Login

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

March 29, 2024, 12:22:36 pm

Author Topic: UNSW Course Reviews  (Read 288562 times)  Share 

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

blasonduo

  • Moderator
  • Forum Obsessive
  • *****
  • Posts: 405
  • Schrodinger waved while Heisenberg didn't?
  • Respect: +356
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #165 on: December 21, 2019, 09:25:54 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: EDST2002 - Professional Engagement

Contact Hours: 4-hour orientation at the beginning of the trimester. 2x full day weekly practical engagement at a given school (8:30-4) (15 total)

Assumed Knowledge: None, prerequisites were all 1st-year courses and EDST2003

Assessment: 7x Forum posts on 7 key standards (~300 each) and 7x forum responses to other posts (~150 each) (HURDLE)

Lecture Recordings? No

Notes/Materials Available: None from the University, varied with schools and your engagement with the school.

Textbook: None

Lecturer(s): N/A

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019 T3

Difficulty: 0.5 /5

Overall Rating: 4.3 /5

Your Mark/Grade: Satisfactory (SY) (No marks given)

Comments:

The experience for each student is almost entirely up to the school you're given, so I can only give my experiences on the course.

For the university side of things, it was pretty horrendous, the release date for our schools was unbelievably delayed (Didn't get them until week 3) and the communication regarding when we would get them was also non-existent. Additionally, with the orientation lecture, 4 hours was probably a bit too much, but it did have pretty valuable information such as what we should be doing, and the completion of the anaphylaxis certificate. However, my problem stemmed from the fact that after this orientation, they did not provide us with the lecture recording OR the lecture slides even after asking through email. It was quite disappointing.

On the school side, I was quite fortunate to meet some extremely passionate and helpful teachers to the point where I was blown away with how willing they were to help me. For the most part, you will be sitting in the corner of the classroom, watching how the class behaves and how the teachers teach. At times, I was able to be a teacher's assistant (especially with science practicals) which gave me more hands-on experience and I was also able to help with reader/writer for exams. I was quite fortunate to also see the more paperwork based aspects of teaching which included the government system Sentral, and NESA's guidelines to accreditation, and especially shown the importance of being organised as a teacher. I was also given the opportunity to mark papers, and to put them into the school system (Turns out you have to put them into 3 different places!) and how report writing works. I was also allowed to participate in the school's social events, such as PE lessons and being a welcomer for a rewards ceremony.

Looking back on this, I'm quite pleased with what I was able to learn in 15 days, and my notes have some interesting tactics and resources that I'm keen to try out myself. Also, this was my first time witnessing what happens in a public school, and although it does seem like some classes are completely chaotic and at times scary, it does allow me to have a more realistic outlook on what teaching will be in the future, and it does allow me to have more appropriate plans when I do inevitably start teaching.

Overall, I was quite pleased with how much I had learnt through this, but maybe it was a bit lucky given I was given a school where the teachers were very helpful. Although I'm still outright nervous about the next practical, this has allowed me to prepare myself better for it.
2018: UNSW B science (physics)/B education

Kicking myself into gear

HSC Physics Topics 1 & 2 Exam!

anomalous

  • Adventurer
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Respect: +17
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #166 on: December 21, 2019, 11:45:59 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: COMP2521 - Data Structures and Algorithms

Contact Hours:
- 2x 2 hour lectures
- 1x 1 hour tutorial
- 1x 2 hour lab class (follows the tutorial for a combined 3 hour block)

Assumed Knowledge: COMP1511 is the only formal prerequisite, but I would recommend specifically that you know linked lists well as this course heavily builds upon the concept.

Assessment:
- Lab exercises, worth 8%
- 2x programming assignments, worth 22% combined
- Midterm programming exam, worth 10%
- Final exam with theory and practical sections, worth 60%

Lecture Recordings? Yes, screen and voice.

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides with some extra programming exercises - this obviously depends on the offering since earlier terms reported no such exercises, but Ashesh should release these in subsequent offerings from now on.

Textbook: None prescribed, however the recommended book is “Algorithms in C” by Robert Sedgewick, published by Addison-Wesley.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Ashesh Mahidadia

Year & Trimester of completion: 19T3

Difficulty: 2/5

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 99 HD

Comments: A very important course for anyone doing computer science or software engineering, since the content is quite relevant for the nature of and types of questions you may see in programming interviews when applying for internships and jobs. This course will also enable you to write better code, since you will now have enough knowledge of algorithms to select the appropriate one and analyse how efficient the programs you do write are.

Lab work is quite straightforward and less in the character of COMP1511 with many short tasks, instead preferring to have one or two more substantial, related tasks on the main programming topics. The assignments can be time consuming in figuring out what you need to do and implementing it, so definitely don’t sleep when it comes to starting on them. The midterm exam is quite reasonable - if you’re confident in your programming, it can take as little as a few minutes to complete. The final exam is a straightforward test of your theory knowledge of all the topics in the course with a programming section that will usually focus on the main programming topics - linked lists, trees and graphs. When it comes to preparing for the practical section, I definitely recommend trying some of the problems on LeetCode et al.

