James Hanson

This professor has taught: AREC386, AREC399, AREC435, AREC489L, AREC699, AREC799, AREC898, AREC899, MATH140, MATH246, MATH246H, MATH445, MATH461

Sort By:

Information	Review
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/29/2024	He's not a great lecturer honestly. He's very nice and his exams are fair, but I honestly skipped a majority of the lectures and taught myself the content on my own. Would recommend him if you are an independent learner and not a great test taker.
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2024	if you cannot teach math do yourself do not take this course. no joke from he first day this man doesn't tell you a single thing about the course and he just started with alright unit 1. Absolutely not normal and not a thing is said about the class, the syllabus and grading etc. he doesn't communicate and many times we would do something in class and not finish and just be expected to do the homework without learning the stuff. I dont think a single test had an average over 65 and many times in the 50s and he doesn't Adress it at all. his office hours are a joke bc the entire class tries to top to them and if you email him best of luck bc he will not respond. the way eh teaches is a joke bc all he just is relay everything in the textbook and I never took calculous before and the organic chemistry tutor was my savior!! dont think you have had to have taken calc to do well bc I still somehow finessed a good grade but it was a huge sweat at the end. I would avoid him at all costs if I could unless you are the kid that can teach everything to yourself and has a friend that does attend lecture so you can know exactly what to study pros he posts exactly the break down of each test (def gonna put the hardest question for each thing tho) I think he dropped the lowest midterm (didn't say anything about it just did it in canvas and didn't mention it in class) lectures are mandatory cons legit just expects you to teach yourself the stuff that you dont learn in class and for the final there was just things we never learned and its worth 30% so much homework and its on stuff that we legit didn't learn- too bad still expected to know out (two homeworks a week) discussion is mandatory but actually kinda helpful lectures are legit just the textbook on the board with little to no more explanantion
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting a C+ Anonymous 05/16/2024	Hanson is honestly not the best lecturer, especially at the beginning of the semester, as he often sped through the material so you will need to do a lot of self-studying to do well. However, he is very accommodating and made grading adjustments that ultimately saved my grade. Homework were unnecessarily difficult at times so take advantage of tutoring and office hours to ask questions.
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/11/2024	James hanson wasen't a particularly difficult professor. Honestly if you went to class and took notes the midterms are a walk in the park. He posts what each question of the midterm would cover and the point value. If you go to class and make an effort there is no shot you fail and will atleast get an B. Although the Tas are terrible graders. the range so heavily when it comes to grades for dicussion with some being so nice and some being assholes. then finally I have had to submit so many regrades for ridiculous points being pulled off my exams. but all in all not too difficult of a class and you just cant skip and expect a good grade. I would recommend him such a caring guy
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/08/2024	I'm retaking MATH140 to improve GPA, so I already knew most of the things. I never once went to lecture either. So I don't know about his teaching skills, I was never there. He's alright though. Very understanding and kind. Gives hard exams, but started curving and 1/3 of the way through the semester said he'd weigh the lowest midterm exam at half of the others, since people did so bad on the first one. I've removed a star because on the first three exams he always had one crazy unsolvable question. Also, he NEVER replied to email so you HAVE to talk to him in person about anything. But he's not mean or anything. I guess just bad with email. Statistics for our class on the exams. All exams out of 100: Exam 1: Mean: 59.29 Median: 60 High: 92 Upper Quartile: 73 Low: 6 Lower Quartile: 46.75 Exam 2: Mean: 74.02 Median: 81 High: 97 Upper Quartile: 90.13 Low: 9.5 Lower Quartile: 66.38 Exam 3: Mean: 65.88 Median: 66.5 High: 96.5 Upper Quartile: 78.5 Low: 10 Lower Quartile: 53.63 Exam 4: Mean: 72.9 Median: 77 High: 100 Upper Quartile: 88 Low: 6.5 Lower Quartile: 63.75
James Hanson MATH140 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/06/2024	Wasn't a fan the first few weeks since he went through topics so fast and it seemed like he only went over easy examples whilst leaving us to do the hard ones but he grew on me over the semester. He lectures very efficiently and incorporates the theorems of calculus very well into the lesson. He's also super accommodating to students, dropping grades, offering to curve tests, giving exact topics each question goes over, providing practice exams. In any case I know he did more than the other MATH140 spring 2024 lecturer to provide us with resources and help. If you put in the work, you will easily pass this class with him.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2023	Hanson truly wants every student in his class to do well. He takes time to meaningfully answer every single question during lecture, no matter how stupid it may sound. He also stays after lecture to clarify confusions and makes himself available through email and office hours. His lectures can occasionally be a bit hard to follow since he is scatter-brained and jumps around a lot, but he teaches straight from Levermore's notes so you can always reference those notes if you get lost or miss class. He also does a generally good job of getting through all the content and does a lot of example problems on the board which helps make things clearer. Before exams he also makes it very clear what will be tested on the exams and what won't be so you always know what to expect. He grades EXTREMELY generously so exam averages are quite high and the weekly workload from problem sets is very light. Overall a nice guy and good professor who will help you get the grade you want in diff eq
