Brendan O'Flaherty

Professor O’Flaherty is a bit eccentric and a bit older, both of which can be endearing as he navigates a younger student body. I appreciated his tangents and general knowledge that he easily applies to course material. I also appreciated the open source course materials. I will say that he was one of the few professors that took the time and effort to talk to students on their own time about the challenges they faced. I’ll always remember him fondly for that. That being said, he’s a harsh grader. I’d studied for a multiple choice final, only for it to be swapped out with an extended problem set last minute. Overall, nice guy, very intelligent with a wide array of real world experience.

God awful class. So uninteresting and hes really not a good teacher in the slightest. Id say the hardest part of this class is trying to interpret the questions he is asking. We have weekly problem sets and occasional open-book quizzes that are sooooooo badly written that not even the internet will help you (and looking at old reviews this seems to be a consistent issue with his class). His questions are often unclear and riddled with ridiculous hypotheticals which require you to hop skip and leap to far-fetched conclusions. When trying to answer these questions, I often found myself thinking more about whether or not this is the type of answer he is looking for rather than thinking about the econ concept itself. The class is curved to a B- which sucks and we are graded on a z-score relative to how other people in the class do. There is literally no clear communication about z-scores or cutoffs or anything. They never gave us our final z-score and didn't release our graded finals on gradescope/the answer key for the final so we can't even see or understand how we got to the letter grade we received.

You read these reviews and are probably thinking that there's no way he can possibly be that bad, right? Wrong. Don't make this mistake. He is as bad as these reviews are but amplified in the classroom. Can't explain a single concept to save his life. Attendance dropped 90% within the first weeks of class but the average grade remained the same. Curve is absolutely brutal, especially if you think you will do well in the class and think you are naturally inclined toward the subject. This is because his quiz/test questions are so badly written that no matter how well you know the material, you will have to guess because you simply have no idea what is being asked. The TAs obviously understood that Dan is a terrible teacher. If you take this class, go to recitation if you want to understand the material at all, even though your grade will not be affected from knowing or not knowing the material. Do not take this class if possible. IF YOU GO TO BARNARD TAKE THIS CLASS AT BARNARD I CANNOT RECOMMEND THAT ENOUGH! DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE!

The course material itself is interesting, but Professor O'Flaherty is painfully boring. I could barely hear him and had to sit at the front of the class, though I stopped going to class after awhile. He is knowledgeable, but a very, very boring lecturer who makes awkward jokes. He also was not very helpful if you asked questions. By the end of the semester, very few students were attending the class.

This course is an approach to economics that's so unrigorous that it actually loops back to being kind of hard again. It's at the level that most conclusions from the models presented should be intuitive, except that each comes with a sea of unstated assumptions and overlooked details that make doing a problem set feel like guessing the answer the professor was looking for. The course also avoids math at all costs, so descriptions of metrics and formulas become very complicated unnecessarily. Professor Flaherty sometimes gives the mathematical basis anyway, but rarely gives it much attention. The lectures are mostly meandering, with Prof. Flaherty talking about barely interesting statistics for a while until he reaches the four slides that may be relevant for that week's problem set. The problem sets themselves are short and easy but terribly written. Most points off will be from misinterpreting a question or choosing the wrong assumption to make. Full disclosure I didn't go to any recitations though. The worst part of this class is the fact that it's inexplicably curved to a B- despite being so easy. Distributions are given intermittently throughout the course (on Ed when a TA feels like it or somebody asks) and everybody basically scores a 94% or above on everything, so just know that Flaherty considers a B+ an excellent grade. Anyway, he's retiring soon so this won't be rel…

I went into this course with almost no expectations, simply eager to learn economics and gauge whether or not I had any interest at all in the subject. For this purpose, O'Flaherty is a wonderful professor. His course is very low stakes (weekly PSETS and an occasional quiz make it so you can operate pretty fluidly throughout the course). However, I will say that after going through this whole course, I do not feel that I have learned any economics at all. O'Flaherty, though charming, is consistently boring and, if anything, deeply disinterested in instruction. Each class is marked by no less than three (at least) comments about how he cannot wait to retire soon. This eagerness to leave is reflected in his instruction style (in that he doesn't). This class, though intended to be providing a firm foundation for one to learn economics -- a stepping stone, if you may -- provided me nothing but two slabs of wood, no nails or tools, and an instruction book that said "figure it out ig". His lectures digress so far from the original point that it is practically impossible to know what he is talking about. And then, the second you think you are understanding something, he uppercuts you with something condescending about calculus that you have known since tenth grade and makes you feel demeaned. Overall, if you are SEAS and need to get through econ, take him instead of Gulati. If you ha…

