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#### jamonwindeyer

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #30 on: August 20, 2017, 06:31:43 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ELEC3104 - Digital Signal Processing

Contact Hours: 3 hours lecture, 3 hours lab

Assumed Knowledge: ELEC2134 (particularly the part of the course on transform methods), as well as a variety of techniques from 1st and 2nd year maths courses

Assessment:  50% Final Exam, 10% Labs, 15% Assignment, 25% Prokect

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials AvailableComplete online video course

Textbook: S. K. Mitra, Digital Signal Processing, McGraw-Hill, 2011. Explains stuff well, good buy if you are planning to do later courses in DSP.

Lecturer(s): Dr Vidhyasaharan Sethu

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/1

Difficulty: 4 out of 5

Overall Rating: 5/5

Comments: This is the first course in Digital Signal Processing that you can take, and it's a prereq for all the 4th year DSP courses.

This is a really, really interesting course, and if you put the work in super enjoyable! Project is fun and lets you do as much as you can handle (you can do a little bit and pass easily, or do a heap of work to try and scape out the full mark). Labs are really long but good, overall - Wish they'd do more to teach you the sorts of questions you'd get in the final though. Lecturer is good, explains stuff well, but could really do with some slides/notes to guide his explanations. Hard to know what the important stuff is sometimes - Very few lecturers can get away with just scribbling on a document camera for 2 hours and he probably isn't one of them. That said, put a bit of work in yourself and he'll give you the ins and outs nicely

This is a mandatory course for Electrical Engineers, and it's a good one. Get ready for lots and lots and LOTS of coding in Matlab (it is criminal that they don't really have you do much properly with it until this point)

#### jamonwindeyer

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #31 on: September 18, 2017, 04:18:19 pm »
+4
Subject Code/Name: ELEC3106 - Electronics

Contact Hours: 3 hours lecture, 2 hour lab, 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: 2133 - Analogue Electronics, but that's not super essential. Circuit knowledge from 2134 is probably enough to scrape by. Also need knowledge of logic circuits from 2141.

Assessment: 10% labs, 10% lab design task, 10% quizzes, 70% final

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials Available: Not a whole lot, but the lecturer provides quite a lot!

Textbook: A. S. Sedra & K. C. Smith, Microelectronic Circuits. Oxford University Press, 6th ed., 2011.

Lecturer(s): Torsten Lehmann

Year & Semester of completion: 2017-1

Difficulty: 4 out of 5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

This is probably one of the most interesting courses I've done in terms of what was covered - It's all about why the theoretical stuff you've learned to this point kind of goes to shit in practical applications. It's real world stuff and Torsten teaches it so well. It's the style of teaching you want - He literally just teaches with a pen and paper, and while it demands you to make sure you've done a bit of reading/know what's vaguely happening, if you do that his teaching style rewards you. Super cool.

What lets this course down, for me, is the labs. My demos weren't great, I don't think the structure of them with the reports really facilitated much additional understanding. Just felt like a slog. Plus I got buggy chips that screwed my final design task -

Overall, really cool course though. Challenging, but rewarding
« Last Edit: September 18, 2017, 04:23:45 pm by jamonwindeyer »

#### RuiAce

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #32 on: November 30, 2017, 10:42:55 pm »
+8
Subject Code/Name: MATH2621 - Higher Complex Analysis

Contact Hours: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: The formal prerequisite is a mark of 70 in one of MATH1231/MATH1241/MATH1251. However, a "lecture 0" is provided as revision and is essentially sufficient as a basis for the course.

Assessment: 2 x 45 minute quizzes (each weighted 20%), final exam weighted 60%

Lecture Recordings? Yes, but in saying that you miss out on anything drawn on the blackboard

Notes/Materials Available: Extremely comprehensive lecture notes provided, accompanied with lecture slides. Quite an abundance of past quizzes and exams.

Textbook: Nil

Lecturer(s): Dr Alessandro Ottazzi, Dr Michael Cowling

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating: 4/5

Comments: This course serves as compulsory for two of the primary mathematics majors, and one viable choice out of two for the statistics major (the other being MATH2221). For the most part it was brilliant; everything about the maths in this course was fun. (This is also what draws students majoring in statistics to this course over MATH2221.) It is the higher counterpart of MATH2521.

