I am a Junior and just made a Bruinwalk account to leave this review. Obara is a nice guy but definitely the worst professor I've ever had at UCLA. I am so confused and he is no help.

Obara is kind, soft-spoken, and clearly passionate about the material he teaches. However, his lectures are very hard to follow and often aren't recorded. Although his exams are open book, they're very challenging and the slides provide very to little no help. If you want to understand the topic, you have to read the optional textbook readings and try your best to understand the very few practice problems/examples provided. I wish he'd take the time in class to go through the 2 homework sets after they're graded, as I think they'd help students maybe understand what to expect on exams! Also, the exam multiple-choice section has multiple answers, which might throw students off.

This class is borderline unbearable (Econ 142 Economics of Networks). Unfortunately, Obara's lectures are convoluted, directionless and confusing. He reads off the slides all class, does very few in-class examples and is often corrected by students for mistakes he makes himself. The midterm looked similar to the singular practice exam he gave, but to figure out any of the answers you must look online, you will not find helpful examples or directions from the slides. Moreover, the content is straight up boring. It attempts to combine game theory and matrices, but generally teaches you nothing. I would not recommend this class for a student who wants to learn OR for a student who simply wants to register for any easy class.