In the event that your exam mark was lower than your assignment marks, your assignment marks were adjusted by taking their harmonic mean. This scaling is always regressive, meaning that your mark would never be adjusted up, only down. There are reasons to use this - a big one is to punish plagiarism - however it only really sought to punish people even if they didn’t cheat. However in 19T3, this was changed to only affect students for which there was a 45% difference or more in their assignment and exam marks. I can almost guarantee that because of this change, course marks were higher on average this term than they have ever been. I bring this up since in future offerings this may be tweaked yet again, so your mileage may vary.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2019, 11:48:12 pm by anomalous »

anomalous

  • Adventurer
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • Respect: +17
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #167 on: December 22, 2019, 07:36:58 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: MATH3411 - Information, Codes and Ciphers

Contact Hours:
- 2x 2 hour lectures
- 1x 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: At least one of:
- MATH1081
- MATH1231/41/51 with at least a CR
- MATH2099
- DPST1014 with at least a CR

The critical things you should know from the above courses though are modular arithmetic from MATH1081 and linear algebra from MATH1231/41/51.

Assessment:
- 3x computer-delivered lab tests, worth 40% combined
- Final exam, worth 60%

Lecture Recordings? Yes, screen, voice and video recording of the theatre, however the video quality is not very good so don’t count on it. Thomas uploaded any relevant blackboard work to Moodle anyways for added clarity.

Notes/Materials Available: Course notes, lecture slides and past exam papers.

Textbook: None prescribed, however some recommended resources are
- N. Abrahamson, “Information Theory and Coding”, McGraw-Hill (1963)
- R. Ash, “Information Theory”,  John Wiley (1965),  recently reprinted by Dover
- R. Bose, “Information Theory, Coding and Cryptography”, Tata McGraw-Hill (2002)
- G. Brassard, “Modern Cryptography”, Springer (1988)
- R. W. Hamming, “Coding and Information Theory”, Prentice-Hall (1986)
- R. Hill, “A First Course in Coding Theory”, Clarendon (1986)
- V. Pless, “Introduction to the Theory of Error-Correcting Codes”, Wiley (1982/89)
- O. Pretzel, “Error-Correcting Codes and Finite Fields”, Clarendon (1992)
- S. Roman, “Coding and Information Theory”, Springer (1992)
- A.  Salomaa, “Public-key Cryptography”,  Springer  (1990/96)
- B. Schneier, “Applied Cryptography”, Wiley (1996)
- H. C. A. van Tilborg, “An Introduction to Cryptology”, Kluwer (1988)

Lecturer(s): Dr. Thomas Britz

Year & Trimester of completion: 19T3

Difficulty: 1.5/5, but you might rate it higher if you’re doing it in your first year (which I did, but personally didn’t find the course hard even still)

Overall Rating: 5/5, but I could easily have given it more than that

Your Mark/Grade: 98 HD

Comments: I absolutely loved this course. Thomas Britz is easily my favourite lecturer thus far, and I really can’t say enough nice things about him - a fantastic lecturer who makes the course a total blast.

For a Level 3 course, it surely must be one of the easiest - though, disclaimer, I haven’t done any of those other courses. It isn’t boring however, far from it - while a lot of the content is inherently computational, it is a very unique application of some of the staple topics in first year mathematics, discrete and linear algebra. Computer science and software engineering students will find this content particularly interesting I think.

The online tests are going to be a similar deal to the ones found in the first year maths courses - you have plenty of time to spam practice tests which contain questions exactly the same as what you will see on the day, just with different numbers. The final exams for this course are pretty normal with one or two challenging questions - our final exam this term was probably the easiest ever given compared to the past papers. If you did well in those first year maths courses, I honestly think this course is barely harder than those, so you will likely find it quite reasonable.

I 100% recommend this course if you’re looking for something interesting to do in term 3 and aren’t too scared of things like first year modular arithmetic and linear algebra.

blasonduo

  • Moderator
  • Forum Obsessive
  • *****
  • Posts: 405
  • Schrodinger waved while Heisenberg didn't?
  • Respect: +356
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #168 on: December 24, 2019, 07:01:25 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: MATH2069 - Mathematics 2A

Contact Hours: 2x 2 hour lectures, 1x 1 hour lecture, 2x 1 hour tutorials (all weekly, split equally between Vector Calculus and Complex analysis).

Assumed Knowledge: Mathematics 1A and Mathematics 1B

Assessment: 2x in-class tests (5% each, each test on either VC or CA), 2x in-class tests, (15% each, each test on either VC or CA), Final exam (60%) 40%+ in both VC and CA and an average of 50%+ is required to pass the course.

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides/notes, past papers for each test and exam, a booklet with key questions (almost identical to 1A/1B)

Textbook: The Vector Calculus strand uses the text: Salas, Hille and Etgen: Calculus 9th Edition. The Complex Analysis strand uses the textbook: J.W. Brown and R.V. Churchill Complex Variables and Applications. McGraw Hill, 9th edition, 2013. (I did not use them)

Lecturer(s): Dr. Milan Pahor (Vector Calculus), Dr. Alessandro Ottazzi (Complex Analysis)

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019 T3

Difficulty: 3.3 /5

Overall Rating: 3.8/ 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75 DN (-1)

Comments:

Although this is nowhere near the marks than the rest of this thread, I will say I am extremely happy with this mark. Maybe it's because I'm now into the swing of things, but I did feel like I was able to understand the content far better than I did in either 1A or 1B.