This course, much like the first semester courses, is a continuation of what's been taught in MATH1231/41/51. Simply put, the first year math courses teach the algebra of complex numbers, whereas this course teaches the calculus of complex numbers. Many proofs in this course are examinable, but have the luxury in that you can figure them out on the spot, so long as you know all the basic ingredients.

The lecturers are very funny and keep you engaged decently well. In particular, Dr Michael Cowling drops hints on what might be in the exam, based off previous years. It still ended up being a bit of a bomb though with more twisted questions this year, but for the most part it is fairly relaxed. (In fact, if the final exam didn't drop the bombs, the difficulty would've only been 1.5/5)

The course really depicts how different and surprisingly beautiful the adapting of calculus to complex numbers can be. Many things that hold for real analysis are broken when taken to complex numbers, but more powerful results are derived.

Note that this course is the expansion of the former course MATH2620 (3 UoC), and was first taught in 2014.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2017, 10:59:36 pm by RuiAce »

#### RuiAce

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #33 on: November 30, 2017, 11:25:50 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: MATH2701 - Abstract Algebra and Fundamental Analysis

Contact Hours: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: The formal prerequisite is a CR in MATH1231/MATH1241/MATH1251 or enrolment in Science (Adv Maths) or Adv Science, but you really should have a bare minimum of DN in MATH1241/MATH1251 if you are considering this course.

Assessment:
- Analysis half: 5 x small assignments (each weighted 2%), can collaborate with your peers and the internet on how to do the problems. 1 take-home test
(weighted 15%), must be done alone.
- Algebra half: A mixture of 10 minute quizzes and assignments (combined weighting of 25%)
- Final exam weighted 50%

Lecture Recordings? No

Notes/Materials Available: Analysis half - Decently comprehensive lecture notes provided. Algebra half - The lecturer provides his notes, but they are hand-written and often hard to read. Notes written by a student also published but they are very brief. A few past papers provided; some more obtained through the lecturer.

Textbook: Nil

Lecturer(s): Dr Lee Zhao, Dr Jie Du

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 5/5 - This course's difficulty is well beyond any other math course in the first two years.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Comments: This course is generally regarded as the pure mathematics "trademark" course. It is what distinguishes this major for the rest. It forms the bridge between the mostly computational nature of first year courses, and the extent of proof in the later pure courses. As implied multiple times above, it is divided into an analysis half, and an algebra half.

Analysis is the formalisation and extension of every idea used in modern calculus, whereas 'algebra' is the exploration of various structures that build and are used in mathematics. They generally involve quite different ways of mathematical thinking, but form the two main blocks (and debatably, pathways) of a pure mathematician.

Analysis is just intense by nature, but was something that I found quite neat and challenging. It is common to just spend hours at a problem and not get anywhere, and at the same time it's always a huge excitement when you figure it out. This half encourages you to draw upon ANYTHING you've been previously exposed to, and produce neat results out of it. Some topics include the big 'O' notation, inequalities and p-adic analysis.

The structures of abstract algebra are mostly groups and fields. Group theory is used in this section but to a small extent; the course's name feels like a misnomer as it's mostly focused on geometries (including projective geometry and transformations). Unfortunately, it really didn't work well with me for several months; I only managed to figure everything out at the end after receiving a lot of help. (There may have been other factors influencing this problem.)

Given the nature of pure mathematics, a bridge between first and third year is certainly necessary and this course serves that purpose quite well. However, whilst it may be easier than what's to follow, the content you learn can be a huge shock, hence the significantly lower candidature for the course. Most people do well in this course, but it's usually because they're just that capable.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 09:22:24 am by RuiAce »

#### MLov

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #34 on: December 01, 2017, 12:19:49 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ACTL2102 Foundations of Actuarial Models

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

Assumed Knowledge:  Prerequisite:ACTL2131 or MATH2901 and (enrolment in 3154, 3155, 3586, 3587, 3588, 3589 or 4737)

Assessment:
- Mid semester exam weighted 20%
- Group Assignment 20% (16% report + R codes, 4% reflection + peer reviews)
- Final exam weighted 60%

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials Available: N/A

Textbook: Ross, 'Introduction to Probability Models'

Lecturer(s): JK Woo

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 2.5/5

Overall Rating:  4.5/5

Comments: This course is regarded as one of the easiest ACTL courrses. It does not require a lot of knowledge in finance, and as the name suggest it has a lot of statistic components. The course can be broken down into two main components, Markov Process and Time Series. However, this course does need some knowledge about computing, as you will learn how to simulate different kinds of distributions (e.g. non-homogenous poisson, exponential, normal etc.) and implement them on R.

