for exams/quizzes you have no idea what you are doing because you spent time practicing something unrelated. I spent about 10 hours weekly to do homework!!! Also, the professor goes quicky through material and skips over defining important symbols/mini-concepts. The nice thing is that he posts lecture notes, however, they usually offer little meaning due to the lack of defining small things, lack of cohesion, and lack of relevant examples. We also have to complete R projects with little to no guidance on how to use the language. Attending his office hours are pointless, when I would go, he would have a hard time answering the homework questions. And because he has one of his office hours on the day the homework is due, when seeking help, he will not provide full explanations saying something along the lines of "it will be hard to explain this completely if you wait until the last minute". Overall, I spent 20 hours a week for his class (including lectures and discussions) and still preformed poorly. I spoke with classmates and I am not the only one. What bothers me the most is how his rating is 3.89. Avoid him at all costs!
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/06/2023	Personality wise, he's a very nice professor and is open to answering questions which stay relevant to what was covered. Teaching wise, Fernandes' lectures more so focus on the theory of whatever lesson or chapter you are on, rather than explaining the process or concept then going into loads of examples. To compensate for this, the class is structured so that you MUST attend every discussion session to go over the worksheets; those are your key to passing this class, as they are filled with example problems. No quizzes, just graded worksheets, WebAssigns, and exams. Exams are extremely fair as the average for the last 3 exams have all been above 80s (about a 3 point curve for each one, except for the latest one we took we got a 6 point curve), so just do the sample exams which are given through ELMS and REVIEW THE WORKSHEETS. Fernandes also records all lectures, which is an added bonus. Luckily, I got an awesome TA (shoutout to Mengting Chao!), but depending on what TA you get it will either make or break this course. Just don't get caught up too much in the theory, and focus more on what's covered in discussion and you'll be good to go. Good luck.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting an A wmy78b 01/23/2023	Jonathan is nice and helpful. I really appreciate that he record all lectures. But the way he taught the class could be better. The contents are unclear and the hand-written notes are hard to read. The course itself is very hard and I hope he can give students better notes to learn. He does give very helpful practice exams but since many people never understand his lectures, it turns out we have to memorize EVERY SINGLE QUESTION which is very suffering. Exam averages are around 80/100. You can easily get 95/100 if you know all his examples and HW questions, but again, it takes a long time.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT420 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/03/2023	I'm disappointed to write this review because I've taken STAT 410 with him and had a great experience. this class was insanely hard and jonathan's expectations for the students were definitely way too high. the homeworks were super hard and I always had to google to figure out how to do them since the class notes were not directly applicable. the exams were also insanely hard and we didn't get much help to prepare. for the final exam he told us "if you know all the examples from class and homeworks you'll be fine". like jeez thanks a lot. He also said he'd post class notes but would always do it super late, giving us barely any time to use them for hw/exams. Only giving him this rating because he's a nice guy and was fairly lenient with grading/curving final grades. not really sure what happened but STAT 420 was a pretty bad experience.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/15/2022	He's a pretty good professor and the class grade is distributed fairly. He goes over the concepts and examples during class. The practice exams are basically the same as the exams with different numbers. Just make sure to do the practice exams and know it all before the exam. Webassign is basically free points. The worksheets are graded pretty harshly so I recommend checking all your work and doing it thoroughly before submitting them. There is a curve for this class so don't worry too much about your grade. I heard most of the other professors for MATH141 are bad so I recommend taking his class if you have the opportunity.
