2.0
Quality3.8
Difficulty19%
Would Retake87
Reviews19%
Would Retake
87
Reviews
Rating DistributionOfficial
5
6
4
7
3
14
2
19
1
41
What Students Say
“Practice problems hardly correlate to the midterms/final”
MAT21D - 1.0 rating“Pop quizzes given in discussion on at random intervals”
MAT21D - 1.0 ratingClass Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
19%
Textbook Required
57%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.32 avg changeRatings by Course
MAT125A
5.0
(1)MAT133
3.5
(6)MAT21C
3.0
(1)MAT21D
2.3
(16)MAT21B
2.3
(8)Difficulty by Course
MAT21
4.5
MAT21A
4.1
MAT21D
4.1
MAT132A
4.0
132A
4.0
Reviews (87)
this guy is the worst teacher i have ever had. if you are in his class, you have my deepest condolences. he assigns more homework than any other class i have ever taken. STAY AWAY AT ALL COSTS I BEG YOU
He is pretty good. Tests are rather simple and alot of extra credit. His explainations are interesting and clear.
The guy from the 132A class who wrote is right. Even though the guy got a 100(140) on the midterm, he is dead right about everything he says, please avoid this prof. if u want an honest opinion. I wish he retires soon, can't stand such people!
If you really want to learn something, you might NOT want to take his class. Of course you may take his class, but you might regret after. Personally I will not recommend taking this professor's class IF You have another choice. Believe or not, I regretted taking this class which was taught only by him in this academic year.
I agree with the previous review. Albert has trouble communicating the material, so it is very hard to actually get anything out of the lectures. I wish I could've had another prof for this class :(
his hw is way harder than the tests, and he is confusing in lecture if you havent done the reading. LOTS of extra credit on the tests. not a very interesting class, but i was able to get an A by teaching most of the class to myself.
Horrible math professor. makes no sense whatsoever.
The people who rate Professor Fannjiang are the ones who weren't so bright to begin with. He is a very friendly professor who does everything he can to make sure the class learns the material. He does not assume students understand things like people who don't know how to teach, but walks them through the material very clearly. Great professor.
While I don't agree with the previous post that stated that all other posters were not "bright" to begin with (just look at the classes 22A and 132), I do agree that Prof. Fannjiang is a pretty good professor, and that he does a good job of explaining the material and is quite friendly and helpful. One of my better math profs that I have had here!
Goes through the material very fast. Friendly guy, but isn't very good at examples. Doesn't use applications of the math. Homework is on MyMathLab and not that hard to do, but it wasn't worth anything. Tests mainly follow the homework. Just make sure you DO the homework and you'll be fine.
i think he's a good professor, but what made me really mad was the fact that the third midterm was 10 times harder than the second one. so watch out.
He's a bit dry, but he is very clear. A good lecturer. The difficulty of his tests vary a lot. Beware: he doesn't curve anything.
Friendly guy, bad teacher. Some days I understood the lectures, most days I would be lost. Tests were relatively fair - most were about the same difficulty as the hw/book problems - some tests were harder because he would word questions awkwardly. All in all.. he wasn't good.. but he wasn't horrible. Expect to teach yourself most of the stuff.
He's not too bad, but he's evil. there is no curve. so study hard or you will fail.
Fannjiang > students... :(
Take the other posts with a grain of salt. They are bitter students who probably failed the class due to the fact that there was no curve. He started out as a great prof, then seemed to lose interest & lectures became way unstructured and confusing. I'll admit I had to learn on my own, but this is college. We can't always rely on a curve to save us
Starts out good, goes downhill. DOES NOT CURVE - HE DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS!! In a class this tough you expect a curve when 21A-C professors have curved. AVOID FANNJIANG, even if the alternative is at 8am. A D percentage in Fannjiang's class is a B in any other. You've been warned.
Nobody posted anything in a few years so I wanted to. This professor is not as terrible as everybody says he is. I ended up with a bad grade because I put little effort in it. If you do the optional homework and attend disscusion then you will do just fine. Don't slack off or his class will rail you.
extremely nice professor with a fair grading system and very clear handwriting and notation. made first quarter real analysis really easy and understandable. first midterm were composed of questions STRAIGHT from the book, but dont expect this for the others or the final. overall great class, interesting book choice
Not a very good teacher. He defiantly isn't the worst I have had, but he is close. He doesn't always connect lectures to what is going on in class and sometimes just starts off on parts of problems without saying what the goal is.
Was completely useless in lecture. He hated using examples to show a new concept and often had mistakes in his notes and would take a huge chunk of time out of lecture trying to correct his mistakes. Rarely made it to his own office hours.