So the reviews were really mixed and i was a little scared going in. The first day of class he went on a bit of tangent and i watched a lot of people decide right then and there to drop his class. But he is honestly a great professor. It's not the typical economics class although i wouldnt even know what that is. But he genuinely tries to get you to understand how economics impacts and is tied to our everyday lives. The first lecture tangent he went on was talking about how garbage truck drivers/workers uphold our society and economy and yet their annual pay doesn't reflect that whastoever nor does the stereotypical view of their work. I think if people genuinely listened to what he was saying instead of half listening while texting their friends/being on their laptops/phones the whole time they would've realized what he was talking about. But maybe that's just the entitlement most people have. He goes in a different order of teaching the concepts than gulatti and lets you know that on the first day. But its all the same content and i found that the way we built up the basic concepts genuinely helped in understanding once we got to more complicated stuff. He is hard to hear though so sit near the front. Also you will need to read the textbook as it goes over things like equations a bit more than he does. I find the econ concepts in general a bit hard to understand/apply but th…

May be a not so nice review, but to be honest, this class had its up and downsides. The good is that Brendan is brilliant, the bad is that grading is tough. Expect to go through a textbook chapter (or a few) each class, while a sparse powerpoint is shown with laser pointer to go through broad topics related and so on. However, these conversation topics (you have the opportunity to chime in every so often) while interesting, rarely have to do with the often complex quizzes and exams. I would have liked either the classes or powerpoint or some other source to go into the information to study from with ease.

Professor O'Flaherty is amazing! He teaches many complex concepts of economics in a way that anyone could understand. He will talk about the market fluctuations and negative externalities and he will bring the examples down to the chalk we are using in class to write on the board. If you listen, you will laugh, cause he puts some really funny things and examples on the slides as well, and you will learn the principles of economics with examples that are unforgettable. He used a new coursebook this semester, The Economy, you could access it online for free or buy it for about $50, which compared to other Econ coursebooks is a bargain. He followed the book and expanded it's knowledge in class and the book was easy to follow on it's own as well. His grading is a bit of a mystery, he z-scores the whole class by categories of assignments, but throughout the semester you don't really know where you are at with a grade in the class.As he said " a 93 on the midterm doesn't mean anything, it doesn't mean an A, it doesn't mean a B, just don't assign letters". All that matters in his grading is how you do compared to others, if you're above the mean, you'll be fine. Some people in these comments write that he has a shitty curve that ruins you if you study hard, I disagree. I worked hard, I wasn't the best, and I ended up with an A in the class, while based on comments below I though I'd…

I've never done a CULPA review, but Professor O'Flaherty is such a wonderful human being and professor that it had to be done. Professor O'Flaherty is one of the best, most eccentric professors I've ever had. He always takes the time to answer questions, and I really appreciate that his class was super discussion-based. Whenever someone would not understand something, he would frame it in an interesting context/example sometimes involving oak trees and cats or witches for folks to better understand. This class has defined my undergraduate experience. This is the best course I've ever taken in my four years of undergrad. I recommend this course to anyone who wants to understand how race plays a significant part in all our daily interactions, major life milestones, and institutions. The studies he shares in his book and in class are fascinating. Also, his book, Economics of Race in the U.S., is hilarious and very readable. One note of improvement for the professor though is that I recommend he speak louder into the microphone (or clip the microphone closer to his mouth) since he can be quite soft-spoken at times. Make sure to sit in the front row if you want to hear him more clearly and ask him to repeat stuff if you miss anything, he won't mind. Just to show you how amazing and ridiculous he is: For our take-home midterm he emailed: "you may use books and the internet and plant…