That said, the format is very similar to 1A and 1B, where the only big difference is there is no coding side of 2A, and no weekly maple TA, and because of this, I feel like students get a better grasp of the course as a whole. The difficulty from 1A/1B to 2A seemed to be about the same in my experience, but the main factor that I found were the quality of the lecturers.

Milan Pahor is absolutely phenomenal, and it made the vector calculus part of the course an absolute blast! Content like triple integrals was made trivially easy with his lectures and his notes. Although he writes on the blackboard, so you have to attend, and he does not like computers open during lectures, none of this matters because of how well he teaches. He was by far the best lecturer I have had so far.

Alessandro Ottazzi was pretty mock standard. His lectures were taken directly from his slides, and he would verbally recap it. This meant that it was basically as sufficient to just read the slides in your own time and to skip the lecture. I wish he did more examples where he worked them out on paper, instead of skipping to the next slide because he was really good at those when he did do that.

For the content itself, complex analysis was definitely the harder half of the course, because it was difficult to understand what the hell you were doing and why. For example, computing the series expansions of analytic functions, memorising the basic case studies and properly manipulating them and calculating real improper and trigonometric integrals using complex analytic methods were all concepts that I found difficult to wrap my head around.
This was also the reason why I Vector Calculus much easier to do; a few of the concepts learnt included calculating basic line and surface integrals and applying the theorems of Green, Stokes and Gauss. Calculating basic double and triple integrals in Cartesian, polar and spherical coordinates, which all had a logical and clear explanation to why we'd want to use these.

Overall, this course was actually quite alright, and I'm super happy with the outcome. I can also definitely see some of these theories translating well into future mathematics and physics courses.
2018: UNSW B science (physics)/B education

Kicking myself into gear

HSC Physics Topics 1 & 2 Exam!

katie,rinos

  • Honorary Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *******
  • Posts: 1081
  • Respect: +1151
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #169 on: December 28, 2019, 09:48:15 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: EDST2002 - Professional Engagement

Contact Hours: 4-hour orientation at the beginning of the trimester. 15 days of 8:30-4 placement (normally 2 days per week).

Assumed Knowledge: None, prerequisites were all 1st-year courses and EDST2003

Assessment: 7x Forum posts on 7 key standards and 7 responses to other students posts. Hurdle task.

Lecture Recordings? No

Notes/Materials Available: None.

Textbook: None

Lecturer(s): N/A

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019 T3

Difficulty: 0.5 /5

Overall Rating: 3.5 /5

Your Mark/Grade: Satisfactory (SY) (No marks given)

Comments:

I was really excited and keen for this course and come out of it disappointed. It is 15 days of observation and in my case, I didn’t really end up doing a lot (especially at the start of the placement). This ended up getting really boring towards the end when I wanted to be able to take a small class. As this is only observation, you are able to be placed away from your method area: I was in TAS for the first two weeks mainly observing woodwork classes. I found it depended on which school you had been given on what you did as each of my friends had a different experience (and therefore things observed/able to do) during the course.

The communication and organisation of this course was minimal, delayed and sometimes confusing. We expected to know our schools during the holidays, except were only told in week 3. Apart from the 4 hour orientation lecture, we had hardly any communication with the uni.

This is a pass/fail course ad the assessments (blog posts) are based on the AITSL teaching standards. Most of the time, these were easy to write, however some of them were annoying specific (in one, we had to write down specific questions the teachers had asked).

Most of my experiences in the creative arts faculty were interesting. I was able to observe music, art, dance, and sport and see the different teaching styles. I also observed lunchtime music groups such as string ensemble, choir and rock bands, how the hall was set up for music/art events and how they organised excursions and assessments. I was able to see how the school was different to my own and that influenced the way subjects were taught. Most teachers were really helpful in explaining why they did certain things and how they organised the classroom. At times, I was asked to help such as getting the class to pack up but the year 8’s didn’t really listen to me, which was frustrating as I didn't have the skill or knowledge yet to effectively manage a class.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2019, 09:58:09 pm by katie,rinos »
Class of 2017 (Year 12): Advanced English, General Maths, Legal Studies, Music 1, Ancient History, History Extension, Hospitality
2018-2022: B Music/B Education (Secondary) [UNSW]

katie,rinos

  • Honorary Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *******
  • Posts: 1081
  • Respect: +1151
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #170 on: December 29, 2019, 09:37:26 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: Performance Lab B

Contact Hours: 1 1/2 hr studio per week, 2 hr ensemble wk, at least 1 out of 3 2hr masterclasses per term.

Assumed Knowledge: Performance Lab A, and enrolment in a music degree.

Assessment:  Ensemble contribution/part checking (occurred each term, 20% overall), Masterclass critiques (4, 1 must be done each term, 15%), Performance presentations (term 1 & 2, 35%), Performance exam (30%).

Lecture Recordings?  No

Notes/Materials Available:  No

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): Laura Chislett Jones

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019, T 1-3. This has become a year long course (12 doc).

