ECON 4340

Burton has no idea how to teach but if you memorize all the powerpoints, you should be okay. Minimal work. Reading is unnecessary, as is paying attention to what he says.

Learned more real-world knowledge in this class than in anything else I've taken at UVA. Lectures are boring and hard to follow/unorganized, but I found the content to be relevant and interesting.

It's honestly embarrassing to the university of virginia that they employ a professor as shitty as Burton. He rambles on about nothing in lecture and there's no textbook, so you're left with vague PowerPoint slides to prepare for tests. The tests are fair, but the grading isn't. The grading in tests was actually ridiculous. You could explain a concept perfectly, but if you didn't include one specific buzz word, he took all full credit. Office hours were useless, and I'd go as far as to say that Burton is the most incompetent teacher I've ever encountered. An absolute embarrassment to the Econ department.

There's absolutely no outside work for this class; that's the positive. On the other hand, the class is an absolute bore. The material itself is interesting and useful to know, but holy shit is Burton boring. He mostly just mumbles too, so you can barely even understand what he is trying to say. Though you pretty much need to go to lecture to actually be able to follow wtf is going on with the PowerPoints. The tests are very fair, but the grading isn't. He wants you to include several "buzz" words in your answers, but if the PowerPoints don't explain a concept you're left to your own devices to actually figure out what those buzz words are (there's no partial credit).

Overall, I do recommend this if you're interested in going the Finance route, but I definitely do not recommend it just for an easy ECON class. Also he divides grading into 1/3 As, Bs, and Cs, so if you're unsure of the material, curve will fuck you over. I ended up blowing the first exam as grading takes a bit of getting used to, and even though I got 90 on the second (and I think did well on the final), ended up with a B.

I had a very enjoyable experience with this class. Overall, the course involves very little material (which is great because the final is cumulative) but you are expected to know the material that is covered very very well. Grading is 30-30-40 with two midterms and a final. Homework is minimal, there were only four readings over the course of the semester, each about 30-40 pages long, weighted heavily towards the beginning of the semester. Over the summer you will be asked to read the book "A Random Walk down Wall Street" which was a pretty good read, but ended up being completely unnecessary for the class. Lectures are necessary and you will learn quickly that about 80% of what Burton talks about in class is unnecessary for the exams. Best advice would be to know the lecture material associated with each powerpoint slide, as he doesn't test about anything not referenced on the powerpoints (which he posts on collab).

Also important to note that the class is graded on a scale where 1/3 of students get As, 1/3 Bs, and 1/3 Cs, so all that matters is beating the mean by about 7 or 8 points if you want an A.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend the class if you are at all remotely interested in finance, as the material from this class is some of the most practical material I have learned in the econ department thus far.

Halfway through the course and everything we've learned can be found with a quick Google search on investopedia.com, but more boring and harder to follow...

Very relevant course. Real life applications and no textbook. Attendance isn't mandatory, but he does put current event questions that he talks about in class on the midterms. Definitely a good 4000 level elective for ECON majors.

The professor can be incredibly boring in class sometimes but his tests are pretty easy. I barely attended class as I just read his textbook and memorized the powerpoint slides. Pretty much everything you need to know can be culled from those 2 sources. Lectures can be a waste of time.

Burton is obviously very knowledgeable, but not great at teaching. He spends the first hour of lecture rambling and tells you to forget whatever he just said then spends 10 minutes on lecture slides. An A is possible only if you know exactly what he is looking for in your answers. I got 10 percent taken off my first midterm because I forgot to divide a number by 2 and didn't get any extra credit. The TA's are also rude, stuck up, and useless.

This class deservedly has very mixed reviews. Professor Burton is undoubtedly one of the most experienced members of the economics department: he's been enveloped in the world of finance for the past forty years, as a teacher, a derivatives trader, a consultant, and a board member of multiple companies. Professor Burton is innately aware of his expertise, and isn't afraid to talk about his history actively for long durations of the lecture (he was a part of the largest arbitrage trading team in the 1980s and the Fed sucks!). Most people groan at this aspect of Burton and his apparent arrogance, tuning him out during these lengthy periods of seemingly pointless material.
For starters, I've taken both 4340 and 4370, and did fairly well in both, but even I got sick of his incessant rambling at times. That said, some of it is worth listening to (and his comments on the Fed appeared on an exam in 4340, but he said they would, and usually he says his rants won't appear). If you have the chance, taking the effort to meet Burton and interact with him goes a long way (he offers lunches to students, so it's not like it's that hard, and he even gave me a ride to my apartment just to talk about a question from class I had on his way home... also, I'm a guy so he wasn't creeping); he's probably one of the nicest people I've ever met, is very talkative, and is open to giving you any advice. I'd bet most people that give him a 1 rating didn't bother. If anything take a class with him to get to know him cause it's worth it. As far as 4340 goes, it takes minimal effort to do well. There were two readings: A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which he asked a single five point question on out of 100 in the first exam and never really talked about again (but is worth reading because it's actually a pretty good book), and 15ish chapters of his own textbook to read throughout the semester, probably a total of 10 pages per chapter so nothing too heavy. Go to class and take notes on the important parts (don't sit on Facebook/instagram like everyone else!), study those notes, and you should do just fine. The midterms are always a few definitions at the beginning, and a series of short answers after that (he has a 'unique' testing style that some students hate, but isn't really unique at all because Wilkerson's COMM 3845 is modeled the exact same way, as with most COMM school classes that aren't the prereqs... taking that helped me). The final was cumulative, but he gives away pretty much everything that will be on it in class during the last week, and what he doesn't mention is usually something from one of the two midterms. I found his tests very easy, just learn from his lectures, repeat what his main points are and you'll get somewhere in the B+ to A range. Burton's grade distribution sounds daunting, but is fairer than you'd expect: about 25% of the class gets Cs, 40-45% gets Bs, and 30-35% gets As. One fourth of the class getting Cs sounds pretty darn annoying, because he promises to give those with the lowest 25-30% Cs regardless of the averages, but you'd be surprised by how many people blatantly do not try, do not pay attention, and get the Cs they deserve. If you don't act like them, you'll at the very worst get a B (Burton even broke his own rule this semester in 4370 and gave significantly more Bs than usual because he felt even the worst exams seemed competent... he's not an unreasonable man). The material itself, when it's actually being covered, isn't too difficult and is pretty interesting. All-in-all 7.5/10, would recommend.