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.

class is pretty calm. gives practice tests before both midterm and final, the actual test is extremely similar, i thought they were easier ngl.
Lecture attendance is not required, he posts notes after, and if you can understand them, you're fine. textbook not needed.
10% hw, these are guaranteed 100%s basically, and you can either have 30% midterm + 60% final, or 90% final.

would take this guy, his class is pretty chill.

THIS CLASS WAS WAY TOO HARD. When I started the quarter, I chose Chetverikov over Liao because of my friend's recommendation when he took him during Spring 2015. He said that Chetverikov was the better teacher of the two and that his was the easiest class to take for ECON 41. However, I think due to the easiness of his first quarter teaching as a professor (Spring 2015), he made a complete U-turn and the class turned out to be way harder than I expected when I took it during Winter 2016. I'll break down how grades were determined:

10% HW
30% Midterm
60% percent final (yes ridiculous, I know).

When my friend took the class in Spring 2015, both the midterm and final average were in the high 80's/low 90's. That was the AVERAGE. During my quarter, everything changed. Our midterm average was a 77 percent, and our final average was set at an even lower 70 percent. The thing about this class is that the material isn't even that hard, it's the fact that the midterm contained literally 1/3 impossible card/dice problems and that the final exam questions were nearly impossible. By impossible, I mean that almost every single question had an additional twist on it that required you to have gone above and beyond the learning required for that chapter, and to also tap into your critical thinking skills in order to solve the question correctly. A lot of the problems I had never seen before and were nothing even close to the lecture examples or the hw problems he has you do. By the end of the final I was braindead, exhausted, and probably shaky on around 30 or so problems out of the 70 that composed the exam. Oh, and did I mention that all of it was multiple choice? I had to randomly bubble in the last 5 or so because I ran out of time. This test was easily a 3.5 hour exam and you definitely have to rush/work fast to finish in the given 3 hours.

Part of this difficulty can probably be attributed to the fact that he breezed through the last few chapters of the class due to us missing two Monday classes during the quarter because of holidays. This ended up screwing us over, because the last few chapters were the most conceptually difficult and we were literally forced to learn them for ourselves with just a week left before the final exam. The only redeeming quality about this class is that it is based on a pretty generous curve where top 25% of kids get A's, and the next 35% get B's. That being said, this class was too much of a headache and stressed me out way more than any other class I've taken here at UCLA.

To paint you a clearer picture, I attended all office hours (both TA and Professors), I went to TWO discussions a week (in attempts to understand the stuff), and I stopped going out or having a social life and literally focused on ECON 41 every day for at least an hour after I got my midterm score back, which was beginning of week 7 up until the end of the quarter. Prior to this quarter, I had NEVER gone to office hours for a class. I had a 3.85 GPA, ended up with solid A's in my other two classes, and put my 110% into this class to STILL only end up with a B as my final grade. Suffice to say, if I knew what a shitshow this class would be before coming into it, I would have dropped it on the very first day.

This class with Chetverikov was absolutely brutal. The midterm was average in terms of difficulty but the final impossible. Not to mention, he fools you by giving you a practice exam that is completely different than his actual test. So ridiculous. Don't even waste your time trying to decipher half of the questions. I had to go to 4 different office hours to figure a majority of them out and it still wasn't all of them. But the real final exam was completely different. Like the previous review said, you had to go way above and beyond what was learned through lecture and homework in order to solve some of the questions. I believe the final's average was a 46/70. As I looked around after the test, many people were shaking and in complete disbelief.

His lectures were very dry and all he did was copy directly from his lecture notes verbartim. I found the TA's ten times more helpful than the professor. But I would say I was learning a majority of the material through my chegg account, and I sat in all but one lecture. The lectures were not helpful, so don't bother wasting your time going. If you can hold off taking the class for a quarter to take it with another professor, do it.

Please avoid this professor if you can. I don't normally review professors on bruinwalk but Denis is all kinds of bad. He makes no effort to help his students. After the midterm he said if you didn't do well, just try harder. No concession from his end that he'll meet with students who didn't do well or anything. All he did was read off his lecture guides and confuse us with terrible terminology.the final was impossible (he put a concept that he didn't even teach and put 5 questions on it). The TAs were the only good thing about this class and honestly they should have been teaching. Only by going to them every week did I manage to get a good grade and even then it was a struggle til the end. It's sad that after spending so much money on UCLA this is the caliber of professor we get.

he is the best professor for econ 41. he was extremely helpful in office hours, and was always clear with what he expected from us to know. he assigned 5-10 homework problems a week and they were extremely doable, and not graded for correctness but for completeness which was nice because some were tricky. his midterm was easy, his final required much more work, but just do a million practice tests (get from the test bank or AAP) and you'll be fine. you need to know different ways to do these problems rather than relying on what he does in class. his final is much different than anything he has done in class, it is a lot harder but it was definitely expected to be harder. I wish I could take him for econ 103. he was very good compared to other econ 41 professors.

Denis.... sigh.
This guy spent way too much time explaining proofs during class that we didn't even get tested on. He spent so much time that we ran of time to go over a MAJOR topic (e.g: null hypothesis)... He had to rush us.... and this topic was like 1/4th of our final exam questions.
I went to 2 TAs' sections. They were both frustrated with Denis's over-complicated notations and how Denis emphasized all the wrong stuff

The practice midterm he gave us didn't resemble the midterm (eg: practice midterm barely had card or dice questions when the actual midterm was filled with them).
The practice Final is provided without solutions... Yes. It's pretty much so that you see how screwed you are.

Awful.
Denis you get a 1/5

Midterm was a piece of cake, but the final was very difficult. I wouldn't say Denis is the worst professor ever and that you should avoid him as much as possible though. Going to lecture is quite valuable. He isn't the most engaging person in the world, but he does care. He hold office hours and is willing to answer many questions. I'm kinda pissed I got a B, but the final is worth 60% of the grade and is REALLY hard!!

Chetverikov was very clear in his expectations and was always willing to help after class. Wookun Kim and Changsu Ko were very capable TAs.

The lectures and homework assignments were extremely useful. Professor Chetverikov was very helpful and patient with answering students' questions, even right after the lectures. While most professors are unwilling to stay after class to talk to students, he makes sure that everyone who has questions gets a chance to ask him directly. The weekly homework is relatively short and very doable, not to mention, great review for the midterm and final. The midterm was extremely easy, as long as you pay attention in lecture and understand all the homework problems (including non graded ones). The final was slightly more difficult, mostly because its 70 questions. He posted 2 practice finals, but I only did one and reviewed all the homework, which was enough to do very well on the final. Overall, one of the most interesting classes I've taken at UCLA, even though some topics weren't that engaging.