I liked this professor. Kinda funny guy and likes to talk about why stuff is 'profitable'. Really easy tests but the hw's were harder.
Good teacher who has to cover a lot of material in 22A so during class not much question time but there were plenty of office hours.
Often goes through the hassle of showing proof for EVERYTHING. Can get very confusing.
This is the WORST math teacher I've ever had. He had little interest in the class, completely skipped certain theorems, and rarely ever applied the theories he was teaching. I ended up reading the book to learn anything. The midterms are fairly doable but theres a big time constraint, practice the problems in the book to do well
This class sucked. The first midterm was impossible. Second midterm was easy and final was not too bad. The lecture is worthless. His homework is mandatory and its graded hard. the curve was okay but not enough. Probably a fifth of the class failed.
Assigned homework due every week during discussion. His class was pretty challenging, but if you study you should do fine. I've never been to any OH's but from what I heard he doesnt really care about his students. He just wants to teach and go back to his research.
Don't do it. He covered 3 chapters over the course of 8 weeks and then crammed the remaining 3 into the last 2 weeks of school. He makes mistakes in his notes and doesn't show up on time for class. Easily the worst professor I have ever had.
This professor knows what he's talking about, however he can't explain anything clearly. He'll start a problem, then he'll do three proofs, then go back to the problem but by that time, he gets lost and then just says "okay, you'll just have to do it yourselves." Also, he's pretty hard to understand because of his accent. Wait for a better prof.
Terrible. Covered half of the material in the last 2 weeks since he was very behind. Textbook was HORRIBLE and so was his lecturing so learning the material was very hard. Midterms were easy, final exam was extremely difficult. Curves to the median, not the mean so a lot of people get very bad grades. I would highly recommend not taking him.
What. Seriously that's the only word I can say about this class. He's confusing and his tests curve are terrible. He crammed spent his time on chapters 1-3 for 8 weeks and the last three chapters were on the last two weeks. Needless to say a lot of people did not get the material.STAY AWAY if you plan to take 22A!
His midterms were quite easy, except he kept interrupting and changing things during the middle of the exam which confused me. Final was tricky. Due to the high scores on the midterms there was not a lot of a curve. His lectures are quite useless as there is no clear direction, it is all random jumbled notes. I would avoid even though initiallyeasy
Initially seemed decent, but then it just got bad. I did not learn any concepts of Linear Algebra without any outside help such as Khan Academy. That was my only hope. I just studied the book problems and webwork and scraped by an A barely. But he is rather easy compared to the other profs. Better than Puckett! Lecture is completely useless!
I agree with most of what's already been said, but don't think he was awful. He's a super fair grader, funny, helpful during OHs. Here's how I got an A: mostly listened during lecture (notes weren't that helpful here); read the book! this is where I started to learn; watched Strang's lectures for each section on MIT ocw to solidify concepts.
I agree with what's been said. Lectures are at times more confusing than helpful. There were many times when I got out of lecture completely confused, but then went and looked up the topic in the book or online and it made much more sense. I didn't get much from this class, but I was also not very interested in linear algebra to begin with.
Excessive homework that has nothing to do with the exams. Final was 50%, two midterms at 20% each and 9 homeworks worth only 10% graded C/NC. Seriously, homework was useless and was due on holidays and the day of the midterms. Avoid him if you can but I think he's the only Prof for 168 so good luck if you have to take it.
The professor himself was not terrible. His lectures were not particularly helpful as he spent most of the time deriving proofs for things we would end up simply memorizing in the end. The class however was terrible. The homework system is annoying. The worksheets in discussion are useless and the time would be much better spent asking questions.
Meh, not the best professor, but also not the worst. he just lectures straight from the textbook. if you know how to do the homework, then you can do the exams just fine. Weekly quizzes in discussions, which are useless and a waste of time. he didn't notice that we were struggling until week 8 and decided to not make any changes until then...
Fannjiang has been my favorite calc professor at Davis so far. He explains things clearly and actually makes jokes/has a personality. Even though he doesn't curve, I had no problem with his class. Just remember to do the homework and you'll be fine lol.
Never before have I ever been so clueless before in a math class. This guy spends his time during lectures pretty much wasting time and doing very few examples. He assigns HW, and then every question on the test is not even close to being similar. He pulls random things from his lectures that he spent a minute on and sticks it on the test too.
Lectures are pointless, repeating the textbook with out any useful additions. Tests do not relate to any assigned work. Good luck.
Lectures were highly convoluted and the instructor doesn't really know how to get to the point. Pop quizzes given in discussion on at random intervals. HW is very lengthy and especially difficult and given on a frequent basis (two or three times a week). Must pay for online hw access. External help outside of class isn't really existent.