Jonathan Fernandes SURV410 Expecting an A mewuzhere 07/15/2022	I took this class over the summer and found it manageable and well organized. We had lectures every day, which were always recorded and the professor's notes were also posted after class. A short quiz was given every day and was available after class from 4 PM until 9 AM the next day. In general the quizzes had 3-8 questions and were a mix of multiple choice, true/false, and choose all that are true. You always had two quiz attempts, allowing you a second chance to learn the material and fix your mistakes. There were two homeworks due every week, these were the most time-consuming part of the class. I found them challenging but nothing too difficult. We also had three R-projects that we were encouraged to work on with a partner, these were pretty easy. To end the course, we had a take-home final. The grading breakdown was quite generous with a large percentage of points coming from quizzes and homeworks, the final was worth 10% of our grade. I felt everything was graded quite appropriately so long as you were actually trying. Prof. Fernandes was good at explaining things further when asked and clearly came into lessons with a plan. The whole class ran very smoothly and I will be going out of my way to take him again in the fall for STAT420.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/12/2022	My criteria for a great professor is one that is fair and reasonable, great at teaching, and challenging. I know not everyone goes by these three criteria, in fact, most people probably care more about how easy a class is to pass than the actual content quality. To quickly address this for people who are wondering, this professor has a generally easy class as everyone else has been pointing out; as long as you do the work, you'll get the grade you want. If this is the only criteria I was going by, he definitely deserves a 5. That being said, I personally try to take classes for more than simply fulfilling requirements or getting a good GPA; I think part of a good college experience is to take meaningful classes that are enjoyable. For those who feel the same as me, the following is a more nuanced answer to how I would rate Professor Fernandes. As a person, Fernandes seems like a kind person. I have never personally talked to him but his flexibility and willingness to take input and dynamically adjust his class is something that very few professors do and this shows his care for his students. There were times when many students were behind in work and he extended the deadline. When it came to quizzes, Fernandes wanted to help students later in the semester by giving them multiple chances to finish a quiz. I feel that there are a lot of professors that do not care whether or not students succeed, just doing no more than needed. Fernandes is the complete opposite of this, wanting as many students to succeed as possible. This is something that I have to give huge props and respect for, however, this can be a double-edge sword (which I will explain at the end). As for teaching, Fernandes is not the most engaging professor and as mentioned by many people, focuses mainly on theory. I won't nit-pick too much on the teaching of Stats because frankly, highly technical classes in STEM tend to be more boring. There are exceptions in Science classes where there are demonstrations, however, for the most part, STEM classes are boring. The professor's teaching style is something that I do have a slight issue with. On the one hand, I get where he is coming from; math, when deeply understood, can easily and be more intuitively applied to concrete problems. Deeply understanding math allows one to apply concepts more versatiley and creatively and even potentially develop new concepts. The truth is though, the higher and more complex Math becomes, the harder it becomes for the average person to 100% grasp theoretical ideas, which is necessary to apply concepts to concrete problems without examples. Also, purely teaching higher math in this manner to people who are not majoring in math and have no interest in math only dissuades students from learning and confuses students. It would be better if Fernandes focused half of his classes on theory and half on concrete examples to get the best of both worlds. Even if I am wrong about his teaching style, it is true that attendance steeply dropped, meaning students did not find his class worth their time. As for my last criteria, I do not believe Fernandes is challenging. There have been comments below that his class is tedious and I totally agree; R projects were something that most people spent lots of time on due to unfamiliarity with R, homework and quizzes took up more than 3 hours a week for me, and the Final project was something that took up some time that was completely unnecessary. Tedious, however, is not always helpful to students and is not equal to challenging. First of all, I have no doubt that there was mass cheating in the class and the leniency that Fernandes had enabled this to happen. Quizzes could easily be shared between students and with multiple trials and multiple friends, most people probably got full marks there. Also, ultimately, Fernandes gave up to 5% bonus points as a curve(meaning someone that got a B+ could potentially get an A), which is exorbitantly high which I felt was giving out freebies. Tests were essentially the study guide with a few modified answers. The only thing that was truly challenging in the class was the homeworks, but it did not relate to concrete examples most of the time and answers were given out on Friday. I ultimately believe that if a class is challenging, hard-work and smart work should be rewarded. Again, I respect Fernandes attitude to help the most people, however, his grading and methods allowed many people to get a grade that is unrepresentative of their actual abilities. This is not only unfair to people who truly work hard to understand the content, but ultimately lowers the legitimacy of this class. As a person, I have no issue with Fernandes, but with his teaching style and lack of challenge (which should not be confused with tediousness) I think there is room for him to improve. *Pardon my grammar, I did not feel like checking back
Jonathan Fernandes STAT401 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/25/2022	I didn't like him at first because he taught with a heavy theory approach but after I hunkered down and developed some intuition for the content, the class became a lot easier. The exams were straightforward and most of the class did well. The R projects (25%) are free points, and he gives bonus points at the end depending on how the class curve is. He expects 80% of the class to get an A and from the looks of it, we did. I plan to take STAT401 with him later, so I recommend him. It's not an easy A but if you put in a fair amount of effort, you will succeed.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/21/2022	Initially, you’ll have your doubts about this professor because you’ll feel lost during lecture often and you have weekly quizzes and homework that take up about 3 hours total to finish together. however, he’s an incredibly fair professor who was willing to give us two attempts on the quizzes and drop lower grades for hw and quizzes. His exams and final were also almost exactly like the practice exams which is great because as long as you comprehend the practice exam, you’ll be good for the actual one. I highly recommend his class!