David Weiman

Writing a review for Weiman is interesting because among all the fuss about his confusing grading / difficult essays / boring lectures, I truly ended up appreciating his class far more than I expected to. For starters, he's incredibly knowledgeable about political economics, which is refreshing because he's able to engage course content with modern/relevant economic events, concepts, etc. Fair warning, this course is not an easy A because Weiman/his TA care deeply about accuracy in every regard. Making broad statements, assuming connections, or even failing to acknowledge not-so-obvious nuances are all things he will take points off for on essays. Even so, Weiman offers an abundance of office hours and his TA Jess is awesome. Even if you just send over a quick email asking for clarification, both are more than willing to help out and explicate confusing concepts. Perhaps my favorite part about Weiman's class was that he genuinely cares about each of his students, learning all of our names + occasionally joking with us + putting in the time to ensure we not only do well grade-wise, but feel confident in the concepts. He wants people to learn, and that's admirable among a department of econ teachers that do not care what you know or do beyond their class. *I also want to note that getting an A in this class is NOT impossible. I received an A on every paper with medium effort (ju…

Weiman is monotone when lecturing, but he's clearly intelligent and genuinely cares about his students. He's very helpful and willing to explain things after class/in OH. By no means a bad guy. He's not arrogant, he's just very direct and no-nonsense - similar to other economics professors. He's good at encouraging class participation. Cracks a couple of jokes sometimes. Grading was stringent; you need to work for an A, and he/the TA WILL read every line of your essays. You cannot BS this class. I finished with an A- and put a good amount of effort in. Like many others, I did not understand his grading at first, but I've come to realize that the primary thing he grades on is accuracy. The answers to his essay prompts are not obvious, so if you think they are, you're doing something wrong. You also want to be careful about making generic statements - there's usually a caveat or exception that he wants you to note. He's spent a billion years studying US economic history, so he knows his stuff.

Proff. Weiman is a nice guy but honestly a pretty boring lecturer. I found his class quite difficult for an intro to economics class (that could be my personal opinion) but the problem sets were also very challenging for a lot of my fellow classmates. I enjoy economics but again the class was really boring you have to stay really focused to pay attention.

Good class, and an intelligent and kind professor. Professor Weiman starts class on time and has an organized approach to his teaching. He will discuss the topic at hand without rambling, and will encourage class participation throughout lecture (usually successful at getting students to speak up). He delivers a very thoughtful analysis when he speaks and has a charming humor that the class enjoyed. Weiman manages to keep the class focused, even if the topic is something like a random bank run from the 19th century. He keeps a tight, organized calendar on Courseworks, so the class is never really in the dark about anything. Looking forward to taking more classes with him in the future.

I hated Professor Weiman, single worse class I have taken in my college career! He is unwilling to help students and his explanations are just plain confusing. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS WITH PROFESSOR WEIMAN, YOU WILL BE MISERABLE. The Aplia assignments were annoying and covered a lot of material that didn't show up on quizzes or the midterm/final. The quizzes were really hard and most students ended up failing them (the average for the last two were 14/20 and 14.3/20). The final exam which I just took today was really tedious and annoying.

The work for the class was unnecessarily annoying. By this, I mean there are Aplia assignments, and you have to subscribe to Aplia (this online economics course supplement) for a fee, and he assigns 3 annoying Excel spreadsheet assignments that you have to go to lab sessions for if you're not familiar with excel. For someone who isn't fond of math, this was not a fun thing to do. With that said, as someone who isn't even really all that interested in economics, I liked the course and I liked Weiman. Some may find him boring, his lectures to be sleep-inducing (not helped by the fact that the class was a Mon-Wed 9AM), but it is clear that Weiman knows his stuff. He's a clear lecturer, and if you stay awake in class to take notes you WILL feel better about the quizzes (which tend to be easy) and the midterm and final (which are not quite as easy). The textbook is expensive and boring, and not a whole lot of it is on the tests. I think he does a decent job of preparing students for the final, and if you go to all the classes and do the practice and graded aplia assignments, do your reading and all that, you should be fine. This isn't coming from someone who did exceptionally well in the class,. As a matter of fact i didn't do nearly as well as I could have. From my experience, just make it to the class, even though it's early. It'll pay off in the end.

In my opinion, Weiman is a haughty and arrogant professor. Yes, one can tell he loves what he's teaching, but he doesn't seem to love his students...or even respect his students. This is a problem. He's unapproachable and he's pretty boring. Do not take his class if you don't have to.

I only took this class because it is a requirement for the Barnard Economics Major. I would not recommend this class at all. David Weiman, while he is knowledgable on the subject (due to millions of years teaching it), is the most boring professor I have ever encountered at Barnard/Columbia. He reminds me of the teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. To begin with, I found the subject matter of this class boring (Hobbes, Locke, Smith), and this was only intensified by Weiman's monotone lectures. Weiman attempts to create slides to follow along with his lectures, although they frequently don't make sense and raise questions that he never clearly answers.

He's fine. Very dry and he goes very slow (yet somehow you'll still miss some very key info?), but he's not a bad professor. I don't really understand his grading standards, but he's not particularly unfair. You'll cover colonial America up to about the First World War.

Intro to Economics with Professor David Weiman was THE WORST CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN. More than his boring lectures, insipid personality and copious home works, Professor Weiman is rude and unhelpful. He does not even bother to answer to an e-mail.If you go to his office hours, he'll make sure you understand that he wants you out of his office in the next 5 minutes and he'll do whatever he can to answer your questions in the most negative way possible. If your looking for an interesting, relatively easy or worthwhile class, this is not it. He assigns home works almost twice a week and they are unannounced. He does not care for you weekends, for he'll ruin them with a Saturday Night assignment. Moreover, he'll maybe give you a two day notice before he assigns one of his aplia nightmares. On top of his irrelevant aplia online home works that do not correlate to the class or notes, he gives 5 quizes a semester, which may or may not be scheduled. I recall him circulating a quiz with a two days notice on more than one occasion. Basically, do not take this class. This professor is not worth it.