UPDATE: It looks like all reviews for Pinto got relocated to this page. As I said below, take the overly positive reviews from Spring 2021 with a grain of salt.

I suggest you read the reviews on the Rodrigo Pinto Bruinwalk page for a more balanced review of the professor. Some people who really loved the professor ganged up and wrote rudely worded retaliatory reviews to a negative review from a Spring 2021 student on that page, so take the the overly positive Spring 2021 reviews of Pinto with a grain of salt.

In my opinion, Professor Pinto was a pretty average professor. Did not love him or hate him. I wish the class were more intensive and in-depth like those of other econometrics professors, but at the end of the day it was pretty easy to get an A in this class. Maybe even verging on too easy.

Professor Pinto is a great professor! I was genuinely worried about Econ 103 since it had been some time since I had taken Econ 41. However, Professor took the time to go over econ 41 concepts the first week. He also simplified the class so that we learned only what was the most relevant and important. He would make it a point actually to say this is important, this 'data gathering or organizing' is important in the real world too. His homework assignments on Jupyter were long but it made it so that you subconsciously ended up memorizing lines of code and later on you got faster at completing the homework. It was also only graded for completion. During lectures, he would make sure to thoroughly explain concepts, compliment students for the questions they asked, clarify any confusion to the best of his ability, and work on examples. At first, I was having a hard time understanding anything but after giving it serious effort and time, everything started to make more sense. If you have a hard time initially just keep trying and I am sure it will get better. His exams were mostly concept questions with math questions that were simple enough to do without a calculator. He also posted exam practice questions and answers. I am very thankful that he was the professor for spring and that he taught it the way he did. I felt challenged but also motivated and confident enough that I can do well. He doesn't curve; however, I felt my raw score was higher than the score I received but that's using standard cutoffs so... Nonetheless, I would recommend this professor for Econ 103! Good luck!

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.

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.