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2022	STAT400 grade wise was not too difficult, the midterm and final was not too bad, as he does review all of the contents right before, and practice exams are very similar to the actual exam. If you just studied exactly how to do each problem on the practice exams, the actual exams are very straightforward. The lectures were very confusing to me, as he tends to go pretty quickly and his handwriting isn't the best, but everything is recorded on zoom and he posts notes as well. The lecture content is a bit difficult to understand conceptually, but if you watch the prelecture and review lecture notes it shouldn't be too difficult, to be honest, the most important lectures to pay attention to is exam review. The homework and the quizzes were probably the hardest part of the course, some homeworks were super easy but some of them were very challenging. Given how well you did in 141, you might want to review some calculus, as there is quite a bit of calculus in the homework problems and in the course in general. If you watch all of the pre lecture videos and attend all of the lectures, as well as discussion sessions, this class should be very straightforward. The midterm average was around 85% and 90%, so the grades are pretty high, he even drops the lowest hw and quiz grades, as well as awards bonus points. The RStudio projects aren't difficult either, the help slides are extremely useful and basically tells you how to do them. I even skipped quite a few classes and was not the best student, but I was still able to do well in this class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/16/2022	The biggest thing about Fernandes is how big he is on "hard work." From R projects to homeworks to quizzes every week, STAT400 can be a bit draining. Fernandes is pretty theory-heavy in his lectures and tends to write pretty fast, and I personally think his handwriting is not the best, so I'd advise sitting in the front. The homeworks can be difficult, but going to the discussions is crucial in order to get these done. His exams are very similar to the practice exams that he gives out, so make sure to practice that heavily before going into the exam. The only really bad part about this class is the R projects. Fernandes gives R projects that basically ask you to do something but learning R takes some time and can be difficult as the IDE is also not incredibly user-friendly. There should definitely have been a guide released telling us what commands we are expected to use and the approach we should take. In my opinion, R was just very poorly integrated within the course. Nonetheless, Fernandes is an extremely nice guy who's down to answer any of your questions in OH and is accessible through email. And he does curve pretty nicely. Overall, I'd definitely recommend him as he's a good professor.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2022	Literally my favorite professor at UMD. I noticed that he got a lot of low reviews because of MATH141 in 2021, but for STAT400 you better fight with everything you got for a seat in his classes. He kept the class engaged and on schedule the entire semester, and frequently posted lecture notes, class recordings, AND asynchronous videos for people to review on their own. Homeworks are the hardest part of the class and will eat up some time each week, but TA's go over the answers for the homework at the end of the week before it is due. Additionally, forming study groups with other students helps as well for questions that TA don't review. Dr. Fernandes himself is easy to get in contact with and is amazing in office hours, he's willing to work through entire homeworks with students if they show that they are trying to put effort in learning the material (and not just there for a freebie answer, he spots the difference easily). In comparison to homeworks the exams and quizzes are super easy, especially because exams are the same as the practice exams that he reviews a few days before the exams. There's lots of opportunities for bonus credit throughout the semester so you don't need to worry about a few bad grades ruining your final grade. Definitely taking him again for STAT401 and any other class he's teaching.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/09/2022	He's a great guy. Exams are pretty straight forward. HW is hard and quizzes tend to be hard. He doesn't mind changing his course policy if it benefits the class. A lot to memorize outside of distributions for the exams if you want to do well. Avg was around a 90. Beginning is going to seem hard but it gets easier.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/23/2022	Prof. Fernandes consistently showed up late to class. His lectures focus too much on theory and history of mathematical concepts rather than concrete examples. The TA you sign up for is CRUCIAL; my TA is the only reason I succeeded. Be prepared to teach yourself concepts outside of class. Invest in a full solutions manual to the textbook.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Anonymous 01/23/2022	He was extremely nice and understanding this semester. Lectures could be a bit disorganized but he also has online recordings that cover all the material. Homeworks were tedious, but exams were quite easy and class average was very high.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/01/2022	If you want to learn the material, don't take him. Not great at lecturing, but an "easy" prof. No minus grades, which was nice. Exams were easy. Weekly homework solutions were given in discussion (before the hw was due). Weekly quizzes that weren't too bad. If you did well in CMSC250, you'll be fine with the first half of the course. If you've never taken discrete math, I don't know if he's the best prof. Really nice guy.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 12/30/2021	Fernandes is a very nice prof, and a bit unpredictable in a good way. For the midterm he said to memorize the distributions, then he put the list of distributions on the midterm. For the final he said to memorize estimators, then he changed his mind and made the exam open note. He has review videos online which match the lecture content. His lecture style may be difficult to follow but he spends a lot of time reviewing material throughout the semester. He also gives bonus quizzes for practice. He is very receptive to student concerns and helpful in office hours, he really wants you to succeed.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/28/2021	Really nice guy, In order to pass this class you need to work together. Find resources that help you. His lectures aren't useless but they aren't the best content to learn Calc 2. HE IS THE BEST MATH141 PROFESSOR FROM WHAT I HAVE SEEN AND HEARD. Good luck, you're gunna need it.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/27/2021	Excellent professor. Homeworks can be pretty difficult, but the discussion sections are pretty much dedicated to going over the whole homework assignment the day before it's due, so they're manageable. The exams were very fair and closely resembled the study guide and practice questions. R projects are generally pretty straightforward, and Dr. Fernandes records videos walking through each assignment in detail. His lectures can be a bit boring sometimes, but are supplemented by a number of very well made explanation videos that give a succinct overview of each concept. Overall, Dr. Fernandes is an excellent professor and I would recommend him to anyone who is taking STAT400.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/26/2021	Dr. Fernandes is a good lecturer and he cares about every student. The course is fairly structured and he offers options for those students that want to seek beyond the knowledge of the course. Exams are fair and similar to the study guides he provided. Home works are challenging but the TA basically gives you the answer during discussions. R projects are not bad. Overall this was a very pleasant experience with Dr. Fernandes!
