Francisco Arana Herrera

This professor has taught: MATH141, MATH240, MATH246, MATH246H

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Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/27/2024	He is alright as long as you do the Levermore practice problems and go to discussions. His exams are very similar to the practice exam he gives. Overall he's not the best in terms of teaching, a lot of this course is learned by yourself or with your friends.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2024	I'll star off by saying this is the first and only Math class that I've ever gotten an A in. He explains things very clearly and is super chill. He's still a young guy and is figuring things our but he's definitely one of my all time favorite professors. His practice exams are carbon copies of his actual midterms, which there are three of. I will say the problems he gives out on exams are generally the simplest/easiest form of the problem to solve which is nice. I got through the class pulling an all-nighter before each midterm without any extra studying and got a 100 on 2/3 of the exams. He's a great guy and def. the best choice to pick if he has any open seats left.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2024	This was one of the best math courses I've had at UMD so far. Francisco is super chill and a good professor. Weekly quizzes were super easy and matlabs were free points. He follows Levermore's notes almost exactly, both in lecture and exams. I thought his exams were very fair. He provides practice material that mirrors the actual exam. His lectures and exams prepared me very well for the final. He posts lecture notes and recordings which is also nice.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/11/2024	Very theory heavy which I personally favor but i know its not for everyone. He was very knowledgable and could always answer questions that people had. The practice exams were always very similar to the midterms. Weekly quizzes always helped learn concepts. Very approachable and a pretty cool guy.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/10/2024	Francisco is fantastic! I was worried about taking DiffEq until I got into his class and realized how much he genuinely cared about his students and ensuring they do well. His exams are pretty easy and straightforward. He doesn’t try to trip you up with fancy calculus which I appreciated; there was one problem on Exam 1 that had us working with integrals and he literally told us to use u-sub (and he provided u!!). He proves plenty of resources to do well on all of the exams and his office hours are extremely helpful. There are quizzes almost every week but they are fairly easy as long as you are keeping up with the material; the quizzes also forced me to study/understand the topics on a weekly basis which was a good review. I had Pablo Cedillos as a TA, he is also fantastic and did a great job explaining the concepts that were on the quizzes.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/28/2024	Great professor! Considering how terrible diff eq professors have been historically, Herrera is fantastic. On a personal level, he is very nice and very understanding. On a teaching level, he does an excellent good job explaining the content in a way that cuts 80% of the BS. Lectures for the most part are easy to follow (occasionally there are derivations and technicalities which can be a pain to sit through). The class is mostly theory, so plan on studying a lot of the class outside lecture (practice problems on levermore's website is great). He records lectures (absolutely godsent). Weekly discussion quizzes are fair and easy for the most part, good to keep you up to pace with the class. The exams have been decently fair, he doesn't throw in any curveballs (no weird identities for integrals, no integration by part). He provides practice midterms, which were super helpful and mirrored exam structure. The second exam killed everyone in the class (some people only were able to attempt 2/5 problems), but he's receptive to these things and had exams graded very generously (I had two incomplete problems and still got a 91% on the exam). Overall, good professor, exams are fair game, receptive to class performance, genuinely nice guy. I would strongly recommend him! Additionally TAs (especially Pablo) have been great
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/28/2023	He follows the textbook pretty directly, but he works through the problems pretty well so that you can understand all of the concepts. The quizzes are pretty easy, and he curves the exams that most people did really badly if they did not reflect the general knowledge of the class. He is very kind and understanding if you have any problems. Although he is somewhat of a boring lecturer, I still found them helpful to go to.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/24/2023	As a person, he's a really nice and chill guy who does care about your learning. However, his lectures tend to just be him copying off Levermore's notes and only going into theory. He rarely goes through example problems with real numbers in class, which make it more difficult to prepare for exams. However, he does give good practice for his exams. My advice is to go through all the problems in Levermore's notes because many times, he simply copies problems from there and puts them in his exams.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/24/2023	Overall, I think Francisco was a decent professor for MATH246, but I did have some issues with how this class was managed. His lectures placed a large emphasis on theory. But he would give a practice midterm before every exam, which really helped. It usually reflected the layout of the actual exam. I spent most of my time for this class self-studying and doing practice problems from Levermore's website, and that alongside the practice midterms helped me prepare well for exams. Francisco dropped the ball quite a bit near the end of the semester. He didn't teach the last unit very well (Systems of ODEs) and went at a poor pace. There were also concepts in class that he didn't teach at all (eigenvalues with higher multiplicities) that ended up on the exam. Also, he was lenient on his exam grading for most of the semester but for some reason, he decided to make a 180-degree u-turn on this last unit midterm. He deducted a whopping 10% for each small mistake on this exam rather than 2% like he did for the rest of the exams. The averages for that unit's midterm were 15% lower than the rest of the midterms. As I stated earlier, his pacing was