Jonathan Simon

This professor has taught: BIOL667, BIOL708L, BSCI374, BSCI374H, ENEE222, ENEE322, ENEE324, ENEE488, HLSC374, NACS728B, NACS899

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Jonathan Simon HLSC374 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/09/2023	I found Dr. Simon to be a perfectly good teacher. His lectures were well-paced and easy to understand. He regularly paused to ask if anyone had questions, and with his friendly demeanor, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all raising my hand to get something clarified. Dr. Simon answered questions very thoroughly, as well. I only went to his office hours once, but from that experience, I'd bet that if you went there, you'd have everything you're unsure about explained. Specifically for HLSC374, the Python labs were helpful for reinforcing topics covered earlier in lecture, and the lab handouts laid everything out very clearly and in basic terms, so labs were a breeze. Similarly, the exams were a breeze because they were open-note, and on top of that, they were given a significant curve. Homework was given out weekly, didn't take very long to complete (1, maybe 2 hours), and served as good practice for the exams. So long as you attend lecture, take good notes, and do the assignments, you should be good to go for this class. Even failing that, there's always Dr. Simon himself to ask questions to or visit in office hours.
Jonathan Simon ENEE322 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/26/2018	Simon was an excellent professor for 322. He gave dense and difficult homework, however, if you understood the concepts in the homework you were well prepared for the exams. His lectures were dense but they were very organized. His homework solutions as others have pointed out aren't the best, but he was more than willing to clarify anything during office hours.
Jonathan Simon ENEE222 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/23/2015	Avoid Simon for 222. He starts off the semester telling you how much of the class has a GPA below a 3.0 and other statistics to make you feel bad about yourself. He's an absolute AWFUL teacher. All he does is write equations up on the board with symbols that he never explains. He'll do examples for about 10% of the concepts but then usually the other 90% is on the homework and all you can do is hope that your TA knows it. The exams are very similar to the testbank but he always puts a different twist on the question and no one knows how to do it. The 2nd exam and the final had to be curved about 20%. The first couple of labs are very easy but after that, the provided information is no help and you just have to guess and hope for the best. I highly advise that you take Papamarcou.
Jonathan Simon Expecting a B Anonymous 01/17/2015	This class only seemed to encourage my pattern of poor performance in (only!) HLSC courses. Dr. Simon is a nice guy but a poor teacher. I spent way too much time in office hours and got little out of the class as a whole. The material is interesting, but once again, ILS seems to ruin that factor by overcomplicating course material. Maybe I’m just bitter because I continually scored in the bottom 20% of class grades, but the effort I put into this course was not reflected in my grade (same thing happened in HLSC322… hmmmmmmmm) The only good thing is that the lab is pass/fail, but you could bang things on the keyboard for answers and he’d still pass you, so who cares? He made the final this year all based on theory when all previous work has been on application, so everyone scored lower than he expected. I still don’t really get what an eigenvector is. I was initially excited about this class as it was the only math class I would have to take at UMD, but I was pretty disappointed with it in the end.
Jonathan Simon ENEE222 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/06/2014	Professor Simon means well but he is not a good teacher. His lectures are boring, dense and often don't help at all in the understanding of the material. I had to look to the book to learn anything at all for this class, and even the book is not that helpful. His homework assignments are very difficult and are graded for completion AND are 30% of the final grade (this portion of the grade is not curved). What's worse, his solutions to the homework are often not helpful for some of the more difficult homework questions as they tend to skip steps and make assumptions about what you know, which is terrible when most of the material being taught in the class is new to pretty much all the students. You get weekly matlab assignments which are supposed to help demonstrate the concepts taught in class, but these are often difficult, and usually cannot be done based on what was covered in the lab or the lecture. I honestly haven't learned anything at all about matlab this past semester, and we've had 12 matlab assignments (and i didn't even fail any of these assignments; I averaged a B on all of them). The only redeeming quality about this professors class is that he gives a huge curve for the exams. There was as much as a 15pt curve for the first exam, and he usually reevaluates the curves for the exams after the final, meaning he makes them bigger. Overall, I would not recommend this professor if you can avoid him. Take papamarcou if you can, take Simon only if you have to.
Jonathan Simon ENEE222 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 02/23/2014	Simon is an okay professor. His class is set up exactly like Papamarcous. He uses the same exact exams as Papamarcou from the testbank, so run through those and you will do very well. I'd say his exams are as predictable as Silio's if you look at the testbank. Labs were unrelated to lecture, but they have some interesting applications. His lecture near the end can start becoming confusing.
Jonathan Simon Anonymous 12/18/2012	I legitimately forgot this man's name less than one day after my finals are complete. He has good intentions but he's just not a very good teacher. Homework assignments are graded toughly and are usually given straight from the book. The book's pretty dense also. I didn't feel this class added to my education in biology at all.
Jonathan Simon ENEE322 Expecting an A swatson 10/29/2007	Dr. Simon is an excellent professor for ENEE322. He gives weekly homework assignments (of his own creation, not from the book) without fail and although they start out reviewing many old concepts they get harder and more time consuming as the semester goes on. The good news is that if you actually do the homeworks you are prepared to get an A on the tests. I strongly believe that the only reason not to get an A in this class is if you didn't finish a significant portion of the homework. This class relies heavily on math and math requires practice. His lecture style is also consistently thorough. If you can maintain focus for the entire class period than you should be able to understand everything. I left the class with a feeling that I saw some of the deep math, but really understood the meaning and application of signals and systems math. There won't be too many proofs or long calculations that don't seem relevant.