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/23/2021	Definitely some salty engineer/cs majors in these reviews. Just for reference, im a bio major (not very math oriented) and his class was fine tbh. Lectures are all recorded, so in case you want to sleep in one day u can always refer back to the recordings. Weekly HW’s were definitely hard for sure, but i don’t understand some of these reviews saying “bad ta= wont do well on hw”. One of the TA’s posted all discussion recordings on canvas (shoutout to jianlong liu) where he worked out essentially every hw problem. I just looked at his recordings and did the homeworks that way. Dr. F gives sample exams to every midterm, which essentially lays out the entire format of the test, so as long as you studied the sample exams, (Dr. F also gives solutions to sample exams) you were fine for the test. He also provided a monstrous curve for this class, and no +/- grades either which is clutch. Also, I may have just gotten lucky, but the one time i emailed Dr. F, he responded within minutes. This was at 2 in the morning also. Overall he’s a good guy, and i definitely recommend him to everyone. Note to rising freshman: Just putting this out there cause I wished someone had said this when i was a rising freshman. But just make sure you understand that calc BC in high school is not the same as calc 2 in college, and you’ll have to put some amount of work in. I came into this class thinking it was gonna be a breeze cause of prior knowledge, but this class is only like 15% BC review, 85% new material.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/22/2021	Dr. Fernandes is great!! I'd admit his homework and quizzes are kind of difficult(esp his homework, but discussion with the TA is basically a lifesaver for this). His exams are pretty much similar to the review and his class is kind of difficult in terms of learning the topics, but overall it isn't hard to get a high grade. Doesn't teach too well b/c he tends to focus on concepts rather than examples as well, which can be overwhelming especially when you don't know how to apply the concepts.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/21/2021	Jonathan was a great teacher and really amazing person. He helped me develop the joy for mathematics some people who don’t love math might not like Jonathan’s teaching style since it is not about telling you how to use formulas, but more about deriving them and showing some basic proofs (he can over explain sometimes). Although this might be annoying to the people stopping at calc 2, it was quite refreshing for myself since it gave me a taste of what advanced math was like. If you want an A+ definitely watch professor leonard on youtube in addition to showing up to his lectures. Doing this you’ll master the applications of the formulas (leonard) and expose yourself to more complex proofs that will be useful later in your math career(Fermendas). 4-5 times throughout the year he’d spend the first 5-10 minutes of class giving us life advice about how to succeed is college and life in general. He talked about being useful to your peers and such (giving not only receiving). He has really good dad jokes about math. funny guy. The complaints about emails were quite valid. However, you can also see this as a learning opportunity. In work environments you will likely have many bosses who suck at replying to emails and need 2-3 follow ups.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2021	Before you read any further, just keep in mind that the entire math department at UMD is doodoo, so I am writing this review with this standard in mind. About MATH141: - This was the hardest class I ever had to take. I never had problems with math, and I actually enjoyed AB Calc in high school. But MATH141 in college made me hate math and question why I chose engineering. - I spent 12+ hours on just math each week, which was draining because you will have to self teach yourself a lottt of the material. You will not understand much of the material taught in class and the textbook is just as confusing, so Khan Academy and the Organic Chemistry Tutor will be your saviors. - The amount of work you have for this class is astronomical. You have homework assignments due after every class, which are a pain to complete. But one of the worst parts are the weekly worksheets. They are quite literally not possible to complete. If you do not have a good TA, you will fail these worksheets (and I say this because some of the graduate student TA's have zero clue how to complete some of the questions). - We had 4 midterms and a final. I think these were fair and the practice exams he provides, as well as the web-assigns, were good indicators as to what you should expect. Keep in mind that the average on these midterms ranged from a 62% to a 69% (and the final was sitting at a crisp 50% average). But at least we didn't have any weekly quizzes. - At the end of the semester, he applied a generous curve: dropped our lowest midterm, dropped two of our lowest scoring worksheets, curved the webassigns, and curved the final. This boosted people up quite a bit. About Jonathan Fernandes: - I will start with the positives. Fernandes records all of his lectures and has zoom as option if you can't make it to in person class. He also posts all of his notes from class to Canvas. As a person, Fernandes is a kind and understanding individual who cares for his students and tries to make the class entertaining by cracking a few jokes (not to mention he has been listening to our advise and trying to improve his teaching). - Now onto the things which need improvement. I don't think he is good at explaining. I left every lecture confused, frustrated, and dreading my life decisions. I did not understand a single thing he taught in class, and he almost never finished his lessons (he usually accelerated to lightening speed in order to try to finish, and even then never did). Another thing which bothered me was the fact that he barely gave any examples in class in the beginning of the semester (he improved on this towards the end of the semester). He just went over proofs and the conceptual part of math rather than demonstrate how to solve the problems through examples. Good luck with MATH141 and say goodbye to your sanity in advance. My best words of advise will be to always expect the worst and hope for the best so that you can avoid disappointment as much as possible (be prepared to fail and know that it's ok). Hope this helped :) and most of my grade is a compilation of my efforts to self-teach myself, the Organic Chemistry Tutor, and tears.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/20/2021	material is pretty challenging but Jonathan does a really good job explaining it. there's a weekly online quiz that's pretty easy if you just go to class and pay attention, and there are about 8 homeworks the whole semester. the hw's are fairly hard and take a bit of time, but the grading is extremely lenient. exams are also very similar to practice exams that he gives out. hard material but easy to get a good grade if you simply do the work he assigns
