Professor Chetverikov is a straightforward lecturer. Some complain of his accent, but I had no difficulties understanding him. This course is a weeder course, and granted, a difficult one that requires time. If you spend significant time studying and practicing the problems from his lectures, notes, homework problems, and practice exams, you should not have difficulties. Having spent a couple hundred hours studying for this class (sounds excessive, i know, but necessary for me), I scored 27/30 on the midterm and 70/70 on the final. This is coming from a guy who failed Rojas' 41 class. Going into the quarter expecting the worst, it turns out that it was a blessing in disguise. The professor often goes over proofs that you will not use. Though many people complain about his proofs, it turns out that they were useful in fully encapsulating the "how" behind concepts necessary to tackle any exam question given. Lastly, exams are straightforward -- no surprises. I strongly recommend anyone willing to put in the time to take his class.

It was bright and sunny on the first day of lecture. I strode confidently into class with my head held high. Students were chattering in the lecture hall as Dr. Chetverikov summarized the syllabus. I was paying attention somewhat half-heartedly: I’d gotten a 5 on AP Stats; what could possibly go wrong?
My curse was answered when the professor began discussing his grading policy:
“Homework is worth 10 percent of your grade. There are two grading schemes, and if you do worse on the midterm than the final, the final exam will be worth 90% of your final grade.”
I was shook. But it got worse.
“Twenty-five percent of you will get As, thirty-five percent get Bs, twenty-five percent get Cs.”
A student raised his hand: “Professor, you account for the remaining 15 percent?”
Dr. Chetverikov grinned, casting a softly menacing gaze across Broad 2160E, and the whole class fell silent, because they all knew the terrible truth.
“I’m not afraid to down-curve a little if needed.”
I knew then and there I would have to frantically claw my way above 75% of the class in order to avoid a scolding from my mommy.
When our midterm results came in, I gasped in horror: the upper quartile was a perfect score. I was thankfully within the bracket. But the final distribution would be entirely determined by homework scores and the final exam. And my homework scores sure hadn’t been stellar.
I decided I had to win this battle at any cost. So…I made a point to be as annoying as possible during lecture. I would munch potato chips, knock over my water bottle, ask extremely stupid questions in the middle of class. Anything to stall the class or distract my rivals.
The strategy paid off in the end…
…or maybe it’s just because 2/3 of the class just stopped attending lectures after the midterm and my work was cut out for me anyways…
…but I’d prefer to think the former.
If you are considering taking Econ 41 with Professor Chetverikov, I wish you luck on your journey. You have my sword.

I highly recommend this class. If you watch all the lectures, you’ll perform well on the exams. The midterm was incredibly straightforward, with an average of 29/30, and the final, while slightly more challenging, was still completely fair. The professor is absolutely fantastic—one of the clearest and most organized lecturers in the Econ department.

Quick background, I had no stats knowledge coming into this class; however, I did extremely well in econ 11 and 101 so I thought this class would be easy. I ended up with a 29/30 on the midterm (after thinking I had failed) and a 40/50 on the final. I definitely could've utilized more resources (ta and prof OH), but I did put in an inordinate amount of time self-studying, especially compared to 11 and 101. Chetverikov is by no means a bad lecturer but the material is incredibly dry including the "real-world" examples. He follows the curve to a T so if you want an A you have to do better than your peers. My biggest takeaway from this class is stats isn't my strongsuit.

so glad this class is over. denis is not a bad professor by any means but he's very strict on the econ departmental curve. more than half of the class got 97% and 100% on the midterm so he made the final HARD AS SHIT it was unlike anything i've ever seen before. everyone was at risk of getting their final grades curved down two signs but he ended up curving up and down some grades to adjust the distribution and i was on the cusp of failing the class fr but i went from a C to a C+ lol. i flopped in this class because for some reason i really struggled on the midterm and got an 80% when clearly the rest of the class found it very easy. i'm also not a great studyer so i didn't prepare as well as i needed to to slay on the final, but if you're a good test taker you shouldn't do as bad as i did. denis is actually a very nice guy and he can be funny during lecture so i liked him as a professor. there's a LOT of formulas to memorize and he doesn't allow a cheatsheet on either exam because he'd have to make the tests super hard, so master the material and do a lot of practice and you'll be fine. FUCK THIS CLASS I'M FINALLY FREE!!!!

As a person who mastered AP stats, scored the top 0.1% in Surro's Econ 11 class, and is a good exam taker, I still have to say THIS IS THE TOUGHEST CLASS I've had since I came to UCLA. 10% homework graded based on accuracy (EVERY HOMEWORK COUNTS, there is no such things as the lowest grade being dropped), 30% midterm, and 60% final. Note that he follows the curve strictly and he will curve up or curve down depending on the overall performance. For the lecture part, he basically elaborates every definition and then gives a very simple example--his lecture is very clear, but these examples are far easier than homework problems or exams. It's like he teaches you 1+1=2 but give you calculus problems in the homework. I basically relied on previous AP stats knowledge and Chegg solutions to help me learn, but if you don't have stats background or are not good at taking exams and calculating, then you really have to go to every discussion and office hours in order to understand how to do all sorts of problems. Practice exams are very helpful, and you can expect similar problems to appear in the midterm and the final. FYI: median for midterm is 29/30 (pretty sure it's similar for every quarter); and the final is hard--the median is 38/50.