The application of Markov process should be the hardest component of this course, it requires you to have a strong understanding about the properties of Markov process and teaches you the necessity to consider every factor in your calculations(which is hard) like all other ACTL courses.

Overall, the course will be like a pleasant break after your suffering in ACTL2131 and 2111.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2017, 12:24:01 pm by MLov »

#### MLov

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #35 on: December 01, 2017, 09:44:22 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: MATH2931 - Higher Linear Models

Contact Hours: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial-laboratory (alternating every week)

Assumed Knowledge:
- Prerequisite: MATH2901 or MATH2801(DN)
- Not prerequisite: MATH2601 or MATH2501 but treated as assumed knowledge throughout the course

Assessment:
- 3 x group assessments, each worth 10%
- Final exam weighted 70%

Lecture Recordings? yes

Notes/Materials Available:  N/A

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): Dr. Libo Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 2.5/5

Overall Rating:  3/5

Comments: This course together with MATH2901 can be used to replace ACTL2131.

The course is pretty dry. It starts off with simple linear models, and then expands to take into considerations of higher dimensions and other factors such as non-normally distributed errors and non-constant variance. More than half of the course is implementing R outputs and "understanding the philosophy" behind them.

(Prepare yourself for all kind of hypothesis testing!)

Other half of the course is proofs. The proofs are mainly linear algebra (and some vector/matrix calculus).

(Now please take a moment of silence for those who enrolled in MATH2931 without learning MATH2601/2501)

Overall the course is relaxing and not time consuming as there isn't too much content, but you can easily lose motivation. Just lay back and listen to Libo's wonderful voice

#### MLov

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #36 on: December 02, 2017, 12:04:55 pm »
+6
Subject Code/Name: ECON1102 - Macroeconomics 1

Contact Hours: 1 x 2 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: Prerequisite: ECON1101

Assessment:
- In game quiz weighted 10%
- Class quiz weighted 10%
- Mid semester exam weighted 20%
- Final exam weighted 60%

Lecture Recordings? yes

Notes/Materials Available: Macroeconomic notes are all over the internet

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): There are multiple streams, and multiple lecturers

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 1.5/5

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Comments: If you think this would be the same as ECON1101, you have came to the wrong place.

This course talks about the economic system from an aggregated scale and introduces how government and central bank influences our economic system. Instead of analysing the behaviour of a single agent, you will be taught how the entire population responds to events like change in price, inflation and policies under specific assumptions.

This course requires much more mathematic computations and interpretations than ECON1101. The mathematics uesd in this course are very simple (you are not expected to know why those formula works, they are further explained, in greater depth, in later courses). However, there are quite a lot formulas you need to memorise.

You need to get your head around the ripple effect: how multiple events affect each other (you are recommended to construct a network of the relationships between each event, e.g. government buy bonds -> more money supply -> higher inflation -> weaker currency wrt foreign currency -> less import -> ...  ) and the beauty of equilibrium.

(Also you will know much more about what the economist are talking about on tv)

Overall, it is a really fun and relaxing course and give you a macroscopic view of our world. It is slightly drier than ECON1101 (less games, more theories) but more relevant to the real world.

Side note: they are currently building a game just like playeconomics for this course.

#### RuiAce

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #37 on: December 04, 2017, 09:38:03 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: MATH2931 - Higher Linear Models

Contact Hours: 3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial

Assumed Knowledge: MATH2901 is a prerequisite. For this course, some elements from MATH2501/MATH2601 are implicitly assumed (although not explicitly examined).

Assessment: 3 x Assignments (10% each), finals weighted 55%.

Lecture Recordings? Yes, but you miss quite a fair bit of what's done on the blackboard.

Notes/Materials Available: As with MATH2901, Libo releases his lecture notes.

Textbook: N/A

Lecturer(s): Dr Libo Li

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 2/5

Overall Rating: 2.5/5

Comments: This course is basically the continuation of MATH2901 and essential to any statistics major student. It takes the concepts of statistical inference introduced in its predecessor and essentially seeks to introduce basic model fitting and analysis. Much of the content in this course revolves around R; you are not required to write R code but you will need to interpret given code in assignments and in the exam.