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/19/2021	one of the most caring professors at UMD. unfortunately i think it is rare to come across a professor that cares so much about students grades AND well being. I have to admit his calc two class was extremely extremely difficult especially since I'm not a math or engineering major. I probably put 8x the effort in that course than any other course. he dropped one of our midterms, two homeworks, added bonus quizzes to help our grade, and curved the final. Even with all that, I barely got an A. Very appreciative of his care for students. I do recommend him, his class is very hard so read the textbook before and go to office hours, but if you put the effort in from the start you should be fine.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2021	Dr. Fernandez is a good person more than he is a good teacher. He has office hours often and is willing to listen and help students out. If you're confused (which you will be), you're going to want to attend these. This class requires an astronomical amount of work. I once spent 7+ hours on one homework assignment (there are three homeworks per week). This class is an absolutely massive time sink. If you have a good TA, everything becomes a LOT easier. They explain the worksheets in depth and guide you to the answers. If you have a bad TA, I'm sorry, and good luck...
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/18/2021	literally could not have asked for better. Sometimes lectures were a bit fast but that's just the pace of the course. He went out of his way for his students to do well. He offered bonuses, got rid of our lowest exam, curved the final, and our final grade.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a D+ Anonymous 12/18/2021	This teacher is terrible at emailing, TAs we’re not helpful this semester and the exams were not too difficult however this class was not conducted well and lectures were not helpful to learn from, spent then entire semester trying to teach myself the curriculum.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an F Anonymous 12/18/2021	Terrible teacher Great personality Good luck
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/17/2021	Professor Fernandes is a good professor and an excellent person. He cares a lot about his students, constantly asking for our feedback and providing us with comprehensive web assigns and study material for tests. He also uploads his notes and lectures, which is very helpful. However, he can be a bit disorganized at times. Aside from these issues, I learned a lot from his class and it was great having him as my math 141 professor.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2021	He is a good teacher and kind to his students. He is super generous !! Like súper!! You will do absolutely fine in this class if you actually do what you're supposed to: go to lecture, do your homework, and seek for help from him/TAs when you need it. You have to put your own effort in HOWEVER I know he doesn't write the finals himself but my God that was the most brutal final exam I've ever had in my entire life. Don't rely on the final to boost your grade bc damn.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/12/2021	Jonathan is an extremely nice guy who genuinely wants everyone to succeed in his class. His lectures were pretty hard to understand for me but he uploads zoom recordings of them so eventually I stopped going to the lectures and just watching those which then evolved to me not watching them at all lol. I found it more helpful to thoroughly read the textbook since that has more complex examples to go over. Jonathan tends to just do proofs during the lectures and if he does do an example it's the most incredibly surface level example that doesn't really help you on the HW. I gave him three stars because I do think he loves his job and wants the best for everyone. Pretty generous curve at the end of the semester as well. Overall, this being my first class with him I think it comes down more to the work you do outside of class if you want to succeed.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2021	He is a really good professor with a great personality. He will try to help his students as much as he can. He listens to complaints and tries to solve them. However, you will need a support system for this class. Going to discussion and having some classmates to study with will make your grade. The lectures can be confusing since he is required to go over theoretical definitions but with the supplement of discussions, you will be okay. The exams are not difficult if you practice the sample exams. Overall, he was a great teacher with a great sense of humor and personality. He is humble and down-to-earth.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2021	The professor focused a lot on the theoretical side and provided little examples, but if you put in a little bit of work outside the class and used textbook problems for practice the class is pretty easy. The sample exam is practically the same as the actual exam so learn how to do the sample exam and you'll be fine. Not a large curve on exams but dropped the lowest exam, 2 lowest homework worksheets and curved web assigns out of 90. If you are good at math you should do fine in this class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/08/2021	By far the best professor I had this semester. He treats everyone with respect, and if you email him with a question he normally responds back in a timely manner. He was big on students not stressing out too much about exams or projects, so he made sure to adjust accordingly. I will say that he has a tendency to get side tracked in lecture, so be prepared for him to go on a few tangents. During the second week of class someone air dropped him a meme and he spent a solid 20 minutes talking about wasting other people's time...yeah exactly. Exams are fair(and kind of easy), and the homework gets more straightforward as the semester progresses. Homework assignments are long, but not difficult, and the quizzes are the reason why I will not have an A+ in the class. HIGHLY HIGHLY Recommend taking this course with Fernandes.