This is by far the most interesting and useful economics course I've taken at UCLA. Be aware, aa majority of the class drops out throughout the quarter. The quarter started with 145 students and a full waitlist and only 69 were left taking the final. There are a couple of reasons why.

First, the course description says, "Preparation: familiarity with data analysis software (e.g., R, Excel, MATLAB, Stata) and/or programming experience." This is not a suggestion. No, opening stata once and copying down 10 lines the professor gave you in 103 does NOT count. Most people dropped because they have never done any programming before and could not keep up with the pace. It is crucial that you take at least one programming course before. (If you want to use Stata from 103, actually learn it). Rojas gives you a homework week 1 in R that will generally weed out most of the class who takes a week and can't figure out how to upload a dataset.

The course has 1 midterm, 5 homeworks, 2 projects, and a final.

It is a lot of work. You learn a lot. If you are an econ major, this will probably be by far the most difficult course you will take at UCLA. If you are a math major (most of the class had a math/stats/ physics background), this should be easier than most of your other classes.

Most people do well on hw/projects. The midterm and final are very difficult. Averages were around 68. The course itself covers a broad range of topics. He will test you on topics barely mentioned and push you to really learn a lot on your own. Your success in the course depends on how much work you are willing to put in outside of class. The curve is very generous. I think it's misleading to think this is an easy course because of the grade distribution. The people left at the end are all very smart and willing to work hard, and Rojas rewards that.

Overall, I really recommend this course. Besides Econ 103, I think this is one of the only Econ courses that can actually benefit you in a career. You'll have to put in a lot of time and effort, but I think it's really rewarding. Whether you should or should not take this class really depends if you're here to get easy A's or want to learn valuable skills that will require a lot of time and hard work.

This was probably one of the most interesting and useful econ electives I've taken at UCLA. I took this course with Rojas during the pandemic (AKA when everything was online/remote), so I'll give my review based on that.

First, you should definitely take a class on R, set aside some time to learn how to use the program, or have a friend who has experience and can teach you how to use R. I went in with really minimal programming experience (I've only taken PIC10A, so C++), so there was definitely a learning curve with it. Since the quarter was all online, Rojas gave us more time to complete the one midterm and final, but he put more weight on programming than he usually would with the class. That meant we had to come up with and submit our own lines of code for both exams.

In terms of content, I think I learned a lot of really useful information through this class. If you're looking to go in the data analyst direction, this is a great course to take. Rojas is also a very clear and helpful lecturer, and probably one of the best professors the econ department has to offer.

If you want to take a more challenging yet helpful econ elective, I highly recommend taking this with Rojas.

The most useful class an Economics major at UCLA can take. Super helpful and applicable skills that make you a very valuable hire, especially in finance and consulting. Rojas is a great professor, though the class was tough, it was very fair and he's the best Economics lecturer I've had to far. The workload for this class is very heavy, especially if you are newer to R-Studio. I would spend from 10-14 hours on projects and HW every week. The midterm and final were fair and the class is curved. I'd take it again.

I genuinely don't understand why Econ students think Rojas is a good professor, because this class was dogshit. Rojas isn't good at explaining concepts, his lectures are unengaging, and the lectures do hardly anything to prepare you for the homework and group projects. The single shining upside for this class is that it is, hands-down, the most practical Econ class you will ever take if you want to get a job. Learning how to forecast in R is very useful, I just wish Rojas wasn't so shit at teaching it.

The homework/group projects are assigned roughly weekly (except for the first week and the midterm week) and require several hours to complete. They're all focused around coding in R, and you have to figure out a lot of it yourself. Rojas tries to demonstrate some R coding in lecture, but it's completely unhelpful. This is the only class where I've ever actually wished for a discussion section, and it doesn't have one. The feedback on homework/projects is generally unhelpful, and gives you little chance to improve.

Rojas assigns three (yes, three!) textbooks for the class, with hours of optional weekly reading for each of them. I don't think it's possible to read everything he suggests and still take other classes, so I ignored textbook B and focused mainly on C (Forecasting Principles and Practices 3rd edition, by Hyndman and Athanasopoulos) and some of textbook A. If you only read one of the textbooks, I recommend FPP 3rd edition, as it's the clearest and the best resource for doing the homework. I wouldn't recommend skipping the reading entirely, as Rojas can't lecture for shit.

The midterm was online, and involved doing coding analysis questions live, which was a time crunch. The final was in-person, and was the worst final I've had in any Econ class (worse than anything in the 11/101/102 series). Rojas asked questions on every single concept ever mentioned in lecture, no matter how briefly (like models that never appeared on the slides, and which he never demonstrated in R, but only spoke about for 20 minutes). He also asked inane questions about the specifics of model implementations in R, which shouldn't really be relevant to the final (you can look those up easily in the R documentation if you ever forgot). At least we got 4 pages of "cheat sheets" for the final, but God help you if you didn't take excruciatingly detailed notes in lecture.

Rojas seems to focus the lectures as if you took 104 with him the quarter right before. He constantly referenced his 104 slides, and the class as a whole felt more like an extension of 104 (which I hadn't taken). 104 isn't listed as a prerequisite for this class, but maybe it should be. Then it would be less of a shitshow.

I took Econ 147 at the same time as this class, and that was a good pairing. The second half of 147 covers introductory time series concepts, and some of the same models (like ARMA, ARCH/GARCH) and concepts (covariance stationarity, white noise processes) covered in 144. It also has a very small amount of coding in R. If you can take 104 and 147 before 144, I highly recommend it, even though they're not prerequisites. The class is doable without them (I still got an A), but it could probably be made much easier if you prepare for it. The Econ department ought to update the prerequisites so students don't make the same mistake I did.

i really like professor rojas and i took this class because i really enjoyed taking 103 with him and i did well (i took 103 before the 104 prereq came out) but this class was definitely really challenging for me, and i wish he didn't reference his 104 slides so often since there are students who technically did not take the course yet (or never will!) Admittedly, I definitely didn't take full advantage of office hours and going to class since things were online so i wish i did that more, but he did curve the final grade.

I felt sad that I didn't go to lectures as often as I should've and didn't work as hard as I should've because this course is REALLY useful.