Sweetest professor I've ever encountered - take him if you can. So considerate of our time - he said he last homework was optional so that we'd have time to study for our finals. Most people got full points on the midterm, and homeworks are graded for completion.

The professor seemed really nice and the workload was pretty manageable, but I left with a poor conceptual understanding of the topics covered in class. In fact, every other economics class I've taken has been taught with greater clarity and organization than this one. Nothing against the professor as a person, and my grade was fine because the workload was manageable, but I'll never take a conceptually important class with him again.

I don't write many reviews, but seeing Professor Pinto's poor ratings and reviews spurred me to write this.

He is a great professor! No he's not super interesting or funny, and he is a bit hard to understand at times, but this is not a big deal at all.

His slides are VERY clear. Everything he tested us on could be found DIRECTLY on the slides. Literally. There was not a single test question that did not come from the slides (our exams were open notes due to covid).

Problem sets are pretty annoying (take between 5-10 hours depending on how fast you work), and have nothing at all to do with his exams or the content really, and you spend more time toying with the "coding" aspect rather than actually seeing the intuition behind problems. However, these are graded for completion, so most students got lazy towards the end and only spent 2-3 hours.

Again, I honestly believe that the tests were super fair. Spent maybe a few days/nights (with long breaks for other classes, meals, free time, etc) studying for each, and got a 95 or something on both. Everyone I studied with also ended up getting A's on both exams as well. If you're willing to put in the work then this will be a very reasonable class. I would basically go over lecture twice: first i would read thru the slides and take notes for 40-45 minutes, then rewatch the recorded lecture at 2x speed, reviewing anything I didn't understand on the slides. So each lecture took me 2 hours to digest. Which isn't bad, considering the payoff. Never at any point in this class did I feel overwhelmed or confused, or that this class was unfair. The professor is clear and organized, and gives you every opportunity to succeed if you do your work.

Professor Pinto is way better than Rojas. I really wish I had him for 41. Pinto's slides and explanations for hypothesis testing and confidence intervals helped me fill in the gaps from 41. His slides are thoroughly detailed. Honestly, if you study the slides and watch lectures on some of the more nuanced topics, you should be good to go. Tests were fair compared to the provided practice exams. The R problem sets were difficult at times, but graded on completion. If anything, they helped reinforce ideas presented in lecture. I would for sure recommend Pinto!

Professor Pinto is an excellent professor. If you give minimal effort, you get his accent by class 3. He is super passionate and wants the students to really understand econometrics. If you are interested in a PhD in Econ, then definitely take him. The tests are hard though. The multiple choice style exam leaves no room for partial credit and there are a lot of trick questions.

Pinto is clearly passionate about econometrics and makes a good effort. His tests are well-written.

Professor Pinto is one of the best professors within the Econ department. Although he didn't curve so I was 1% away from a solid A, I won't fail to recognize how generous he still is in spite of that. He truly cared about his students and explained all the material very well. For those complaining that the professor didn't provide enough of an incentive to learn R, THERE IS A REASON WHY YOU ARE AT UCLA, YOU SHOULDN'T NEED A PROFESSOR TO "MOTIVATE" YOU!!! At the beginning of the course, Pinto gave many resources for us to learn R if we wanted to. Not only that, but his labs were very detailed, all you had to do is follow them and you would learn a lot. During office hours there was someone trying to impress him and waste time with R but if you didn't do anything about it, that's all on you. I knew I had questions to ask so I simply politely interrupted that other student and asked my questions. Professor Pinto did not tell me to wait as he did want to answer any questions related to 103, all it took was some effort on my part. He always listened to the students' opinions by asking what day office hours were best for us, just giving us the answer for problem set #5, etc. So for those complaining, STOP WHINING AND TAKE INITIATE, YOU RECEIVED A GOOD GRADE AND CAN ALWAYS LOOK BACK THROUGH HIS LESSONS OR STUDY ON YOUR OWN IF YOU REALLY WANT TO LEARN ECONOMETRICS.

Absolutely useless professor. His accent makes it impossible to understand anything he say's during lecture. Tests were not correlated with what he went over in class. Learnt nothing by going to lecture. He simply "read" slides, from which students could not garner any info. Highly recommend any professor other than Pinto.

Professor Pinto, while knowledgeable in econometrics I'm sure, is entirely incapable of delivering that knowledge to his students.
On our first lecture, the professor spoke his first sentence and I could hear the entire class let out a collective sigh. His extremely fast speech and difficult to understand accent make for a nasty combination. I cannot stress enough just how difficult it is understand even the very words that he says, let alone the concepts he is talking about.
Based on what little I could understand, his lecturing style essentially involves reading dense formulas off of his slides (which, to his credit, he posts online). He offers very little comprehensible intuition to the concepts he presents and instead seems to prefer only dry theory. In other words, he gives you the formulas, tells you (sort of) how to use them, and goes no further. You leave lecture with a head full of formulas and feeling no more versed in econometrics than when you entered.
But here's the kicker: his tests involve heavy intuition. They are incredibly "meanly" written, filled with trick questions and concepts which are poorly explained during lecture. The answers to the majority of questions on the first term were, in fact, on the formula sheet he provides. The difficulty comes from trying to figure which obscure trick he expects you to use to manipulate the formulas and correlate different formulas. The questions can feel almost like a test of reading comprehension and semantics, of how well you can decipher what he wants rather than how well you understand the core concepts of the class.
By midway through the quarter, attendance for the class was sitting around something like 20% of enrolled students (we counted). So that should tell you something. And don't even get me started on the nightmare of Stata.
So, in conclusion, I don't doubt professor Pinto's intelligence, knowledge, or even his good intentions (he actually allowed us to use 10 pages of hand written notes on the midterm and provided an above average study guide). I do, however, believe that he is a poor instructor and does not test fairly based on his lectures. I strongly strongly STRONGLY advise that you do not take Econ 103 with him if you have any other options. If you do not, well....good luck!

It is impossible to understand him. Do not take him unless you want to learn everything on your own.