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating:  2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 66 CR

Comments:
This course is run very similar to the first year performance lab courses: assessments are almost exactly the same, except expected to be at a slightly higher level. 

However, our year was the trial year of how this course would run with trimesters and there were some differences in how the course was structured: the main ones being studios every week, only having 1 exam per year and having a year long course. Due to this, some aspects weren’t organised well. At times, my lecturer didn’t know specific information about certain assessments/the exam which was a bit frustrating or info came out fairly late (we were reminded to bring scores to our exam the day beforehand).   

Studios at times felt random, unplanned and some didn’t really interest us (we spent a few weeks on the physics of our instruments which was just really confusing for me). Most weeks weren’t as engaging as I was hoping and I was bored halfway through studios. There wasn’t a set plan for the term so one term I felt like I was asked to play almost every week (while some people never played) and the next term I performed once.

I really enjoyed being a part of wind sympth but found it really difficult to get a high mark in part checking.

You are still given a subsidy for instrumental lessons: $60 per week for 8 weeks each term ($480). It doesn’t cover everything but is still really helpful.
Class of 2017 (Year 12): Advanced English, General Maths, Legal Studies, Music 1, Ancient History, History Extension, Hospitality
2018-2022: B Music/B Education (Secondary) [UNSW]

HelpICantThinkOfAName

  • Trailblazer
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Respect: +34
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #171 on: December 30, 2019, 12:42:22 am »
+5
Subject Code/Name: MATH2521 - Complex Analysis

Contact Hours:  4 hours of lectures each week. 1 Hour tutorial each week

Assumed Knowledge: MATH1231/1241/1251

Assessment:  10% Online Revision Quiz. This was essentially a free 10% quiz that could be repeated as many times as you wanted. No reason to not grind it for the full marks

2 x 20% Midterm Exams.

50% Final Exam, covering all material.

Lecture Recordings?  Yes. Some early recordings had no video, and the blackboard was often used.

Lecturer(s): David Angell, 4/5

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019/T3

Difficulty: 3.5/5

Overall Rating:  4/5

Your Mark/Grade: 76 DN

Comments: I found this to be the easiest second-year core mathematics subject, which I'm sure many of my fellow math majors will disagree with. I never felt like I was getting far behind in it, and much of the courses revolves around simplifying calculations and processes that were introduced in first-year mathematics. Overall an enjoyable and not super intense course.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2020, 04:26:42 pm by HelpICantThinkOfAName »
Studying Economics/Mathematics @ UNSW

HelpICantThinkOfAName

  • Trailblazer
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Respect: +34
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #172 on: December 30, 2019, 12:57:12 am »
+5
Subject Code/Name: MATH3511 - Transformations, Groups, and Geometry

Contact Hours:  4 hours of lectures each week. 1-hour tutorial each week

Assumed Knowledge: 12 units in a second-year mathematics course. I would strongly recommend one of those be Linear Algebra (MATH2501/2601), and take Complex Analysis (MATH2521/2621) before or at the same time. There is a lot of overlap between this course and Complex Analysis towards the end. Brush up on 3U circle geometry before beginning this course.

Assessment: 20% Midterm Exam

2 x 15% Assignments

50% Final Exam

Lecture Recordings?  Yes.

Notes/Materials Available:  Full set of notes are available on moodle

Lecturer(s): John Steele, 4/5. I enjoyed John lecturing this course much more than I enjoyed him lecturing several variable calculus earlier this year.

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019/T3

Difficulty: 2/5 Towards the start of the course. 4.5/5 By the end

Overall Rating:  5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 79 DN.

Comments:
This is a fascinating mixture of subjects, which all compliment each other well. The course begins with Triangle and Circle geometry, which introduces mostly new stuff than what was covered during high school, and goes much more in-depth with proofs, although these are (for the most part) not assessed. Menelaus' and Desargues' theorems formed a large component of this early work.
The transformations component is why I reccomend taking Linear Algebra and Complex Analysis before this course. Part of this topic revolved around matrix manipulation and understanding how a matrix can be used in a geometrical sense. Another part used linear fractional transformation, a topic covered in Complex Analysis. I found that understanding how compositions of transformations could result in another transformation was the key to success during this topic
I was never able to truly grasp the idea of a group in this course. I struggled with the notation, the calculations, and how groups functioned. This certainly dragged down my mark in the final exam and is why I gave it a high difficulty rating at the end of the course.

Overall this is still a great subject and was a lot of fun to take.
Studying Economics/Mathematics @ UNSW

HelpICantThinkOfAName

  • Trailblazer
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Respect: +34
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #173 on: April 16, 2020, 09:05:33 pm »
+7
Let's kick this off for 2020

Subject Code/Name: ECON3202 - Mathematical Economics

Contact Hours:  2 x 1.5 hour lectures per week. 1 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week.

Assumed Knowledge: ECON1202. I recommend taking this after taking ECON1203, or if you have taken at least MATH1231.

Assessment:  10% Class Participation. Mostly a video submission of you doing one of the optional homework problems. The lecturer also gave out marks for answering and asking questions, or for correcting typos in the lecture slides.

