Wow, it's May already! I have challenged myself to blog every day in May. Don't worry I'll understand if you can't keep up. After all, it's unlikely I'll run out of things to write about. On the first post of the month, I'll bore you with my review of this semester and each of the three classes I took.
First, Quantitative Business Tools II, as I've called it before ECO 3411 was downright horrible. I'm still not sure what this class was supposed to be about. Was it statistics or was it economics? I don't even think the professors knew what material to teach or how to teach it. I managed through the semester with a professor change halfway through. They both sucked equally. I spent the whole time wondering if the knuckle heads were ever going to start teaching something. They never did. I didn't read the book the professors co-authored together because it was even more unbearable than the class itself. They spent most of the lectures bragging about how this isn't how your typical Quant II class is taught at other institutions and they made it sound like that was supposed to be a good thing. I don't think they ever proved their point. I got through the semester by teaching myself from the sample projects, homework, and practice exams. I even carried over some things I learned from Financial Models and applied it to some of the stats we did using regression. I'll be doing a post about the regression model tomorrow, so get excited. I learned nothing from this class. It was a waste of time and money.
Second, Legal and Ethical Environment of Business, aka Business Law, aka BUL 3130 was a really interesting class. It was all concepts, which is okay I just prefer to deal with numbers and math and money. I didn't get the professor I registered for because he passed away a few days before the semester started. R.I.P. Dr. Lako, I heard you were one of the best at UCF. The professor I had flew by the seat of his pants. He lectured 3 hours every week without any prompts or power-point. My writing hand got conditioned to taking notes for three hours. Although if I could do it again, I'd use my computer to type the notes like a savvy high-tech student. He's a practicing lawyer so he was able to give real life case examples from his experience. Two life lessons I learned from this class are to never co-sign for anyone and to always get a prenuptial agreement. Other things I learned about were contracts, the UCC, consumer protection laws, property law, businesses and their formation and their advantages and disadvantages. People are crazy, this world is crazy and our laws are sometimes even crazier. Cabbage heads, which is what my professor liked to call jurors, will most likely be complete, unpredictable idiots. If you don't believe me, I'll give you a case example that will blow your mind. Just ask.
I saved my favorite for last, Financial Models, FIN 4453. The professor for this class was one of the best I've had at UCF, Yoon Choi. He knew the material well, was a natural lecturer and was even unintentionally funny. He's been published in financial magazines and has attended meetings with top financial experts that are famous in the finance world. He's brilliant and his passion for the subject definitely was contagious. I'll be posting some of my favorite models I learned in later posts. I learned simple and multiple regression, solver function, matrix algebra, sharpe and Jensen ratio to value a mutual fund, and style analysis. These were juicy with numbers just like I love. It was challenging and great!