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/08/2021	He's great, but the class is hard. Curve is pretty generous (drop 1 exam and 2wks). Overall, his teaching style is fine, but you need to have a great TA to actually understand the wks and some concepts.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 12/06/2021	TOUGH CLASS(in general) this professor is very understanding and tries his best to teach in a way that helps students in the long run. I will say at first i was not a fan of this class but soon realized, its the material and not the professor. Jon has a great sense of personality and WANTS THE BEST FOR YOU. All you have to do to pass this class is go to class and try to be as active as possible, exams are fair, require studying and understanding, not just memory. homework is a little tough, try to find a friend to work through it, if you're lucky you will get a TA that basically does all of the work with you in discussion. I CANNOT PRESS THIS ENOUGH if you ever are struggling go to office hours, it helps a lot and is definitely pushed by prof. all of my friends who had other professors said they were swamped with work, this class is less work and more self study, so if you don't do good with self study do not take this class.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/05/2021	I give him two stars because he's a nice guy. He truly does care a lot about the students and the way he changes his grading policy throughout the semester shows it. However, please do not listen to these spur of 4-5 star comments coming out of nowhere. He is not good at teaching. It literally is a TA lottery and if you have a bad ta you are fucked. The lectures are useless because he teaches proofs and ignores doing examples that will help with the homework or worksheets. The worksheets are only completable if you to go discussion... they are pretty much impossible to fully complete on your own. He comes into class late every day and always gets sidetracked by random stuff. It can get frustrating and for a bit, I just stopped attending lectures. Overall, He's a really nice guy. I would give him 3 stars just because of that but I don't know if I can because I have never taken a class worse than his in my entire academic career (I'm a junior). He just has no idea how to teach the course.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/04/2021	This is a college calc 2 class so expect to have a lot of work and spend time everyday to do well in this class in general. Fernandes' lectures are kind of hard to understand so you will NEED to read the textbook and practice problems from there to understand the topics. He is a very kind professor and cares about his students, but the reason why I would say he is good is because his tests are very similar to the worksheets and hw. If you can do all the problems from the worksheets and hw you can literally ace every exam. TA's are also very helpful and answer questions really well. He is dropping our lowest exam.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/03/2021	I think a lot of the bad grades are from people who didn't expect the workload that comes with college and are unprepared to independently do well. It's a college calc two class - it's going to involve a lot of work and a lot of confusion. However, the TAs I've talked to are capable and even if yours isn't, you can go to any TA's office hours for help. You WILL NEED to go to office hours, read the textbook, and do extra work to do well in this class but that's the same for any math class you will take in college. If you spend this time learning the material, the tests will be easy as he makes them exactly like the homeworks. Fernandes does have some teaching flaws but he is a good professor and genuinely wants everyone in his class to succeed. If you aren't doing well in his class, you won't do well in any calc 2 class.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/03/2021	He's a very caring professor, and it shows. His class is difficult, and for good reason. I would be surprised if it wasn't, it's calculus after all. The homework and exams are challenging, but never completely unfair. I will say that he sometimes does not explain complicated concepts well. Other than that, he's a good professor, and a good resource if you're willing to put in the work for yourself.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 12/01/2021	My professor who taught me Calculus 1 at a community college easily trumps Fernandes ten-fold in terms of explaining the concepts and doing the examples. If you don't have a good TA, you are screwed. Going to UMD Math Success has been an integral part of me being able to pass this class, other than that, the tests are really difficult unless you are good at doing math problems quickly. He often has technical difficulties in class and always starts the lecture 3-5 minutes late. He rarely ever does examples, like what you see on the WebAssisgns and the worksheets, instead just talking about proofs and concepts rather than how to actually do the problem. The weekly worksheets are impossible unless you are gold-like or have a good TA. Overall, I've stressed more about this class than all my classes combined, and I do computer science for crying out loud. Overall, this is the only class I have ever taken where I am uncertain about it I'll even have a C at the end. Only good part about this class is that there are no quizzes and he is a nice guy.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 11/29/2021	Look, he's a great guy. But he really struggles to teach. If you win the TA lottery, then you will get an A with ease since the professor likes to curve things with the average being based on his lackluster explanations. Otherwise, good luck. Good grade or not, you're looking at 10 hours / week of homework, 4 midterm exams (for some reason), and a whole lot of stress. I give my prayers out to whoever has to take this class (which, unfortunately, is every engineering and computer science major).