I have gotten A+ on all my math courses since high school. For this class, I got an A. The teacher is awful and the tests do not relate to anything in the book or presented in class. Avoid fanjiang at all costs and if you have him, well then good luck.
Professor Fannjiang really isn't that bad of a teacher as most of these reviews say. MAT21D is just a very hard course on its own. He does a lot of examples in class to help you learn the material, but also assigns a lot of homework. The homework (in my class) was a generous 20% of your grade. However, beware of pop quizzes in discussion.
Lectures out of the book, and you need to pay for the homework. Practice problems hardly correlate to the midterms/final.
He is a very enthusiastic professor. If you want to learn well, you need great self-study ability.
He is not a good lecturer by giving confusing lectures and sometimes he doesn't understand your questions. Quizzes are given every week. However, his exams and homework are really easy if you did great self-study then you can definitely pass.
Just don't. Take my word. And just don't.
Dont know how he is during covid but his lectures were not helpful at all. mylab math taught me more calculus than he did. The lectures would be him going over the examples in the textbook. The thing is he would breeze through the problems so fast and never explains why he would do these steps. He would skip steps and questions for the sake of time
PROBABLY TOO LATE BUT DONT TAKE THIS CLASS. HE MAKES THINGS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND. THANK GOD WE HAVE MYLABMATH DURING COVID TO TEACH US INSTEAD OF THIS GUY.
lol looked at the rate my professor and thought "he can't be that bad", "maybe he's changed" That was a lie. Everyone here is right. Lectures are dumb, homework took 2-4 hours for me, quizzes weekly, but at least we did not have a final b/c of covid. You need to learn it by yourself. Mylab teaches more comprehensibly than prof. so thank you covid
Gives 4 hours of homework on last two weeks of "final" midterm
He is a nice person but he is not very good at explaining things. Grade is based on hw, weekly quizzes, and midterms. You can get a good grade as long as you do the hw and study hard.
Really rough experience overall. Very confusing and disorganized lectures, thus I ended up learning most of the content from MyLab and prior calc experience. Copious amount of homework with unpredictable due dates. The syllabus didn't have a lot of information and therefore the grading scheme is unclear.
The lectures aren't super helpful, I stopped attending them midway through the quarter and just learned through MyLab. He assigns about 2-4 HW assignments a week and has weekly quizzes. Our grade was based on homework, quizzes, and midterms, with our lowest score in each dropped. If you're good at self-teaching, this class isn't that bad.
Probably one of the worst math professors I've ever had. I stopped attending halfway through the quarter after he told a student he didn't know how to solve a math problem. Lots of homework once you start getting close to finals. You can get an A as long as you're good at self-studying.
Maybe he's better for in person classes, but his online class definitely caused me the most stress out of anything I've ever taken. The homework was usually really long, and his lectures were very disorganized and he overly complicated concepts. If you're good at math then you should be fine. If not, go for someone else who will teach better.
Lectures were not helpful, had to self study most of the class. Quizzes are weekly and require you to finish around 10 questions (sometimes multiple parts) in 20-25 minutes. The grading was disorganized, at the end of the quarter grades were put in multiple times each resulting in a different grade. Unclear, unhelpful.
Assigns an unreasonable amount of homework. Lectures are useless as he doesnt explain very well. Self studying is needed for this class.
-Weekly Quizzes online -So much unnecessary homework problems, -last week of quarter, the week of finals assigned nearly 90 hw problems, barely studied the previous material for the final - really bad lecturer, self taught all the material - organic chemistry tutor was my bae <3 - if you can, avoid this professor
Be ready to self learn, because he is NOT a good lecturer. Luckily, there are a ton of online sources, so it was fine. He assigns weekly quizzes, but those are pretty similar to the homework. The homework was fairly easy, but it is particularly time-consuming. He assigned over 90 homework problems to do during the week of finals, which sucked.
mf really thought it was a good idea to assign almost 90 homework problems on finals week
Lectures were really difficult to understand. He assigned 90 questions during finals week for homework. There aren't any midterms for this class its all based on homework, the final, and weekly quizzes.
This is a self taught class. DO NOT LISTEN to his lectures. You will do worse in the class when you follow his lectures, instead of teaching yourself everything. Everything is online and he is one of the most incompetent teachers when it comes to using a computer to teach in person. If I could give him a 0 I would. Lacks braincells.
If I had not taken AP calc in high school I would not have passed. Confusing lectures and homework that was always unnecessarily long. I didn’t go to any lectures once they were in person because they were completely useless. Hard final and don’t expect a very generous curve. Avoid this prof if you can!
The final (which was very difficult) was a whole 30% of the overall grade. 90 multi-part hw questions assigned during finals week (60 the night before the final) Lectures hard to follow. The class heavily relied on an online interactive textbook. I didn't learn the concepts, I learned how to do the problems.