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2023	This guy was slightly hard to understand but SO understanding and kind.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/24/2023	He's not a great lecturer, which makes it hard to learn the harder topics, but he's a very kind and understanding guy. He very clearly cares about his students and wants everyone to get a good grade. Midterms were curved generously, and practice exams for the midterms are almost exactly like the actual midterms, so they're easy to study for. I just wish he would respond to emails more, he was hard to contact if you didn't approach him after class.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/21/2023	Hanson's lectures aren't terrible, but the online notes will usually be more informative (and easier to read) in studying for the exams. Discussion sections are have pretty helpful groupwork, but they aren't mandatory and the work isn't graded. Weekly homeworks typically are only a few questions but can take 2-4 hours to get through, so don't procrastinate. MATLAB assignments are not too bad if your groupmates are competent, but they were graded pretty nicely anyways (tip: skim through the sections of the textbook that the problems are from if you're stuck. What you need to do is often spelled out verbatim in some example). Tests were alright, and especially towards the end, he would post what questions were on each topic and how many points they were, which was super helpful. Three midterms were all curved by lowering the cutoffs (70, 120, and 100) by ten points, which weirdly benefits people with higher scores the most (ex. Going from 30/100 to 30/90 is a 3% increase, but 90/100 to 90/90 is 10%). Final was written by some other professor, hard as hell, and not curved at all despite a low average (65%). Lowest MATLAB and regular homework assignment were dropped. Overall, not great experience, but I can't say most of it was attributable to the professor and not the fact that course was, even on a good day, still differential equations.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/20/2023	So, there are currently about 6 one star reviews under me giving him one star, and at the start of the semester I can say I might've thought the same too. I will say that he is unexperienced at teaching, but being fair this is the second time he's taught the course and looking at previous exams I think the bigger issue is that the course's curriculum makes no sense, so what he says seems like random crap when that's how the course was designed. However, he acknowledged this quite a lot and so made the 3 midterms have pretty good averages, (75%, 80%, and 85% respectively), which was from giving nice numbers and problems and not making anything seem too much out of the blue. He also gave an extra 10% for each of these afterwards due to the lower quartile being lower, so the average student was at an A for a while. It seemed like the graders for his section did not take off massive points for mistakes so that seemed nice. The final itself had a 65 percent average but apparently that was also last semesters average so not much new there. Lastly, the MATLAB and homeworks do take a long time, but also it's not even taught in class but expected to be learned by students... It's another moment where the curriculum is at fault, not Hanson. Getting to the lectures, Hanson really does try, and I'd say closer to the end of the course he actually got his stuff together and made more sense. His initial explanations can be janky, but when asked for clarification he usually explains what's going on better. I think lecture is hit or miss, but going to discussion (Keagan the GOAT fr), using the notes as necessary, and redoing examples from the notes is how to actually understand what's happening. In addition, outside of class I do believe he's reasonably accommodating, at least in my case he answered my email within a week and also stays after lecture for a couple of minutes if you have an issue. Overall, I do not believe he is a great teacher, but he does try to make sense of the course and gave a generous curve, and if run like this semester I believe it will be a decent experience.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/19/2023	He tries to communicate the information, but he writes all over the board and it isn't clear what he's writing. The exams were only doable because he provides previous exams, which look exactly like what's on the current one save for some changed numbers or reworded questions. The homework was difficult, and I couldn't do it without the TA's office hours. The MATLABs are especially challenging, as the book is horrible at explaining how to do things and I don't have any prior experience. If you're able to teach yourself material and attend office hours, you can get through this class, but otherwise, I don't recommend him.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 05/18/2023	He isn't that horrendous, but he still isn't the greatest. He definitely does try, however I feel like he was very unprepared to teach the class. Every lecture was just a rehash of the textbook the school uses, which definitely did not help. If the textbook and material was better and less terribly organized, I might've had a better experience with the course. Overall the bigger problem I had with the class was the material being taught rather than the professor, the textbook/Levermore's notes manages to take the simplest of concepts that could be explained in a sentence or two and turn it into literally, not-exaggerating, into 20 fucking pages with the most esoteric wordings alongside greek letter spam, which for some reason the entirety of the course is based and taught off on. I don't think anyone who takes this class with any professor would be having a good time. Overall, with Hanson, I went to the TAs office hours to carry me the homeworks and the TAs graded generously the MATLABs which took hours to do and the textbook, which the questions taken from, being wildly out of date and the example code often unhelpful and often incorrect. The only reason I probably had a decent grade in the class was because that I managed to score mid-80s on all the midterms which Hanson, did reduce the total amount of points it was worth 10-20 points before the final. However, this did cause some anxiety if the class was going to be curved for the entirety of the semester. The final was not curved though and the average was a 65. Overall, Hanson isn't a bad professor I'd probably give him a 3.5 but the way the actual course material was taught from and organized was questionable at the best and brain-dead at the worst.