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Anonymous 11/17/2021	literally tragic the way this man teaches. often has technological difficulties and goes through long round about ways of explaining concepts that is not needed as well as doesn't explain everything that we need to know for homework. 10/10 do not recommend
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/17/2021	An absolutely horrible professor. He shows up late to every single class and never finishes a lecture. He does not do relevant examples and always makes mistakes so nothing makes sense. He also gets easily distracted and wastes a lot of in class time. You need a great TA or you will fail, some TAs will explain the worksheets and some have no idea how to do them. The worksheets of which are basically over complicated challenge problems that he will not teach you how to do. Even if you've taken calc 2 before it is extremely difficult with him as a professor. If you read every page of the textbook and do every possible practice problems you might pass. Luckily there were no quizzes so your grade is mostly the exams...
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 11/06/2021	Not the best at explaining concepts, but he's a very kindhearted and understanding professor. He goes out of his way to help students wherever they need help. He also grades things leniently gives many opportunities for extra credit. Tests are very fair - lots of practice materials are provided. I especially appreciate his decision to eliminate "minus" grades (he assigns grades of A+, A, B+, B, etc). Good choice for STAT400.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting a C Anonymous 11/03/2021	He clearly knows the content very well but is terrible at explaining it succinctly. He goes a long round-about way of explaining the material in a conceptual way that could be shortened by just giving us the equations since no one really cares about proving the equations. Then he doesn't test us on the conceptual stuff; he tests us on applications that he glosses over/skips entirely in class. The weekly worksheets (25% of the final grade) are pretty much impossible unless you have a good TA who explains the entire thing. The twice-a-week WebAssign homeworks (15% of final grade) are also very difficult, and you really need a lot of friends to figure it out together and to use all three attempts of each person to get to the right answer. He often doesn't finish his lectures during class and has to hold zoom make-up sessions or just posts notes he expects us to go through on our own time. He doesn't go through any/nearly enough examples for us to understand the topic. If you don't read the textbook sections before class and land a great TA, good luck. On the bright side, we had no quizzes, just the 4 midterms and final.
Jonathan Fernandes Anonymous 09/25/2021	Nice guy, but terrible at explaining concepts. He wastes a lot of time in class getting distracted. His lectures are from the textbook, but he doesn't ever explain definitions, he only states them. He also expected us to know R without ever going over it in class.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT410 Anonymous 07/12/2021	I had Fernandes this past summer for STAT410 and it was his first time teaching the course. Usually students take STAT400 first before STAT410 but this was not the case for me. Fernandes did an amazing job explaining the course material I would say he's just as good as Justin when it comes to teaching. Also if you ever had questions about the homework, course material, or R projects you could do to office hours and he would walk you through it. He turned STAT410 from a difficult to easy course and was extremely approachable definitely easy to get at least a B and with a little bit of extra studying you can get an A.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 06/26/2021	Dr. Fernandes is truly the man. Great lecturer, and really cares about his students' success like no other.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/01/2021	If you have to take or want to take stat 400, take it with Fernandes. One of the best teachers and really cares about the success of his students.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/29/2021	Fernandes really cares about his students and provides everything they will ever need for their success. He provides excellent notes, help with the homeworks and R projects and even Guided Study Sessions with TAs. The content is decently interesting but he presents it in a way that is understandable and relevant. My only critiques with the class are the homework assignments. The homework assignments will be the most difficult thing you will do compared to the quizzes or exams. I really wish the homeworks would be more accurate the questions encountered on a quiz or test. Other than that he has very generous weights, provides a 10% buffer on each exam, and provides a bonus points curve. Oh and he doesn't do A-. If you have a choice take stat 400 with fernandes. Recently he discovered that some people were cheating, and so now he is making the final only during a select time period (rather than 24 hours like the mid terms were). I believe this is unfair towards the students who do take the class and their learnings seriously but I guess it is what it is.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting a B Anonymous 04/06/2021	he's ok i guess. alot of his quiz and exam questions are poorly worded which makes it way harder than it needs to be. however, he clearly cares about his students and makes sure he tries to accommodate everyone that struggles. i have no idea how he will be in person though.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 12/20/2020	One of the best professors at UMD. Would 100% recommend to take his class. He is so accommodating and he genuinely cares about his students. I have never seen a professor care about his students so much. He gives you handwritten notes that are so comprehensive and really help with prepping for the quizzes and exams. All of his exams were fair and he handles online classes really well.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2020	He is a great professor, always very prepared, always willing to go the extra mile for students to help them succeed. Take his class if you can!