He curved down the grades and had super unclear lectures. His lecture notes were helpful, but it didn't help that we were expected to have tons of formulas memorized on the final that we had just learned.

As someone who does not have a stats background at all, I was extremely nervous coming into this class, especially given all of the bad things I had heard about it. However, I felt like Chetverikov was a super straight-forward professor and really broke things down in a clear way. Going to his office hours to ask questions about the homework or practice exams is definitely key as I felt like I would not have been able to understand some of the bigger and more complex concepts otherwise. He was extremely nice and willing to take his time to again break down the material in his office hours, so I highly recommend him as a professor. The last few lectures did feel a bit rushed, which was why I ended up looking at the last lectures maybe a week or so beforehand so I had more time to practice, which I think was the way to go when it comes to preparing for the final, especially if you don't have a strong stats background. The main complaint with the class is the grading as the final is either worth 60% or 90% of your grade and the curve is extremely competitive. I found that really understanding my mistakes from the practice midterm and finals, redoing the homework multiple times, and grinding his extra practice and lecture questions gave me a super strong foundation for his tests. If you go over basically all of the material he has given you in the quarter in the weeks leading up to the midterm and final, then the tests are extremely doable and there won't really be any surprises. It's really all about putting in the time and effort to practice a lot. The memorization can get a little intense towards the end, which is why again it's recommended to maybe look at some stuff in advance or keep your own type of personal "cheat sheet" or running list of theorems throughout the quarter. Cheat sheets are not allowed on the exams, but, given the exams are quite doable and reflect what he shows in class, I never found it to be a huge problem. Overall, I highly recommend Professor Chetverikov, especially for a weeder like Econ 41.

Content wise, this class wasn't too difficult and the professor does a good job teaching. The issue with this class is really more of an issue with the econ department, as the professor does follow the department curve (25% A, 35% B, 25% C), and by making the tests very easy, it leads to a downcurve. For context, I had barely gotten an A- in raw score, and it got downcurved to a B. For people that are good test takers, I would recommend this class. For people like me that make a lot of careless mistakes during tests, maybe not. Once again, the class itself is very straightforward, at least with this professor, but the downcurve does make it pretty hard.

While I didn't do great in this class grade-wise, I would 100% recommend! Truthfully, I feel like Chetverikov is the best lecturer and most personable professor I have had in the econ department. Unlike some other econ professors, he does not hastily rush through theorems and examples and is willing to go as slowly as needed for students to understand and ask questions. Some students may find his lecturing style sluggish and repetitive, but this type of teaching was perfect for me as someone who isn't very quantitatively-minded. Yes, he has an accent, but I don't feel like it interferes with his clarity, and he writes down everything important for the HW/exams on the whiteboard anyway. However, I will say that he was much stronger at teaching the probability portion of the class compared to the statistics portion (lots of people were confused over normal distributions and confidence intervals).

Difficulty-wise, this course's content is probably the easiest out of the econ weeder trifecta (11, this class, & 101). While some topics may take a while to grasp (like enumeration), the problems you encounter overall are a lot more mechanical/less ambiguous than the ones in most other econ classes. For a mathematically-oriented person, I can see this class being relatively easy. The course is very content heavy and requires extensive memorization (exams are closed notes and time-pressured), but I feel like if you take the time to study and grind out practice problems you should be able to get to the point where you sufficiently understand all the topics. I don't know if it was intentional, but exam averages were shockingly high (median of 93% for the midterm and 86% for the final). Practice exams are relatively good (yet not perfect) indicators of actual exam difficulty.

Here's my only gripe with this class: the grading system is unfair. HW was 10%, and all of them except the last were graded very strictly on accuracy. Here's what I mean by very strictly--if you got part A of a problem wrong with parts A, B, and C, you would not get credit for the entire problem. Exams were weighted so that the final was at least 60% of your grade, which put a lot of pressure on students during finals week. Because exam averages were high and Chetverikov strictly abides by the econ departmental curve (only about 20% of students can get solid As), we faced a downcurve. To put this into perspective, my B+ raw score became a B. So ultimately, while the content of this course is very manageable, it is still a weeder course and is still insanely competitive. I've received an A+ in a previous introductory stats course and consistently studied throughout the quarter yet received a mediocre grade. In terms of how hard it is to get a good grade, I'd probably compare it to Surro's 11 class, which had much lower exam averages but basically the same final grade distribution.

In the end though, if you really want to learn and are willing to put in a decent amount of effort, I would definitely take Chetverikov's class. He is a tough professor, but he's also extremely knowledgeable, engaging, kind, and even funny at times. Despite the class' unfair grading system, I'd still say Chetverikov has been my favorite econ professor!