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/18/2023	Ok look. He’s not the greatest teacher. Matter of fact, he usually ends up making you more confused. However, he is probably the easiest professor to get an A in the class with. His midterms are extremely easy to study for because he gives you practice midterms that are super similar to the actual ones, making it easy to know what you are getting into. He curves extremely generously imo. Before the final, he curved all the midterms by reducing the amount of points of them by 10. This meant that if you were in the upper quartile, you literally got extra credit. I had over a 100% in the class before the final. Now, again, really bad teacher. You’re gonna need to basically self study the entire course. But this is generally true for most other diff eq teachers. The Levermore notes give you more than enough practice problems to learn everything yourself with answer keys that explain how something is solved. The class is perfectly doable, and I give Hanson 5 stars because he made it extremely easy to pass the class. As of right now there isn’t a better professor out there. If you want to pass differential without caring about understanding it, Hanson is your guy.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2023	Alr bruh imma be honest. Ignore what everyone said an listen to this. I’m a student who hates lectures and skips often. I do not condone this but if you do, you can still be at pace by using the provided LEVERMORE NOTES at home. Hanson is a very nice, reserved, and theoretical guy as he doesn’t not do examples in depth. For that you should definitely go to discussion as they help a lot. EXAMS: to pass this class you need Levermore notes and his practice exams. ALl you have to do is do some practice examples from Levermores and basically memorize his practice exam. His Practice exam is basically 1:1 but slightly different problems. He wants you to do good and his grading shows that as he CURVES at the end of the semester. He takes off 5-10 points off of each midterm. His Matlabs are basically free points and so is his hw so make sure u have a good group of friends to work on it with. FINAL: the final will probably be hard as he spoils you with his somewhat decent exams. However if you memorize the Levermores notes you should be in good hands CONCLUSION: compared to the others, Hanson is a great professor and I am happy I chose him. He is understanding, and though he may not respond to emails, In person he really wants to help. His TA’s are great and his grading is very nice. Just follow the practice exams and study hard for the final and no doubt you’ll have an A.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/14/2023	He's an okay professor I'll list the pros and cons. Pros - Class gets curved well - Exams are nearly identical to the practice tests he releases - Homeworks are relatively easy and never too much (excluding matlab) - Helpful during office hours Cons - Lectures are often very confusing because he's a smart guy but really isn't good at presenting the information - Writes in small messy handwriting on the board so if you don't have 20/20 vision you'll spend more time trying to understand what's written on the board than understanding the actual info on the board - Matlabs are so awful no help is provided and they take hours upon hours to complete
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/10/2023	Straightforward exams that are exactly like the practice exams. Be careful of random trig sub calc 2 integrals though... The homeworks are really time consuming and not very expansive. He would give 1-2 problems for the topic, but give them the most atrocious numbers so that it would take you 1-2 hours to do each problem. However, by the end of the homework you should be able to do that type of problem pretty easily. His lectures suck a lot. Do not go to his lectures, and instead just learn from looking at the practice problems in the online textbook. A lot of diff eq is brute force memorization, and when you think of it like that there isn't actually that much memorization in the end. Trying to understand what is going on conceptually will make your head spin, so i suggest that you just don't do that for this class and just memorize how the problems are done. tl;dr take hanson for the easy exams. Self study from the textbook and don't go to his lectures.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/09/2023	246 is already hard enough, but Hanson just makes it so much worse. Lectures are basically him scratching stuff down on the board with little to no explanation for anything he is doing. He also likes to go off-topic and waste 5 minutes of lecture time, which is mostly just confusing and destroys your capability to learn properly. He will then proceed to run out of time at the end of lecture without having taught much, if anything at all. If you genuinely want to learn the material, you will need to basically teach yourself, as even discussions aren't very helpful. Also, good luck on the MATLAB assignments, those are complete hell. My advice is to do them as soon as you can, or else you'll probably end up struggling for hours on end. TLDR: Don't take Hanson if you can afford to, literally any other professor would do a better job of teaching 246. Also, pray when you do the MATLABs.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/08/2023	In my experience, I'm not terribly fond of James as a professor. His lectures move extremely fast paced and he would frequently erase things people were still trying to write down. I write pretty fast, but the entire lecture I felt like I couldn't listen to what he was saying because I was trying to keep up with writing everything down. James wasn't the best at explaining concepts and would just kind of do the problems on the board, so oftentimes I had no idea what was happening or why. The exams were fair and, for the most part, the same as the practice exams (except the first one which he included a tank problem which we had done ONCE in discussion and never in lecture that I remember). I found the homework pretty difficult and the matlab assignments were an absolute nightmare. Overall he's a nice man and very personable, but my arm was about to fall off after every lecture from writing so fast and I often left class confused about what we had even learned.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/02/2023	Class is terrible. Professor needs to get better at teaching. Half the stuff he tries to teach is blubber and rubbish. Professor is bad but class is even worse than the Professor. Like seriously what is key identity!!!