Jonathan Fernandes MATH141 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/15/2020	He's a decent professor who applied a very generous curve at the end of the semester, dropping the lowest exam, lowest two quizzes, and lowest two worksheets. The class itself is just very difficult and his exams are somewhat difficult. The weekly quizzes also stack up in damaging the grade and are pretty tricky. However, he's always very open for questions and records all his lecture. He also provides his notes. The class is definitely not an easy A or easy, but he's a decent professor for a hard subject.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/01/2020	He's an amazing professor! He is very accommodating when there are legitimate concerns and truly cares about his students. If you ever need any help, he offers lot of opportunities to meet with him during office hours or before class (this is during COVID so all online). I have never done statistics before, but I have been able to do really well with this class even with it being all online. Homeworks can be challenging sometimes, but he gives lots of time to do it and you can ask for help during office hours. R Projects are not hard if you go to his R-Mondays (help session specifically for learning R), and he usually records these. He provides notes online and records his lectures, so you can always go back to review. Hands-down one of the best professors, you can't go wrong with him!
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/29/2020	he's really nice and very willing to help students but i dont like him because he gives way too much hw and doesn't explain concepts very well imo the concepts studied in stat400 are actually so simple but somehow his lectures overcomplicate them and make them difficult to learn. personally i have difficulty reading math textbooks so learning mostly from lectures took way too much time. He kind of just writes a bunch of numbers down and assumes you understand what he's talking about. sorry I dont speak math - im not a math major I was watching lectures asynch tho so i couldn't ask questions. BTW he was SUUUPER open to questions and stopping lecture to answer ur questions. he gives 1 quiz, 1 r project, 1 hw every single week. its so fucking annoying. chill tf out. the hw problems take so long, the R projects are annoying, the quizzes will hurt ur grade if u don't understand the concepts. he makes an introductory stat course harder than it needs to be with an unnecessary emphasis on R coding
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Expecting an A Anonymous 11/20/2020	Great professor with great notes. Not only a good teacher, but also a pretty nice person. He has been very responsive to student feedback and made significant changes to the structure of the class based on it. Would definitely recommend. A little note is that there are some particular small matters that upset him, so just be cautious.
Jonathan Fernandes Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/06/2020	He was an amazing guy that answered everyone's questions to the best of his ability. He always provided students with ample resources and was open and understanding to students' concerns and issues throughout the whole semester. His exams were more than fair. His R projects were hard at first but he adjusted the difficulty after some complaints. The weekly quizzes and hw's were kind of annoying. Some of the quizzes were sort of difficult but they were always multiple choice questions. He was a great guy and truly cared about us learning however, I found it very difficult to learn stat from him. He didn't really emphasize the differences between different statistic concepts. The math isn't the difficult part. Its understanding when which distributions are used and what each of their qualities and downfalls are. Now, if I came to class I could've asked these questions but I was asynchronous and only watched recorded vids. Not too hard a class, but difficult to learn the concepts from just the math text book and his lecture recordings.
Jonathan Fernandes STAT400 Anonymous 09/24/2020	he's such a sweet teacher and really understanding. I wasn't really sure about him because he didn't have any reviews for the class but he is a really great teacher.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH461 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/23/2020	Professor Fernandes is one of the best professors in the Math department. I have not had a professor who was more concerned with his student's success. He made the linear algebra easy to understand, with his very clear and precise notes. Overall, Professor Fernandes is by far the best option for taking MATH461.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH461 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/22/2020	Genuinely wants you to learn, is extremely organized (has some killer notes), is easy to talk to, makes expectations clear, and was accommodating and compassionate during these corona times. If you really enjoy math and there are things outside the scope of this class that you want to explore then Fernandes is your guy. It is clear he loves math and he really cares that you learn. He is more than willing to talk math with you even if it is not something in the class. Overall great guy.
Jonathan Fernandes MATH461 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2020	Good professor. Easy exams with high averages and adjusted due dates on MATLABs and homeworks to accommodate the unusual situation the pandemic put us all in. He genuinely cares about his students and I highly recommend taking any class with him.