quite poor for the last unit. As a result, he dumped a boatload of new content (very difficult content, that too) on us on the very last day of class, which he stated was going to be on the final. Because of this, I had to spend many, many hours across a mere few days just to learn and understand this new content. This made it way harder for me to study for not just for MATH246 in general, but all my other finals too. This gave me an extraordinary amount of stress going into finals week. However, despite all these issues, I felt Francisco was very understanding throughout the semester. He cancelled quizzes when it was not appropriate, such as right before/after an exam, or right after Thanksgiving break. He also entirely cut out a Matlab as we were short on time, instead of blindly stuffing it in on the last week like many other professors would do. He was also super chill, friendly and open to answering any questions in class or in office hours. I think he truly wanted us to succeed. Also, his TA, Dmitrii Gudin, was awesome. I've never had a more lenient grader than Dmitrii. About MATH246 in general - this is quite a difficult course. I know others who took this class with different professors and had it way worse. In general, it seems most MATH246 professors are terrible. In light of this, Francisco is definitely on the better end of MATH246 professors. I recommend taking this class with him if you can.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/21/2023	He's a good lecturer but spends a lot of time on theory. Not his fault, it's how the course is designed. The quizzes are decent and the exams are really fair. The practice midterms he posted were what was put on the exam with different numbers, etc. The final was much harder but that was common across all diff eq sections. The matlabs were terrible to do but the ta wasn't too harsh in grading. They did take a crazy amount of time. If I had to redo this class, i would spend more time understanding the theory and being able know how to do different types of problems intuitively.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 06/25/2023	he is a nice guy. however, his lectures were boring and he really taught directly from the textbook. since he was new to math240, he had no practice exams to study with. his exams were not necessarily difficult, but they were very long. the true/false on his exams were taken directly from the textbook, but they were very specific and he didn't go over these much in class. i feel he also doesn't explain conceptual theorems well and sometime they were confusing to understand. overall hes not the worst choice, but also not the best.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/26/2023	Pros: -Easy weekly quiz -Responsive to emails -Friendly -Provided several final exam answer keys from past years Cons: -Teached directly from textbook -Failed to provide extra detail to help students understand complex topics in the class -Failed to provide midterm practice exams Ultimately, I found it hard to understand Linear Algebra under his teaching and midway through the semester I began to attend a different professor's lectures. At the time of this review he is quite middle of the road but is a nice guy and is willing to help if you ask.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/17/2023	Good instructor although he follows the book pretty much to a tee he explains concepts well and doesn’t give much work. His exams might be hard but he gave a pretty nice grade cutoff at the end of the course. Overall he’s Very nice and worth taking imo.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B ikaici 05/17/2023	Decent lectures, and beautiful notes. His exams are decent, but grading is pretty harsh, especially with true/false questions- even if you get the answer correct its practically impossible to even get full credit on the question. Quizzes are weekly and when combined with MATLAB assignments due on the same day it can become overwhelming. Honestly, this class wasn't very fun but I doubt Math240 is that fun anyway.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/16/2023	My grade was mostly my own fault, so don't mind that. Honestly, he isn't the worst lecturer as other reviews have said, because they are well structured, he has ample examples and explains each topic fairly in depth where it makes sense. However, it can certainly be not very engaging at times. His MATLAB grading is easy, just answer the questions and you'll at least get a 40/50. Personally I struggled a bit with the quizzes, but if you study the textbook beforehand you will be fine. He is a nice guy, and he is communicative in his office hours and his TAs were great! His exams felt fair, but the True/False questions are very difficult and not many resources are given to actually study how to answer them correctly. Overall, it was a pretty hard class, (I though MATH240 was supposed to be easy??) and I wouldn't have survived without Francisco's curve at the end, which was around 5%.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 05/15/2023	Very solid professor. His midterms are on the rough side as there is no practice material to study for them. You only have problems from the textbook. His TAs are amazing though and he does give a decent curve at the end. I would recommend him over other professors.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/04/2023	Horrible teaching, choose someone better worth your time! Trust me.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a C Anonymous 05/01/2023	Very monotone and unenergetic during lectures. Lectures go word from word from the textbook. You could just read the textbook and get more value out of your time then going to lectures. Suggested questions in the textbook don't represent exam questions. His true false questions on exams are worth 20 percent of the exam grade, and there is no real way to study for them. Grading is really strict. He is new to teaching 240, take someone with more history behind this course.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/19/2023	Teaching is based solely on the textbook. Grading on MatLab is incredibly strict, one small syntactic mistake leads to 5+ points off on a 10 point question. Exams are generally fair besides the conceptual true or false section which can be very confusing and unclear. Isn't the best, isn't the worst.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a B- Anonymous 04/19/2023	I don’t know how his ratings got so high. The only reason I chose him as my MATH240 professor were these reviews. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT make the same mistake as me. This man recites the textbook WORD FOR WORD for each and every one of his lectures; and that’s all he does. I have found Khan Academy and talented professors on youtube FAR more useful than anything this man has said or done. The homework is unstructured and vague and he provides no practice material yet makes THE VAGUEST true/false questions worth 20% of EVERY SINGLE EXAM (even though you can’t practice them even with the textbook as the textbook DOESN’T PROVIDE ANSWERS TO TRUE/FALSE HOMEWORK QUESTIONS). Overall, he is a very nice man and I don’t feel great writing this review but the amount of mental strain his class has put on me is absurd; and I don’t want anyone to fall into the same trap.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting an A- Anonymous 03/16/2023	Beautiful notes, felt like exams were really easy so far. His lectures are very clear and concise - the pace is a little quick but isn't really a problem. A thing I really liked about him was that he goes into the "why" of things.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH240 Expecting a C Anonymous 03/11/2023	Don't take him for Math240,these positive reviews are from different courses and he is not like this in Math240. He probably read every positive things about him on here and made it so he doesn't have that anymore. Also this review is his only math240 review. Takes points off for silly mistakes even though your answer is correct you get almost no points because you made simple mistake. Doesn't give mock exams so you have no idea what to expect on the day of exam (considering your whole grade depends on those exams its hit or miss).I read the book and did every exercises on the book but exam is nothing near alike to book exercises. No recordings for the class so if you want to go back to look certain topic you can't.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/18/2022	Fantastic teacher. Very clear but moves fast (not his fault just the pace of the course). You will love him if you care about the hows and whys of math. He will not test on those deep concepts but they are a majority of the lectures' content and very valuable for good intuition. The MATLAB assignments are tedious but all of MATH246/246H have to do them. He is very friendly and extremely knowledgeable + helpful during office hours. He is also prompt in his email responses. The fast pace of the class meant that even in a 20-person class it felt just like a large class lecture but it wasn't his fault. This is definitely the hardest I've ever worked in a course but he has been extremely valuable in my A-. As for tests, he is very fair and gives tests that focus on your general understanding of concepts, not on random, useless, details. He barely takes off points for silly mistakes and couldn't care less about the right answer if your logic is right. He will, however, test you on anything covered in lecture, as is his right, but just keep that in mind.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/16/2022	Right off the bat, Francisco is a great guy. While a little quiet at times, you can tell he cares about his students, especially given that I had him for his first semester here. While he mainly reads off of the online notes, he summarizes it well in a way that will expose you to the material. Keep in mind I said “expose you to” and not “make you understand.” This class is far from easy; if you want to succeed you have to do a LOT of practice problems. Thankfully, Francisco makes it easy to access the online notes and practice problems (each practice problem has answers directly under it which helped me the most when it comes to understanding). The only issue I had, which is the main reason why I ended with a B-, is that I only started looking at the practice problems right before the exams. My main words of advice: look at the practice problems on a lesson-to-lesson basis. It will help. When it comes to exams and grading, Francisco makes his own exams and makes them generally easier than the other professors. For example, my class’ final exam was a lot easier than any other exam he assigned and it had no MATLAB question (keep in mind, there are a lot of MATLAB based homeworks that aren’t too difficult but can be time consuming especially if, like me, you have no prior coding experience. That being said, there are solutions for every MATLAB assignment somewhere online and people with coding experience are usually willing to help… don’t be afraid to get tutoring for it too, that’s something I wish I did more. In addition, the lowest graded MATLAB assignment is dropped so I just skipped the last one and took the excused 0). His grading isn’t always fair since he never takes off half a point (there were multiple instances where I got one or two points off of a 25 point exam from sign errors) but if you go into his office hours to review the exam and ask for extra points (specifically on questions where you made small errors) he will likely give you an extra point or two (I have a 100% success rate of doing this). Everything being said, I highly recommend taking differential equations with Francisco. Compared to the reviews I’ve heard of the other MATH246 professors he is the best one.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/16/2022	Great guy, very chill. Will help if asked. However, teaches directly from Levermore notes with few examples. Grading is rough, with 80% of your grade being midterms and the final, with only 3 midterms. No curve.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/15/2022	Great teacher in my opinion, especially as a new post-doc. He teaches directly from Levermore's notes, which means that notes are available online for any missed classes. I will admit though, to understand the beauty of his teaching, you do need to appreciate math pretty deeply. The MATLAB assignments are long, but are mostly found online, and he drops your lowest MATLAB grade. His grading is very fair, and does an excellent job of testing you only on whether you remember the concept/methodology or not. Small syntatical errors don't matter as much in the class as much as more overarching concepts and general ideas.
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Anonymous 12/15/2022	Reads directly off Levermore's notes, doesn't go over many example questions, strict grader as he never takes off half points (exams are 25 points). Also your grade is dependent on matlab (extremely tedious) and exams, thats it
Francisco Arana Herrera MATH246H Expecting an A Anonymous 12/06/2022	Great dude love this guy!