Reviews of professor Ben MacAdam

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
Lectures and assignments are extremely unorganized and hard to understand. He will diverge from the notes and then confuse everyone and himself and give up. Messed up multiple times with the assignments and quizzes and then sent an email telling students not to ask him for help. Even the TAs are confused by him. Bad. Avoid if possible.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
Frequently fails to fully explain assignment questions and expects the students to guess at his meaning under the guise of "You are in university now". Avoid if possible.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
He got put in a tough situation this semester, and there were a few mistakes, but for the most part he did his job well and was very fair (especially on tests) to the students. He definitely has room to grow and improve but he handled the class with professionalism and fairness.

Rating: 3.0/5, difficulty: 5.0/5
He is very new to teaching and you have to understand he is learning how to teach while also lecturing for a very hard class. His notes can be a mess and his assignments can be vague but he does try his best to help in his office hours (and is often very generous with his advice). He has definitely improved and will continue to do so.

Rating: 4.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
I enjoyed this class. Ben is definitely very passionate about the subject and he does his best at making lectures interesting. He was also always available to explain things after lecture hour. but this is a tough course and I wish he was not a tough grader.

Rating: 1.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
What was expected throughout the course was very unclear. Makes way too many mistakes during lectures and on assignments. Has trouble answering questions thoroughly and was never on the same page with TA's. I don't know what position he was put in since he was substituting for Eberly, but overall, he was just very ill prepared to teach this course.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 4.0/5
While I understand his position, he is still a new Prof making lots of mistakes. He was supposed to take over for a bad Prof but instead just introduced more difficulty than necessary. He likes to avoid answering questions about assignments and make assignment questions much harder than they need to be.

Rating: 2.0/5, difficulty: 3.0/5
Lectures are very technical with little useful examples and assignments are even harder and more confusing. He also writes new notes as he teaches and will frequently make a mistake, throwing out the last 10-15 minutes of notes. Take with a different professor if possible.