Professor Haanwinckel made the material for this course very simple and easy to understand. In my opinion, this course was slightly easier than the material in ECON 11 and 41; the only material that carries over from these classes are simple expected value calculations and profit maximization. There were plenty of prior exams that were very helpful to study off of, and classes are recorded with slides posted on Bruinlearn as well.
The course is structured with two non-cumulative midterms, and a cumulative final (emphasizing the last third of the course). If your grade on the final exam is lower than the two midterms, the exams are weighted 30/30/30, but if you score higher on the final, it is a 50/40 weight, with your lowest midterm being dropped. The last 10% comes from problem sets, which are not too difficult and also serve as pretty good study materials for exams.
One slightly tricky part of the course was the amount of purely conceptual questions on both the midterm and final, which had the tendency to be phrased very vaguely. However, if you go over the prior exams and in-class examples, they should be easy enough to figure out. Overall, I agree with other recent reviews in that Haanwinckel has made a successful effort in making this course light and engaging for students. Would definitely recommend.

The grading format was 10% HW and then either 30% Midterm 1, 30% Midterm 2, 30% Final, or 40% Highest Midterm 50% final, whichever was higher. The course is curved, so only your ranking in the class matters. At least taking this class online, the tests were all multiple choice and the lectures were pre-recorded. There was no textbook for the class. The professor would hold "Q&A Sessions" during class time, which most students never attended.

In Spring 2021, the exams were definitely challenging, especially compared to the homework problem sets. Problem sets, especially at the beginning of the course, were more computationally focused while exam questions tended to be more abstract. There are really only 4-5 different types of problems, and making sure that you are intimately familiar with them is the best preparation for the exams.

For the first two midterms, we were given the exams from Winter 2021, and they were definitely much easier than the exams given. However, when the practice final specifically created for this class was much closer in difficulty and format to the final exam.

After each exam, he added ~10-20 points to every student's score. I'm not sure why this was done since the class is graded purely on a curve.

I found the course more insightful than Econ 11, but it definitely is not an easy course.

This class was the actual bane of my existence winter quarter. I was so confident on all the homeworks and honestly did super well on every one of them, but then the exams were COMPLETELY out of nowhere. I actually did surprisingly well on all three exams (no thanks to Haanwinckel) but it is honestly just because I am good at intuitively guessing. He made this class harder on purpose because he wants to single out the stellar students and weed out the non exceptional ones which is ridiculous honestly. Avoid him at all costs.

I came into this class expecting bad things from this professor. And it was hard to believe the ratings as he appeared to be nice and accommodating. The reality was his lectures contained the info. but he didn't actually teach it well at all. The hw is very straightforward with about 10 questions and multiple choice. However, the tests were complicated and it would be hard to believe the questions were similar to the hw assignments. I received an A in Econ 11 and expected i would do alright as well in this class. I just couldn't understand his tests well enough to score past a 76%. The cherry on top was his inability to round or really look into my final grade as I was .3 away from a B-. Really pretty disappointing and just expect to be confused on his tests. Nice guy but just not the best teacher.

This class is very difficult, but it is doable as long as you really review the material and do all practice provided. TA sections were not very helpful to me and I preferred to study on my own. The professor really cares about making sure students understand and he is very nice, but not the greatest teacher. His tests are hard, but he does curve them quite a bit.

Nice guy and exams weren’t bad if you study enough. Only a few homework’s total. Lectures are kind of boring, but they’re recorded and he posts slides so it’s not too bad.

A lot of these ratings threw me off and made me not want to take 101 with this professor, but they could not have been more wrong. I thought that he was very engaging and funny, and the tests were very fair with high averages.

For all those reading reviews from 2022 and prior -- don't be scared! Professor Haanwinckel genuinely means the best for his students and his teaching has grown to reflect it. His exam difficulty has lowered immensely from previous years, and the average will probably be around a B or B+. He's a caring guy and you can tell that he has utmost concern for his students' success. He also likes to crack jokes and gives off a pretty nerdy vibe with the examples in class (RPG games, sci-fi, etc.). All lectures are recorded and the homework is well-paced. Exams are all multiple-choice and the content of 101 is mathematically less intense than 11. Overall, enjoyed this class a lot.

Professor Haanwinckel is so nice and a very good professor. He had two grading schemes (problem sets 10%, midterm 1 30%, midterm 2 30%, final 30% OR problem sets 10%, best midterm 40%, final 50%) depending on if you score higher in the final or the midterms. This class didn't bring me anxiety at all throughout the quarter and I could tell that Haanwinckel wanted his students to succeed. His exams were made up of true/false and multiple choice and were very fair. Overall, highly recommend taking 101 with this professor.

Made everything harder than it had to be. Terrible at explaining the material and overcomplicated any and every explanation. The material itself wasn't bad but he just made it so hard in the way he asks questions. The tests are tricky and often have mistakes/don't make sense, and you aren't even allowed to ask for clarification. I can tell he isn't a bad guy but he screwed me over, maybe out of stupidity. I had a mistake on a problem set assignment that he didn't fix because he said it wasn't a big deal and it "wouldn't affect my overall grade by much, only .2 ." Of course I ended with an 89.8 and he didn't round it up, he had no sympathy, and seemed to have forgotten about our discussion.