7 x 5% Homework Assignments. There weren't any problems that took more than 5-10 minutes of thinking. Most of them were 3-4 pages. Easiest 35% I've ever gotten.

55% Final Exam. This was much harder than any material that we were given, but since it was a 24-hour take-home exam, it likely was not indicative of what the final exam in future years will be. Very few people that I've spoken to were able to completely finish it and feel confident in their answers.

Lecture Recordings?  Yes.

Notes/Materials Available:  Full slides given out. Slides were mostly complete but lacked examples that were done in lectures.

Textbook: Mathematical appendix from Jehle and Reny's Advanced Microeconomic Theory. This is a solid resource, but I only used it a few times.

I'd recommend using Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis instead. Many of the proofs in this course can be found in detail in this textbook. If you're studying mathematics this should be a standard real analysis textbook as well.

Lecturer: Juan Carlos (JC) Carbajal, 5/5. JC is a love/hate lecturer for some. But everyone I knew who took this course loved him, including me. Not quite Alberto levels of chill, but certainly up there for this course.

Tutor: Jonathan Nathan, 4/5. Jonathan is a great tutor and is great at explaining how to approach the proofs found in the course.

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020/T1

Difficulty: 0/5. As a math major, I'd already covered most of the material found in this course in first and second-year math. The homework assignment averages were around a 4-4.5/5, and I suspect that the average mark for this course will end up being a distinction

Overall Rating:  5/5. If you've already done MATH1231 then it won't be hard at all to ace this course.

Your Mark/Grade: HD

Comments:
This should be a math major's gen-ed of choice.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2020, 10:52:17 am by HelpICantThinkOfAName »
Studying Economics/Mathematics @ UNSW

RuiAce

  • ATAR Notes Lecturer
  • Honorary Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *******
  • Posts: 8814
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  • Respect: +2575
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #174 on: April 24, 2020, 11:49:41 am »
+10
Subject Code/Name: MATH3901 - Higher Probability and Stochastic Processes
Equivalent postgraduate variant: MATH5901. Note that this was introduced the year after I took this course.

Contact Hours: 2 x 2hr lectures, 1hr tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: For the higher version,
- MATH2901 or DN in MATH2801
- MATH2501 or MATH2601
- MATH2011 or MATH2111
(Essentially all the core level 2's. No linear models is required. You should definitely know your MATH2901 before coming here - it is retaught but crash coursed and pretty much assumed all the way. I think calculus is more useful than linear algebra for this course though.)

Assessment:
- 2 x 7.5% class tests (question bank given, randomly question selected to complete in TEN minutes)
- 25% midsession test (one-sided A4 cheat sheet allowed)
- 60% final exam (two-sided A4 cheat sheet allowed)

Lecture Recordings? Yes, however prior to COVID-19 he also used the whiteboard, which is obviously not recorded.

Notes/Materials Available: Full lecture slides given at the start of the lecture. Pretty much all you need to learn the course. An abundance of midsession and final past papers are provided but with NO ANSWERS.

Textbook: "An Introduction to Probability Models" by Sheldon Ross (8ED, 9ED and 10ED all work). The course was written off this textbook so it should be useful, but I haven't had need for it.

Lecturer(s): Dr. Gery Geenens.

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T1

Difficulty: 4.5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: SY (will never find out what I truly got :( )

Comments:
This is one of the Level 3 core courses to students pursuing a statistics major.

Among the three cores, I personally believe this is the hardest of the lot. MATH3821 gets its difficulty from having too much content. This course is about probability theory, and that's not something you can simply overcome with memorisation.

This course is pretty popular among mathematics students as a whole due to the fact that MATH2931 is not a prerequisite and that it's really just a probability course, not statistics. Part of this is influenced by the fact that many people genuinely enjoy the first half of MATH2901, and drop off in the second. Mastery of this course can be extremely useful in the short term, because the strengthened intuition in probability can help useful in trading interviews, where probability based questions resurface more than you might expect.

Stochastic processes are just useful in general for people who want to work with the market. A simple summary: a stochastic process is just a sequence of random variables measured over time (can be both discrete time and continuous time).

Assessment tasks are definitely more challenging in this course, compared to its sister course MATH3911. Although most questions are doable, every past paper I've seen seems to introduce a completely unrelated question to that of the previous paper. They all use the same techniques, but the question style appears foreign.

For the class tests, the questions are the same. The difference is that he changes the letters in the actual test. (Or for MATH3801, he might change a number instead.) Figure out a way to write it as quickly as you can, but not too quickly that you'd struggle with different letters/numbers. Some explanation skipping is okay, just not too much.

Also, after studying for the finals, I would advise being careful with Brownian motion. It's also a really interesting concept to learn about, but it can take a while to understand because it's so far to the end and is fairly different to the stochastic processes you see before it.

(The difficulty would've been 4/5, but it jumped to 4.5/5 after I saw the challenge of this year's midsession. It was a pretty spiked paper to offset that we had all the lecture notes available, and not just the cheat sheet.) Edit: I'm convinced 4.5/5 was the right choice now after studying for finals.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2021, 10:29:53 pm by RuiAce »

RuiAce

  • ATAR Notes Lecturer
  • Honorary Moderator
  • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes
  • *******
  • Posts: 8814
  • "All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  • Respect: +2575
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #175 on: April 24, 2020, 12:23:06 pm »
+11
Subject Code/Name: COMP3231 - Operating Systems
Equivalent postgraduate variant: COMP9201

Contact Hours: 2 x 2hr lectures, 1hr tutorial. (Note that for COMP3891, the extended lecture completely replaces the tutorial.)