For me, this course felt significantly more dry and bland than its precursor. The first half of the course introduces all the essentials to model fitting and the concepts behind it, but it gradually turns into just grind and rote. It becomes more memorisation in the later half, and whereas the proofs are decent they start becoming very convoluted. It's more or less about how to fit a model that does whatever it does, and just what deductions you can make out of it. You also need to know the uses of various forms of measure (e.g. Mallow's Cp and the PRESS statistic for goodness of fit).

This course would've been rated a 1/5, but every course is made better by the presence of Libo and that can't be denied.

I don't regard this as a difficult mark despite getting a considerably lower mark in it than MATH2901. I just find it a lot less interesting.

It should be remarked again that linear algebra (MATH2501 OR MATH2601) is not a prerequisite for this course. Linear algebra is just an aid used for the proofs in this course. Remember that MATH2931 assumes MATH2901, WHICH assumes MATH1231/41/51, so elementary linear algebra concepts should not be foreign. Stuff like spectral decomposition, may, however, be a bit unfamiliar.

Note: The lectures for this course are combined with its ordinary counterpart MATH2831. This is due to the cohorts being appreciably smaller than that of MATH2801/MATH2901. MATH2831 students aren't expected to deal with much of the linear algebra components and have a few less things to memorise.

#### RuiAce

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #38 on: December 13, 2017, 02:03:04 pm »
+7
Subject Code/Name: COMP1511 - Introduction to Programming (later renamed to Programming Fundamentals)

Contact Hours: 2 x 2 hours of lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 2 hour lab

Assumed Knowledge: Nil. But the nature of computing courses is that ANY prior programming experience is recommended.

Assessment:
- 10% allocated to milestone writeups
- 5% allocated to labs
- 30% allocated across three assignments (weighted 5%, 10%, 15%)
- Final exam weighted 35% (30% for theory, 5% for practical)

Lecture Recordings? Yes

Notes/Materials Available: The materials they provide for the lectures, tutorials and labs are all you really need. (Well, and of course assignments.) Exam skeletons provided which reduce reading time required in the actual exam room. Fairly abundant in quantity.

Textbook: As implied above, not required

Lecturer(s): Andrew Bennett (occasionally substituted in by Jashank Jeremy)

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating:  3.5/5

This course is one of the new courses introduced as part of UNSW CSE's massive renovation. It is the second time it's been offered (first offering was last semester), and replaces the old course COMP1917. It is generally regarded as the more intense of the bundle for engineering students that need only 1 computing course for their degree (the alternatives being COMP1911 and ENGG1811).

This course introduces C, which is essentially one of the fundamental languages of the programming world. The focus isn't necessarily on just C syntax itself, but its applications in solving relatively simple problems. Attempting to design methods to solve these problems is generally the hard part, not necessarily the actual coding element.

Content wise, the course is brilliant. It pretty much introduces all the basics expected for an introductory course without overkilling it. Everything is introduced from scratch, which really reflects the "no assumed knowledge" statement. Math required is fairly minimal (no calculus and such for sure). Teaching staff were also very helpful and taught really well. The staff and the content itself basically make up the bulk of the rating given. The extra .5 comes out of interesting assignments (again, content wise).

The teaching staff did their best to cut down on this, which was definitely something I appreciated, but personally I just find blogs effort when I'm marked on them. So any bit of it damages it for me, but it doesn't really damage it enough to make me dislike the course. It was also nice seeing some increase in marks towards the end, regardless of the reasons behind it and how little there were.

A small remark I do want to make before talking about the cons - you can never really know if you'll like coding unless you give it a go. Some people really loved doing it (including me) and other's hated it. This is just because coding doesn't work well with many people's brains; it's a bit algorithmically intense to be fair, and hence why the difficulty rating was above 2/5. So if it's of some interest, give it a shot, and then abort it only when you actually know you really dislike it.

A surprisingly large amount of my marks seem to have fallen from style during the second half of the course. The style guide is something essential to the first course - I've seen outrageously disgusting code be written by some programmers and it just isn't legible. But the extent of its strictness felt too far in some regards (not EVERY regard), and it resulted in many marks going to waste.

As well as being uncertain of where my code was incorrect every now and then. Quite disappointingly, just one of the three assignments ended up drowning away all of my expectations for my results (the other two were really great).