The professor does not teach...Loads of homework...
Fannjiang was not what I was looking for in a professor. His lectures did not follow the HW a majority of the time and he did tons of confusing proofs which did not help the first-timers taking derivative calculus. The HW takes FOREVER even if you know what you're doing and there is a lot of it. Quizzes weekly, HW, and final are the only grades.
Prof. Fannjiang is a nice guy but he is NOT a good lecturer. Always went too deep into theory and struggled to teach things relevant to the massive amount of hw we had. I do not reccommend taking 21A with him, you will end up self teaching yourself 90% of the material. Came out of the class knowing less than when I took calc AB in highschool. Sorry
Nice guy but he could not lecture for the life of him. Always talking about theory with little to no examples that could connect to the hw. 30% final 40% quizzes and 30% hw. You had little room for error. We took our quizzes/final online so it was open notes. I came out of this class feeling unprepared for 21B.
Took 21A with him after seeing bad reviews here and thought it couldn't be that bad, right? Nope, everything said here is accurate. Useless lectures not worth attending. Very confusing and overcomplicated. Tests are very hard. You won't be prepared for MAT 21B if you're not self motivated and disciplined. Avoid for your sanity, take different prof.
Don't ever take him, he deserves his terrible rating. Wait another quarter. Uses horrible Pearson MyMathLab instead of WebWorks. It shows examples that just uses different numbers, so you end up not learning anything, just plugging in numbers. Doesn't care about doing proper lectures, just lectures randomly about topics with complicated proofs.
bad, hard
Lectures confusing asf. Will often not say what he is doing and will jump ten steps when solving a problem. Midterms are hard but manageable if you study a lot on University of Youtube. Even if you are good at calc before this course, you will leave the course with less knowledge than when you came in .
Lectures confusing asf. Will often not say what he is doing and will jump ten steps when solving a problem. Midterms are hard but manageable if you study a lot on University of Youtube. Even if you are good at calc before this course, you will leave the course with less knowledge than when you came in .
This class was terrible, would rather dropout than retake the class with him. I basically self-tought myself 21B through youtube and other online notes.
He's not that bad, test highly reflected the expectations based on mock exam
Pretty much copied and pasted lectures straight from the book that had nothing to do with the homework. Very disorganized and unclear over class logistics. Learned more from the TAs and Youtube rather than a single lecture of his.
Very bad experience. It was almost laughable how bad his lectures were. At the very least he record lectures so you could watch another time if they were any help, rather than going in person, which honestly was a lot worse. Only take him if he's your last option, and expect to do most of your learning from other sources.
I can tell prof cares abt his students learning math, but lectures were hard to understand. I often didn't understand what we were learning until I got to disc and my TA reviewed everything. I thought hw was unreasonable (20+ q's each week). Final was during TA strike but we weren't told it was mcq until 10min before the exam. Kind person, ok prof.
Overall, he was okay, but his lectures were at times unclear. The grading breakdown helped, 30% was based solely on doing the homework, which was graded on completion. He doesn't know how to work CANVAS or Zoom the best, so be prepared to things to end up in weird places or him to forget to share his screen. Self-study is needed for this class.
Fannjiang was a solid professor, he is an excellent lecturer and his exams aren't very difficult. His homework is very long but is participation credit.
Lectures come straight from the textbook and lead to largely useless and confusing proofs Midterms were not super difficult and mostly fair if you are prepared to self-teach yourself the class isn't that bad
Overall, a good professor with course content that is very interesting and useful in real life. Exams are not too difficult, and plenty of students in my class did very well on them. The professor is also accessible outside of class and gives good general advice.
Horrendous slides and terrible at lectures, no way the previous review was written by a student
His lectures aren't very good, but the exams aren't that hard.
Highly recommend reading the Intro to Mathematical Finance with Applications textbook. Prof's slides are great for studying. Wasn't a fan of the professor, he's not the best at explaining concepts. First half of class is easy, but once he covers Portfolio Theory and Capital Markets I was lost and had to depend on textbook to learn material.
Class Info
Online Classes
100%
Attendance Mandatory
19%
Textbook Required
57%
Grade Predictor
Your expected effort level
Predicted Grade
B+
Grade Distribution
Common Tags
Rating Trend
Declining
-0.32 avg changeRatings by Course
MAT125A
5.0
(1)MAT133
3.5
(6)MAT21C
3.0
(1)MAT21D
2.3
(16)MAT21B
2.3
(8)Difficulty by Course
MAT21
4.5
MAT21A
4.1
MAT21D
4.1
MAT132A
4.0
132A
4.0