Assumed Knowledge: (COMP1521 or COMP2121) and COMP2521. (The former pair can be subbed for DPST1092 or ELEC2142, and the latter can as always be subbed out for COMP1927.)

Assessment:
Course mark is calculated as a weighted geometric mean here. Let \(C\) be your class mark and \(E\) be your exam mark.
The class mark is comprised of:
- Assignment 0 - contributes 10 marks to \(C\), by yourself
- Assignment 1 - contributes 30 marks to \(C\), by yourself
- Assignment 2 - contributes 30 marks to \(C\), in pairs
- Assignment 3 - contributes 30 marks to \(C\), in pairs
There are also bonus marks available for early submissions, and for doing the advanced components.
The exam mark is just your final mark in the exam. Note that there is NEGATIVE MARKING for multiple choice type questions. (This includes true/false.)
The final mark is calculated by the formula \( M = e^{\frac{40\ln C + 60 \ln E}{100}} \). (So the weightings are roughly 40 to 60 between \(C\) and \(E\).) It only hits you hard if your class/exam marks are disproportionate from one another.

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Slides, tutorial problems, and recordings are all uploaded onto the course website. There is also a wiki page for students taking this course, which has some miscellaneous tips on setup and the assignments. A piazza forum is also maintained for this course.

Textbook: A. Tannenbaum and H. Bos, Modern Operating Systems, 4ED. Never used it so cannot comment.

Lecturer(s): A/Prof. Kevin Elphinstone

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T1

Difficulty: 4/5 (for me, but tbh provided you put more effort in it should be a 2.5/5. Can't say the same for extended OS though.)

Overall Rating: 4/5

Your Mark/Grade: SY (apparently would've been 97 HD)

Comments:
This is one of the many level 3+ electives for UNSW CSE degrees. For the embedded systems major in computer science, it's one of the prescribed electives.

This course is genuinely popular. Although I believe this course is a little overhyped, it deserves hype without a doubt. This is the course that REALLY starts teaching you about how the computer works, and really helps develop an appreciation for all the things you take for granted on your device. You can pretty much see the course coverage on the Lectures tab in the website (but note that you have to be enrolled to get access to recordings). It's precursor course COMP1521 might not be needed, but is extremely valuable. In fact, these words from the assignment should literally be ringing COMP1521 bells: locks and semaphores, file systems, virtual memory. I would recommended to do this course as quickly as possible after COMP1521, but it's not mandatory to.

You use OS161 in this course, which is a relatively small-scale OS (compared to Linux, Windows, ...). But it's still a couple tens of thousands of lines of code, and you won't have the time to work with all of it. The assignments are tailored to implementing additional features on top of what is already featured in the codebase.

The rule of "planning things out before you code" is perhaps more important than ever to code. It's very easy to get entangled in your code and lose track of what direction you're heading.

It's also stupidly easy to make fatal bugs in this course. For example, back in COMP2521, if you had a memory leak the computer would probably fix it for you. (Reason being that Linux and Windows already know how to.) But if you forget something like a kfree() to a kmalloc() in OS, you pretty much lose the memory forever and break your system for good. (Well, it's fixable, but it's an excruciating pain to fix OS's damaged like this.)

The extended version COMP3891 should appeal to everyone that has a strong, genuine interest in this course. But it's follow-up course COMP9242 is... ahahahahahaha. (But if you loved COMP3231/COMP3891 a lot, you should probably give it a shot.)
« Last Edit: May 21, 2020, 10:37:31 pm by RuiAce »

Opengangs

  • New South Welsh
  • Forum Leader
  • ****
  • Posts: 718
  • \(\mathbb{O}_\mathbb{G}\)
  • Respect: +480
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #176 on: April 26, 2020, 09:24:33 pm »
+10
Subject Code/Name: COMP3411/COMP9814 - Aritificial Intelligence

Contact Hours: 5 hours.
- 2x 2 hour lectures.
- 1x 1 hour tutorial.

Assumed Knowledge:
COMP3411:
Prerequisite is COMP2521 or COMP9024.

COMP9814:
Prerequisite is COMP9024.

Assessment:
The assessment structure before COVID-19 hit was:
- 2 assignments followed by a final exam.

During the 20T1 session, COMP3411 had 3 assignments, each of which was weighted 33% of the final grade.

Lecture Recordings?
Yep.

Notes/Materials Available:
Mainly lecture notes and other readings on the textbooks located below; otherwise, lecture recordings were sufficient. Tutorial problems were theoretical by nature with very few problems being coding-related. The coding-related problems were mainly Prolog.

