So, last week, Dr. Charatonik was scheduled to teach Math 209 (Foundations of Math) and that was all find and shiny. As of like two or three days ago i believe, Dr. Insall has taken over.
Would it be worth it to stick with it or should i just drop it now?

Drop it. Isn't worth the hassle, take it with someone else or wait a semester. If you need it as a prereq suck it up and take it, but otherwise I wouldn't be caught dead in a class taught by that man.

here and here and here

Forum search "insall" for more.

Taking the class with Insall equals reading the book if you want to learn. I stayed in his class about three weeks to give him a fair chance, but I think in the first two weeks he lectured over the material maybe twice. The rest of the time he was explaining the precise format he wanted the homework in, or making us put questions on the board for him to critique. He's really weird, really anal, and from what I can tell he doesn't seem to be good at math (I don't know if I'm alone on that, but I think his 'formatting' is an elaborate cover-up). That was the first, and only class I've dropped at UMR in my almost four years here. Read the other threads Paradigm linked to and check out ratemyprofessors for more details.

If you can get Charatonik go for it. He teaches like a normal math teacher, well organized notes every day, quizzes once a week, and math tests in a format you'd expect from the department -- ie, answer sane questions that see if you understand the material.

I'm not sure I'd agree with the above posters. If you're taking math 209, I'm guessing you're a math major? (I don't know of any other majors who have to take the class offhand, but I guess you could be taking it for some kind of elective.) I had Insall for linear algebra, and although I doubt I'd recommend him for that, I could see him being a decent teacher for a more theoretical class like 209. (Note: I haven't taken math 209, so this is all speculation, but I have some idea of what the class entails.)

The other thing is, if you're a math major, you're probably going to be needing to know the material pretty well, since it's a prerequisite for a lot of 300-level math classes. If you take it with Insall and you put forth some effort, you'll learn the material. You might hate every second of it, but you'll learn it. That said, you might also learn it pretty well with Charatonik or someone else. I don't know.

Also, I think I'm in the minority here, but I didn't find Insall to be an incredibly difficult teacher. As long as you follow his specifications (which can be pretty annoying), you can get a good grade in his classes. And I'm fairly sure he plays favorites.

So I'd say what it comes down to is how lazy you are, how well you want to know the material, and how badly you need to take the class next semester.

Avoid Insall like the plague. I have him for 308(a more theoretical class) and he still sucks. His exams are impossible to study for and his lectures are useless. Just say no to Insall.

I'm in 209 next semester. I've decided that I'm going to at least try to bear with Insall for a couple weeks. If by then I have lower than a B and don't know what the fuck is going on, I think I'm going to drop it. Fucking Insall, ruining my schedule....

209 isn't so much learning material for future classes as it is learning how to think for future classes. You do learn a lot of the fundamentals, but it's not really things you'd use later on. What you do use later on is the ability to construct and develop proofs.

With that said, when I took 209 with Charatonik, he did not run the class very well at all. Granted it was his first semester teaching the class, but for many of the proofs he would ramble for 15 mins and then stop mid-way and go, "Uh huh, yeah," and that would be the end of the proof. There seemed to be a bit of a language barrier as well (hence the "proof by 'uh huh, yeah'"), which is certanly not something you want to have in a class that is purely theoretical.

I'm probably one of the very few on campus that actually <b>liked</b> Insall when I took 208 (not 209). Yeah, his formats are annoying, but they're pretty standard for mathematics. It's not hard to just suck it up and follow his format.

He teaches in a little different format... I like it, it's just like my high school teachers did. Just because he doesn't sit there are just lecture like "normal" math teachers, doesn't make him bad... Actually, in my book that makes him good. The way "normal" teachers do it is just plain wrong - and the literature says it over and over again; They just don't listen to anyone but themselves.

--sea

I think the general consensus is that those who are not particularly enamored with math will hate Insall. Everyone else seems to like him or hate him.

Ditto, he's one of the better Math professors (relatively speaking).