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a W Anonymous 05/01/2023	Please do not take this man if you love yourself. I have never in my entire academic career had such a terrible professor. I would go to class and not understand a thing. He teaches very scattered brain and his lectures are very hard to follow. He is an intelligent man but a terrible lecturer. If you do not do your own studying before class you will be genuinely confused about what concepts he's teaching. Take someone else.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B- Anonymous 04/27/2023	He writes chicken scratch on the board and doesn't make any sense. Don't take him.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/27/2023	He does try. His lectures are pretty difficult to parse and I mostly just ended up reading the book, asking my TA questions, and studying the both the sample midterms and practice problems from the book. I got a better grade in this class compared to what I feel like I ended up understanding. Also yeah the exams are really quick.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 04/04/2023	For all those who put higher than one star, I am seriously questioning your sanity. Yes Hanson’s exams are basically the same as the midterms but that is the ONLY positive thing I can say about him as a teacher. He never replied to emails. Sick- screw you, no response. ADS accomodations- screw you, no response. I had to email ADS to badger him to get accomodations. His lectures are all over the place. He always messes up, starts and stops topics, jumps around and honestly unless you know the content already, good luck getting ANYTHING out of going to lecture. The only reason to go is to the know the topic so you can learn it on your own. He typically starts with examples which he never finishes and changes partway through as an intro to concepts and the never actually explains the concepts. Unless you are really good at calc 2 and memorizing and have enormous amounts of time to waste learning on your own, you will not do well at all. Take someone else. Also the matlabs are horrendous. There are seven, no help is provided, the textbook does not help, he doesn’t teach it, and they take hours upon hours to complete. In addition, the TAs are not prepared to help with them except right before they are due. Discussion is helpful (for once) but it is not enough to substitute the hours is will take to understand the content well enough to pass with Hanson’s horrible attempt at teaching
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a C Anonymous 12/18/2022	This class was genuinely the worst experience I have ever had in college. Maybe it is just how messed up this class has always been? The exams feel legitimately humanly impossible to complete on time (many other students agreed and frequently complained or joked about it). I doubt the TA's or prof himself could solve these in time. Even if you completed Hanson's midterm practice exams (which were identical to the exams) and studied extremely hard, there STILL will not be enough time to finish these exams, which I find EXTREMELY unfair (MANY of the solutions to these exam questions would take up to two pages of work in my notebook). No calculators allowed on exams and lots and lots of tedious integration and algebra to do. This isn't a calc 2 class, these integrals need to be easier to do by hand when you have less than 8 minutes to solve each question man. Hanson please. Hanson's lectures are frequently confusing, extremely unorganized (at times he would completely skip examples and further explanation if they were missing from his hand written notes), and students had to very frequently correct what he would write on the board (not just algebra but notation for formulas or how he was using them, etc.), so I never felt as though I could trust my notes to study from. It's mostly everybody's first time taking this class so I don't understand why the students have to know this stuff before lecture in order to correct the professor when he makes a mistake. I mean don't get me wrong, he would catch his own mistakes too, many many times. Be prepared to change what you write in your notes over and over again because his notes are just chaos. Justin's notes do not cover the class material in depth at times so I was frequently jumping between the textbook, my TA (Keith)'s notes (which were awesome), and thank god for Terrence Long's videos on youtube, though there is still some material he does not cover, and some of Professor Leonard on youtube. Hanson did end up curving the 3 midterm exams by lowering the total by 5-10 points (which was strange because it gave some people extra credit). The final was tough and the class average was a 63% and seems to barely have been curved. In closing, I wish you all good luck in this class. I disliked every moment of it.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/14/2022	Hanson tries his best to explain the concepts, but it often feels clouded and you end up getting lost. I would say the MATLABs were typically way hard and can take hours to complete, so make sure you start on those early. The homeworks were fair and serve as good review. His practice exams were basically 1-1 with the real exams, so they're great to study off of. The use of a cheat-sheet for the midterm exams was also quite welcome, especially with the complex nature of Diff Eqs. He did curve quite generously pre-final and will probably be receiving a final curve as well. Generally, take him if you want to pass the class and not learn too much. However if you're genuinely interested in understanding the material, maybe not the best professor out there. I will say though, shout out to Terence Long's review videos. Definitely take a look at them if you're lost or stuck!