Textbook:
None prescribed, but recommended reading for the course is:
- David L. Poole and Alan K. Mackworth Artificial Intelligence: Foundations of Computational Agents , 2nd Edition. [print] [digital]

Other textbooks that may prove useful:
- Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach, 3th Ed., Prentice Hall, 2010.
- Nils J. Nilsson, Artificial Intelligence: a New Synthesis, Morgan Kaufmann, 1998, ISBN 1-55860-467-7.
- Ivan Bratko, Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence, 4th Edition, Pearson, 2013.

Lecturer(s): Claude Sammut.

Year & Trimester of completion: 20T1

Difficulty: 2/5.
Wasn't difficult; there weren't many theoretical problems throughout the term. The most difficult aspect of the course was getting used to coding in Prolog, which has very different syntax to what a student coming out of COMP2521 may feel.

Overall Rating: 3/5.

Your Mark/Grade: SY (cut that it's only SY/FL ;-;)

Comments:
For what it was worth, COMP3411 was a very enjoyable with very little commitment throughout the term. It is required by all computer science students specialising in Artificial Intelligence and I felt as though Claude did the best he could out of this situation with transitioning into online teaching.

He was very considerate and often asked the students what they wanted out of the course; the course itself, though, felt a bit dry as it felt like a brief overview of the main concepts found within Artificial Intelligence.

One of the big components within the course is the use of Prolog (logic in programming) which felt very different to any other languages such as C, Python and Java. This was one of the more difficult aspects of the course as 2 big assignments hinged on the programming of Prolog. Claude taught it well enough to understand how one may approach the first assignment (as of writing).

Overall, I liked the course and wanted it to be graded but alas, that could not be done as per the Faculty of Engineering's decision to make every course SY/FL for the term. It's a shame, because this was a decent course.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2020, 11:22:56 pm by Opengangs »

HelpICantThinkOfAName

  • Trailblazer
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • Respect: +34
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #177 on: April 27, 2020, 04:39:06 pm »
+11
Subject Code/Name: ECON2112 - Game Theory and Business Strategy

Contact Hours:  2 x 1.5 hour lectures per week. 1 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week.

Assumed Knowledge: ECON1101 AND (ECON1202, MATH1031, MATH1131, MATH1141 or MATH1151)

Assessment:  3 x 5% and 3 x 8.33% homework assignments. Questions were relatively easy to solve, but some were very poorly worded.

60% Final Exam. Same issue as before, with questions being poorly worded at times. The final exam required more abstract application of earlier topics than was covered in the homework assignments.

Lecture Recordings?  Yes.

Notes/Materials Available:  Full slides given out.

Textbook: Gibbons' Game Theory for Applied Economists

Lecturer: DJ Thornton, 5/5.
Aleksandra (Sasha) Balyanova 3/5. If she had slowed down just a tad and went through more complete examples during lectures she would've gotten a 4 or 5/5.

Tutor: Chris Teh, 5/5. Great at encouraging participation and clearly explained all the problems that we had.

Year & Trimester of completion: 2020/T1

Difficulty: 1/5 at the start, 3/5 at the end. The second half of the course covers Bayesian Nash Equilibrium, which I felt was rushed and poorly explained. This is also an issue that most students experienced in previous years.

Overall Rating:  4/5.

Your Mark/Grade: 88 HD

Comments:
This course only really relies on a few tools techniques that get used and refined over and over again. As long as you understand the content in the first 3 weeks, you should be well prepared to deal with the second half of the course.

I suspect that some scaling with the final exam took place, as I don't feel like I earned my final grade after having taken that final.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2020, 05:29:05 pm by HelpICantThinkOfAName »
Studying Economics/Mathematics @ UNSW

owidjaja

  • National Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1315
  • Bibliophile. Stationery addict.
  • Respect: +1010
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #178 on: April 29, 2020, 05:33:34 pm »
+11
Subject Code/Name: MMAN2130 - Design and Manufacturing

Contact Hours: 1 x 2 hour lectures per week, 1 x 1.5 hour labs per week, 1 x 4 hour TAFE class per week

Assumed Knowledge: N/A

Assessment:
25% - Engineering Drawing & Manufacturability Review
10% - 3 CAD Tests
35% - Final Report
10% - Prototype pump completion & operation
20% - TAFE assessments (basically each week you need to finish making whatever piece you need to make and give you a mark out of 100 each week and you get an average mark)

Lecture Recordings? No.

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides and CAD guides are on Moodle. Machinery guides are supplied by TAFE instructors via hard copy.

Textbook: Material Selection in Mechanical Design, Ashby, M., Elsevier
I actually used this for the final report because the final report requires you to explain your reasoning for selecting the ideal material/manufacturing process and Ashby basically covers the steps for this (and it's good to throw in the diagram into the report). But you don't have to purchase the book because the e-book is available for free at UNSW library.

Lecturer(s): Corey Martin

Year & Trimester of completion: 2019 T3

Difficulty: 2/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Comments:
This course is for anyone who's doing a degree from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. I would describe this course to be ENGG1000 but with more effort and they actually teach you real engineering skills. You get to learn how to use CAD (specifically SolidWorks), you get to operate heavy machinery and you learn about different manufacturing processes and materials.

