i really like professor rojas and i took this class because i really enjoyed taking 103 with him and i did well (i took 103 before the 104 prereq came out) but this class was definitely really challenging for me, and i wish he didn't reference his 104 slides so often since there are students who technically did not take the course yet (or never will!) Admittedly, I definitely didn't take full advantage of office hours and going to class since things were online so i wish i did that more, but he did curve the final grade.

Having taken Econ 1 with Rojas (and having had a pretty good experience), I was shocked by how unorganized and poorly planned this course was. This class began with a ridiculous homework assignment in R that took days and ended with Respondus crashing over and over again on the final. In between, Rojas basically seemed to give up on trying to teach - it really felt like the pandemic had taken a lot out of him. He also decided to teach off of an R Markdown document, which sort of made sense because he was trying to teach us R, but was a lot more difficult to follow than a traditional powerpoint. If you can, I would recommend that you wait a couple of quarters before taking 103 so that the Econ department can figure out how to run this class.

Dont take Rojas unless you absolutely have to. He bascially just reads off the lecture notes during the lectures, which is extremely confusing. He only gave one practice test for midterms and finals, which are pretty much irrelevalant from what actually appeared on the test. Both midterms and finals were quite hard:( However, the group project was graded pretty leniently which was the only good thing about this class.

this class killed my 4.0 gpa. lectures are not recorded. 2 group projects with R but you will struggle unless you are already okay with R

He changed the structure of this class, there are now 2 projects worth 20% each, a midterm worth 20% and a final worth 40%. He does not give much practice material so just make sure to ask the TAs to give you more practice problems, some give out additional old practice problems.

His labs are essentially a continuation of the lectures. While he explains the concepts of the material very well and helped me grasp the thought process and foundational ideas, he doesn't really teach how to code in R, which is essential for the projects. Because of this, the TAs suggested using Google and ChatGPT for coding help. Rojas has high expectations for his students, but I genuinely learned a lot from him and I'm glad that he was my professor. Take his class if you're eager to learn, but not if you're looking for an easy A. I really liked him and the way he explained stuff but a lot of people complained because he had high expectations from us and covered more material than other professors.

Overall he's a very nice guy, if you ask him for help with the project, he will help you and he is very knowledgeable about the material.

I really liked Professor Rojas. Although I had taken statistics and probability before, I never truly grasped the concepts until this class. I think he did an excellent job of explaining the material clearly. We had two group projects, which were time-consuming, but they helped deepen our understanding of the content (each project accounted for 20% of the final grade). The midterm (20%) and final (40%) exams were challenging and built on what was taught in class. To succeed, you really need to understand the material as there is also no cheat sheet. On the positive side, the projects were graded leniently, and he only curved grades upwards.

Overall, I thought he was very nice and a good lecturer. I would take another class with him.

Rojas is a great lecturer, learned alot in this class. Projects made up 40% of our grade and everyone basically got a 100% on them. The only problem this class had was that the exams had a few random questions he barely ever touched on and his practice exams were nothing like the actual exams. Most exam questions were very easy however.

EHH. The only two plus's is that practice exams match the level of the actuals, and that he has lecture notes.

Since the projects are most of the grades, if you have a good grade and study for exams, you'll be fine. However, the professor is not clear at all (frankly I think he's so smart that he doesn't understand that students don't get it), so it felt entirely self-taught as lectures were not helpful. This class is a huge time commitment and is quite stressful so make sure the rest of your classes are not too stressful.