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/05/2022	Hanson isn't the most eloquent speaker, but he teaches the content well enough. His exams can be difficult, but he provides practice exams that are basically the same as the actual exams, which, if you practice, will make the exams a breeze. I wish he covered the MatLab assignments a bit more, but I feel like that is more of an issue with the amount of content in the course rather than a fault in his lectures. He is probably one of the better professors for MATH246.
James Hanson MATH246 Expecting a W Anonymous 10/21/2022	Hanson does try, and he does explain the processes needed to solve differential equations. However, there is no concept base to build this off of, and the MATLABs and homeworks are not reflective of exams. If you are good at memorizing processes and specific cases, you will be fine. I would not recommend him for anyone trying to have a complete understanding of course concepts.
James Hanson MATH461 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/20/2022	I would definitely recommend Hanson for 461. I'll admit it could be a little boring at times, but that's kind of the nature of linear algebra. He teaches you everything you need to know in a fairly stress-free environment. Exams were mostly straightforward so long as you understand the material on the practice exams. Homework sets and Matlab projects were also reasonable. If you put a bit of work into understanding the material, you should definitely do well in this course.
James Hanson MATH461 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/16/2022	If you just want to pass the course with a good grade and don't care much about learning the material, Hanson is perfect for you. His lectures are very theoretical and abstract, but he gives extremely good reviews for exams to the point where it is almost difficult to not get an A as long as you are studying and care enough. That being said, if the material in linear algebra is actually important to you you are probably better off taking a better professor if one is available. However, if only the really bad professors are available Hanson is definitely a big step above them, as you can tell he cares about the students and he is always quick and open to respond to any kind of questions asked during lectures/email. Also, take his lectures being bad with a grain of salt since I am fairly certain my class was his first time teaching Math461, and it is possible that the lectures will improve in the future.
James Hanson MATH445 Expecting a B Anonymous 01/08/2022	Hanson knows his stuff, but is just inexperienced at teaching. He would often go on long, confusing tangents and rants during lecture. He would try his best to explain things in detail during lecture, but would simply fail sometimes. His homework is tough to prepare you for his difficult exams. The exam averages were 50s-60s from the two midterms and final. This class has a good amount of proof writing and is not as easy as it seems from an outside perspective. The class gets significantly harder after the first midterm. I do not think Hanson is bad, but I definitely would not recommend.
James Hanson Expecting a B Anonymous 01/08/2022	Hanson definitely knows his stuff, but is just inexperienced at teaching. He did his best at explaining things in a detailed manner, but went on long, confusing rants or tangents often. He makes his homework tough to prepare you for his difficult exams. The exam averages were 50s-60s. He is quick to answer emails and questions if they arise. I do not think he is bad, but probably would not recommend taking.
James Hanson AREC435 Anonymous 05/30/2011	This class surprised me! The first day I left thinking that it was going to be one of the most confusing classes ever. Overall though, it ended up being one of my favorites! You get some good practical experiences learning about agricultural markets. Prof. Hanson is very straightforward in how he presents the material and goes step-by-step, very methodically, always making sure that students understand it. The grading in the class involves homework (20%), a midterm exam (35%), and a final (45%). Half of the homework involves worksheets that are graded based on completion, which he goes over it in class they day it is due. I recommend completing it ahead of time though because it helps you grasp the material better. Half the homework involves Geograin, a program that allows you to manage a hypothetical agricultural market account. It's a great experience learning how to analyze real prices. This part of the homework involves handing in updates 5 times a semester (2% each) of how your Geograin is performing (though results do not impact your grade). The exams mostly involves the same problems performed in the homework, as well as some of the definitions and terms we discuss in class. Make sure you attend class and understand the problems because there are no powerpoint slides. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you do not understand. The final is a substantial portion of the grade, and it's cumulative, so make sure you don't fall behind and procrastinate in your studies!