It's a unique course because you go to TAFE to learn how to operate machinery such as mills, lathes and drill presses. This is probably one of the only times you actually get hands-on experience. I will say, it's very exhausting. Pro tip: it would be highly beneficial if you put your TAFE class in the afternoon because if you put your TAFE class in the evening (like me) you finish at 9pm and by that point, you're completely exhausted, you're walking around the city late at night (which is scary for me) and you're hungry (you're given 30 minutes during the 4 hours to have a bit of a break). It definitely sucks more if you live far away from uni. In fact, I arrived home at 11pm every Monday because of those night classes. Even though it's really tiring, it's still cool to be able to develop hands-on experience with machinery, which really helps you understand different manufacturing processes.

This course also teaches you how to use CAD. To any engineering students who bought Macbooks instead of a laptop that uses a Windows system, you're screwed lol. SolidWorks is only compatible on Windows, so your options are either download Windows onto Macbook (which you can do through bootcamp - it's free!) or spend countless hours in Ainsworth 203/204. I did both. Regardless which laptop you use, SolidWorks uses up so much power because it's such an intense software so whenever you run it, it ALWAYS lags. Lag also happens when you're using a computer in Ainsworth, which is why your lab demos always tell you to save!

Speaking of lab demos, your CAD tests are probably initially stressful but by the time you're doing your last CAD test, it's not too bad. The first one always sucks because you're given 40 minutes to make an engineering part, which is difficult because you've only spent around 3 weeks using the software so you're still inexperienced. On top of that, 40 minutes is not enough time to complete the test. However, the next two tests (which is on Engineering Drawings and Parts and Assemblies) aren't too bad. Pro tip: it's better to over-dimension than under-dimension. If you over-dimension, you lose 1 or 2 marks, but if you under-dimension, you can lose up to 10 marks (in the assignment, you can lose up to 25 marks for under-dimensioning). While I found these tests stressful, they are worth 10% overall so it's not too bad in the end.

Finally, this is a group assignment, which means that you should make sure that all your group members are doing the tasks. If they're not, report to a lab demo because they can give you due date extensions (within reason of course). And because these assignments really emphasise on group work, you can't just completely reject your teammates. The final report is kinda long, everyone needs to contribute in terms of manufacturing the part and designing the pump parts so make sure you communicate!
« Last Edit: April 29, 2020, 06:12:57 pm by owidjaja »
2018 HSC: English Advanced | Mathematics | Physics | Modern History | History Extension | Society and Culture | Studies of Religion I

ATAR: 93.60

2019: Aerospace Engineering (Hons)  @ UNSW

owidjaja

  • National Moderator
  • Part of the furniture
  • *****
  • Posts: 1315
  • Bibliophile. Stationery addict.
  • Respect: +1010
Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #179 on: April 29, 2020, 10:24:13 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: ENGG1300 - Engineering Mechanics

Contact Hours: 2 x 2 hour lectures per week, 1 x 2 hour tutorials per week

Assumed Knowledge: MATH1131, PHYS1121

Assessment:
27% - 3 x Block Tests
18% - Weekly Quiz + Weekly Tutorials
10% - 2 x Lab Reports
45% - Final Exam

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: They give you a spiral bounded tutorial booklet and video solutions for all homework problems. Towards the end of the term, they give you a customised study pack based on your weekly quiz and block test marks to help you study for areas you struggle with the most.

Textbook: Meriam J.L., Kraige L.G. Engineering Mechanics
No need to buy it because you can easily find the whole textbook online.

Lecturer(s): David Kellermann

Year & Trimester of completion: T3 2019

Difficulty: 4/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Comments:
There are two streams available for ENGG1300: civil or mechanical stream. I did the mechanical stream and boy it was hard. The mech stream tends to be harder because we cover dynamics, which is probably the most difficult part of the course. The whole course is a mix of the mechanics section of PHYS1121 and the vector component of MATH1131, especially when looking at statics. However, I would highly recommend anyone doing mechanical engineering to take the mech stream because ENGG2400 will build on top of the mech stream of ENGG1300.

Another good thing about doing the mech stream, specifically with Kellermann, is that you get free marks by doing tutorial problems. It doesn't matter if you get them wrong but if you attempt all the problems, you get 1 mark (that's where the tutorial problems in the 18% comes from). I don't think you do this if you take the civil stream, so this is a good system to take advantage of. Another thing to take advantage of is the lab reports. These are easy marks! They basically give you a template and you write the parts you need to complete. It's not worth much but it's still good to take advantage of.

The block test is a good indication on what the final exam looks like. The good thing about these exams and tests is that it's one question per topic, meaning that there will be 9 questions altogether in the final exam (there will be 3 questions in each block test). They are difficult though. You're given 45 minutes to do 3 questions, and these questions take a while to do.

Also, unlike other courses, ENGG1300 uses Microsoft Teams instead of Moodle. We still use Moodle but all the resources are on Microsoft Teams. This is mainly because Kellermann works very closely with Microsoft but he's also made a bot where if you use the tag "question" the bot will automatically tag your tutors.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2020, 10:26:49 pm by owidjaja »
2018 HSC: English Advanced | Mathematics | Physics | Modern History | History Extension | Society and Culture | Studies of Religion I

ATAR: 93.60

2019: Aerospace Engineering (Hons)  @ UNSW