This definitely has to be the best class I've taken at UCLA and truly recommend this class to anyone regardless of your major. Professor Christensen is truly amazing in what he does and makes the class so enjoyable. The class itself doesn't have a lot of content, and it sort of functions like a math class in which the concepts build off of each other, making it easy to remember and feel prepared for exams. The class is based on Game Theory and Christensen makes it super easy to understand. He really cares so much about his students and you can easily tell how passionate he is about what he is teaching. The only knock I would give this class is that the exams consist primarily of true/false questions, which sounds easy on paper, but can really get to you in the moment. Other than that, really enjoyed this class, really enjoyed the readings, and really enjoyed going to lecture. Please take if you get the chance!

PUB AFF 30 with Professor Christensen is a great option for any Public Affairs or Political Science Major looking to complete one of their lower-divs. Professor Christensen creates a highly engaging, fun, and interesting class through his lectures, slides, and examples. The class makes you critically think about any and all public policy through the use of game theory. While game theory can be complex and hard to understand, Professor Christensen breaks it down and makes it much easier to digest. When it comes to grades, the class has post-lecture quizzes, attendance, two assignments, and two exams. The grade distribution is great and makes it easier to pass the class even if you struggle on the exams or the assignments. The exams can be tricky as they contain some questions on specific details, but this can be made up through the SAQs. I highly recommend this class for anyone who is interested in game theory and how to use it to think critically in many different ways when it comes to public policy.

Prof. Christensen's lectures were somewhat engaging but could definitely get a bit dry sometimes, but I don't think that it's his fault. It definitely felt at times that the class was moving very slowly, but I appreciated the fact that he and the TAs wanted to make sure everyone had an understanding of each topic. I thought that grading for our midterm policy memo was a bit arbitrary, but I ended up doing better on the video we had to make at the end of class. Christensen also made the midterm no-harm following the encampment attack, which I appreciated, especially because I did a lot better on the final. He also sprinkled in easy extra credit, so getting an A in this class ended up being pretty easy.

As a public affairs major, I am absolutely obsessed with game theory, strategy, and hypotheticals, so keep in mind my review may be slightly biased towards that. A couple thoughts about this elective class:

Primarily, I did enjoy lecture a lot; I thought that Christenson covered content crisply and coherently, for lack of better language. He was engaging, I loved our TAs, and I think he gave really great examples in lecture. Cool content too. I would honestly just rename this class game theory tho, bc that was what it mostly was. What I enjoyed most was our policy influencer final project video. It allowed us to really use anything from our lives to show a concept in this class. It was also really helpful to learn how to write policy memos, as those are useful for skills in careers later on.

I will say that the content was a little bit more difficult to grasp than I realized. I wasn't aware of this until the midterm - I think maybe the MCQ questions were trickily worded and SAQs were graded pretty strictly. But what seemed self explanatory during class turned out to be more complex to identify than we initially believed. My piece of advice would be to pay attention to the examples he gives, recognize patterns in social dilemmas, and use this to correctly identify on the exams. Chiller tho at the end, I would definitely recommend this as an elective for the major.

The actual time spent in Professor Christensen's class was always worth-while. He is a very engaging lecturer who clearly is very wise and cares about the learning of his students. That being said, the class itself was not my favorite major class thus-far. He assigns quizzes after every lecture, which are honestly just annoying to keep track of. It feels like busy work and doesn't significantly impact my grade. The assignments were also relatively vague in their prompts, yet I felt the grading was harsh. The professor also made almost all the midterm true/false questions, which was just rude lol. Overall, I love attending Professor Christensen's lectures, but the work outside of class felt like a waste of time.

I loved this class so much. It is part of the reason why I decided to double major in Public Affairs. Dr. Christensen is amazing; his lectures are super interesting and engaging, the assignments were informative and fun to work on, and he is very helpful when approached. I would definitely recommend this class because I think what I learned in it can be applied to issues and dilemmas we have in life even outside of academics!
In terms of difficulty, I think assignments were graded fairly, and we even got extra credit on the final for doing course evaluations.

Dr. Christensen if you're seeing this, please do more undergraduate courses!

PA 30 was one, if not my favorite, PA prereq I have taken. Professor Christensen is hands down the best professor I have had here- he is so knowledgable and engaging and actually makes lecture fun and interesting. He just acts like a normal person and is very relatable. He doesn't let you have any electronics out during lecture, but it was honestly really nice and helped me learn better. He goes over concepts in great detail and reviews a lot, so you don't have to study that much for tests because you already have it engrained in your brain.

He is lowkey a master at designing tests because they are not terribly difficult, but he phrases some questions in a strategic way that can trick you. If you study, you will do fine on these.

The writing assignments were really interesting because you got to pick topics that interested you and were graded pretty easily.

The name of this class is kind of misleading because it's more about game theory and ethics and not really at all about money. But it's still super interesting and I would highly recommend it as a GE or prereq for the pub aff major!

Professor Christensen is an amazing teacher. His slides are clear and he explains everything incredibly thoroughly. I didn't even need to study for the exams because he made sure we knew everything just by attending lecture. The midterm was super easy and the final was a little bit more complicated but not too difficult. We had to write two papers on topics of our choosing which were short and interesting. He does have a no electronics policy in class which I didn't like at first, but taking notes on paper actually helped me stay focused and learn. Overall, this class is an easy but interesting GE with a great professor!

I took this class for my major and it wasn't what I expected from the title. It ended up being more about game theory and predicting the effects of various policies than wealth, policy, and power, but it was still pretty interesting! My year it was online due to covid, although I'm not sure if it still is.

I took this during winter quarter 2021 for a GE. The first 3 lectures or so were over zoom and attendance was tracked. However, then the class switched to asynchronous lectures so obviously attendance didn’t matter anymore.

It’s required to do the readings before every lecture but I stopped doing them because they could get super long and they’re covered in lecture anyway. Even though there’s math mentioned in the readings and lectures, there was never any math in the midterm/final so I just didn’t worry about it. The exams are based on the lecture slides so as long as you know those I think you’ll be fine. I definitely thought the exams were fair.

After every lecture there is a short open book lecture quiz that are basically just taken from the slides, these are really easy and just to pad your grade a little. Discussions are mandatory but I didn’t really find them too helpful

There are 2 papers, one op-Ed and one policy memo worth 30% of your grade . I thought these were graded pretty easily (but that depends on your TA) and there are lots of examples and guidelines provided. There’s also more than enough time to complete them imo. There isn’t a big workload for the class, just go to lecture, do the lecture quizzes, and the papers and exams

Overall I thought the class was interesting and not too hard for a GE at all. The prof was super nice and accommodating throughout the entire quarter too. Sometimes lectures could be a little boring but I do think I learned some valuable things lol. I’d recommend this class!