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Matthew Bigio Luks
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Based on 31 Users
Worst Economics class I have taken at UCLA before (topping Haanwinckel 101). As written in other reviews, I tend to take every Bruinwalk review with a grain of salt. For Saki, I wish I had listened to previous reviews on this guy. Bigios is an intelligent dude for sure, but a horrible teacher with little concept of how well his students understand the material. The only pro to this class was his open note tests which allowed you to print every practice problem ever solved in his class and bring them to the final and midterm and hope that you can plug in answers with different numbers that you have printed out. Other than that, the class was very difficult and Bigios's TAs did all the real teaching. His lectures were pointless and he never taught us how to actually solve the problems he tested us on, just gave quick theoretical overviews. This class is doable, but not without a serious headache and serious doubt on whether you learned any useful information over the course of an entire quarter. in retrospect, I really wished I had waited and taken 102 with another professor.
I'm not normally one to complain, and 99% of the time when people complain about a professor on here they are never as bad as they seem. This is not the case for this class. The only good thing about it is that the exams are open note so you can just print out the prior years' test and answers and essentially copy/paste some questions with the new numbers. That's all the pros. Everything else is a con, from the lengthy and difficult homework where you have to answer problems we've never even gone over in class, to the dull lectures where page after page of mindless, vague math and derivation just turns into a blur. Professor Luks is very intelligent, he is also a terrible teacher. He was born to be an economist, not an economics professor. Try your best to steer clear of him, if you're stuck with him your best bet is just to print everything out for the tests that way you can at least get some points when questions are repeated with different numbers.
Had him for Econ 102. While I don't think he was ill-meaning as some are writing here, his class was a pain. His slides are riddled with complex math and derivations which are a) mostly incomprehensible at an undergraduate level and b) not used in exam questions. Homework in this class is hard, graded for accuracy, and extremely lengthy. The TAs and the textbook did most of the actual teaching in this class, though they too were at times confused at the problems we would be confronted with. The material itself goes from 0 to 100 within the first three weeks, and moves on too fast for us to actually learn and comprehend much. The pros, while few, are these: lots of real world application, a fairly balanced grading scheme, and a midterm that is nearly identical to the practice exam he gives you. If you take this class, I suggest studying the textbook, shopping around for a good TA, and leaning on them heavily for explanations and questions. While Saki's class still wasn't as bad as Haanwinckel's dumpster fire last quarter, I probably would not recommend him for Econ 102 if you have other options.
This was the worst Econ professor I have had thus far. The majority of the class stopped attending lectures because they were useless and he was horrible at explaining things. The TA's helped, but the midterm was extremely difficult (but was curved up) and the final was also pretty difficult but less excruciating than the midterm. Take this class with literally any other professor.
This was one of the most unorganized classes I have ever taken and I have taken a class with Haanwinckel. Our lectures were very random, and the material for exams was always unclear. the lectures weren't recorded but they are quite useless anyway. The professor did not explain most things on the syllabus. All the Ta's gave us different notes and asked us to focus on different things. In the middle of the Palestine protests, we were told our midterm would happen because "life goes on." It made me disinterested in the topics that I was excited to study. This class is very important in order to take other electives and if you can wait to take this class, please wait for any other professor.
Terrible professor, literally run for the hills. The class itself was only manageable because of the TAs, but the way this class drained me and everyone I knew is so so terrible for your mental health. The professor is not helpful at all, in fact there's nothing I genuinely retained from this class other than how he's from Peru.
Worst Economics class I have taken at UCLA before (topping Haanwinckel 101). As written in other reviews, I tend to take every Bruinwalk review with a grain of salt. For Saki, I wish I had listened to previous reviews on this guy. Bigios is an intelligent dude for sure, but a horrible teacher with little concept of how well his students understand the material. The only pro to this class was his open note tests which allowed you to print every practice problem ever solved in his class and bring them to the final and midterm and hope that you can plug in answers with different numbers that you have printed out. Other than that, the class was very difficult and Bigios's TAs did all the real teaching. His lectures were pointless and he never taught us how to actually solve the problems he tested us on, just gave quick theoretical overviews. This class is doable, but not without a serious headache and serious doubt on whether you learned any useful information over the course of an entire quarter. in retrospect, I really wished I had waited and taken 102 with another professor.
I'm not normally one to complain, and 99% of the time when people complain about a professor on here they are never as bad as they seem. This is not the case for this class. The only good thing about it is that the exams are open note so you can just print out the prior years' test and answers and essentially copy/paste some questions with the new numbers. That's all the pros. Everything else is a con, from the lengthy and difficult homework where you have to answer problems we've never even gone over in class, to the dull lectures where page after page of mindless, vague math and derivation just turns into a blur. Professor Luks is very intelligent, he is also a terrible teacher. He was born to be an economist, not an economics professor. Try your best to steer clear of him, if you're stuck with him your best bet is just to print everything out for the tests that way you can at least get some points when questions are repeated with different numbers.
Had him for Econ 102. While I don't think he was ill-meaning as some are writing here, his class was a pain. His slides are riddled with complex math and derivations which are a) mostly incomprehensible at an undergraduate level and b) not used in exam questions. Homework in this class is hard, graded for accuracy, and extremely lengthy. The TAs and the textbook did most of the actual teaching in this class, though they too were at times confused at the problems we would be confronted with. The material itself goes from 0 to 100 within the first three weeks, and moves on too fast for us to actually learn and comprehend much. The pros, while few, are these: lots of real world application, a fairly balanced grading scheme, and a midterm that is nearly identical to the practice exam he gives you. If you take this class, I suggest studying the textbook, shopping around for a good TA, and leaning on them heavily for explanations and questions. While Saki's class still wasn't as bad as Haanwinckel's dumpster fire last quarter, I probably would not recommend him for Econ 102 if you have other options.
This was the worst Econ professor I have had thus far. The majority of the class stopped attending lectures because they were useless and he was horrible at explaining things. The TA's helped, but the midterm was extremely difficult (but was curved up) and the final was also pretty difficult but less excruciating than the midterm. Take this class with literally any other professor.
This was one of the most unorganized classes I have ever taken and I have taken a class with Haanwinckel. Our lectures were very random, and the material for exams was always unclear. the lectures weren't recorded but they are quite useless anyway. The professor did not explain most things on the syllabus. All the Ta's gave us different notes and asked us to focus on different things. In the middle of the Palestine protests, we were told our midterm would happen because "life goes on." It made me disinterested in the topics that I was excited to study. This class is very important in order to take other electives and if you can wait to take this class, please wait for any other professor.
Terrible professor, literally run for the hills. The class itself was only manageable because of the TAs, but the way this class drained me and everyone I knew is so so terrible for your mental health. The professor is not helpful at all, in fact there's nothing I genuinely retained from this class other than how he's from Peru.