So essentially, marks negatively bias my ratings (at least, when they are a cause of disappointment and not expected). But I maintain the relatively good quality of this course. Apart from a bomb thrown in the final practical exam, everything did feel quite easy for me. Any student capable enough should give this course a try.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2019, 08:19:41 pm by RuiAce »

#### jamonwindeyer

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##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews
« Reply #39 on: December 21, 2017, 10:26:11 pm »
+5
Subject Code/Name: ELEC3117 - Electrical Engineering Design

Contact Hours: 2 hours lecture (though none of them went for more than an hour or so), 3 hour labs

Assumed Knowledge: ELEC3106

Assessment: 40% on proposals and reports, 30% on final presentation, 5% attendance, 25% final exam

Lecture Recordings?  Yes

Notes/Materials Available: -

Textbook: Pretty much any textbook could be useful in this course depending on your project.

Lecturer(s): Dr Beena Ahmed, Dr Alex Von Brasch

Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3/5

Comments: So this is the course you take as a prerequisite for doing your Thesis in Year 4 - It's a big design project. You pick a partner, and you build a consumer product prototype. No real assistance, no restrictions.

The project itself is really difficult because, I don't care if you got 90+ scores in every electronics course so far, that doesn't teach you how to design something. You need to be able to program a microcontroller, design a PCB, do stuff that no course teaches you (and this course won't either). That's my biggest criticism of this course - It would be the chance to have industry professionals come in and teach you things you'll actually use, introduce actual industry software and methods to help with the projects. But nope, they waffle on about phases of design and let you figure out the important stuff on your own. Don't get me wrong, some of it is really good to know, but it falls so far short of the potential of a course like this.

Labs are well designed - A few really knowledgeable people are around to help you navigate issues in what is essentially free time for your projects (you need every 3 hour session, and so much more time at home, to get it right). I envy them - $50 an hour (or something) for doing mostly nothing assessments are fair, a couple of reports, a presentation and attendance are the things directly related to the project - Good practice on documenting things for industry. Then there is the Final Exam, which is based on the almost completely useless lecture content. Waffle your way through it and it shouldn't be too difficult, and it weighs nothing (compared to other exams) anyway. If you enjoy building and designing something from scratch that is yours (who wouldn't!), and you have a good partner, this course is fine. But it had the potential to be the best course they offered and instead it's just - Meh. « Last Edit: December 21, 2017, 10:29:33 pm by jamonwindeyer » #### jamonwindeyer • Honorary Moderator • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes • Posts: 10145 • The lurker from the north. • Respect: +3083 ##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews « Reply #40 on: December 21, 2017, 10:40:15 pm » +5 Subject Code/Name: ELEC3145 - Real Time Instrumentation Contact Hours: 2 hours lecture, 1 hour tutorial, 3 hours lab Assumed Knowledge: First year Mathematics, ELEC2141, and a fundamental programming course (COMP1511 or similar) Assessment: 10% lab checkpoints, 10% lab exam, 10% midsem, 10% assignment, 60% final exam Lecture Recordings? No Notes/Materials Available: - Textbook: None prescribed, anything on Real-Time systems could be useful. Your textbook for Control Systems could come in handy. Lecturer(s): Dr Branislav Hredzak Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2 Difficulty: 2/5 Overall Rating: 5/5 Your Mark/Grade: 92 HD Comments: This is a good course to take at the same time as Control Systems, because much of the content overlaps. I found the two courses nice to do in tandem because they expanded and played off each other - Made things easier to remember for me. The course is essentially in two halves - An analytical section focusing on the mathematics behind certain control systems, and then a programming section on how you actually code using a real-time kernel. The two don't overlap in any meaningful way, and the programming section is far more useful and interesting than the analytical section. The analytical section is not that difficult - The programming section is extremely easy if you are a decent programmer. Overall though, an interesting and enjoyable course. Branislav teaches it quite well - His style is always quiet but methodical, I've never gotten to the end of a segment of info and gone, "Wait, wtf did that mean." He knows his stuff, enjoyed his lecturing more here than in ELEC1111. The labs are fun, the exams are not difficult if you put a bit of work in. Overall, really good third year elective!! #### jamonwindeyer • Honorary Moderator • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes • Posts: 10145 • The lurker from the north. • Respect: +3083 ##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews « Reply #41 on: December 22, 2017, 12:32:52 pm » +5 Subject Code/Name: ELEC3105 - Electrical Energy Contact Hours: 3 hours lecture, 1 hour tutorial, 3 hours lab Assumed Knowledge: ELEC2134, ELEC3115 (particularly this second one is important) Assessment: 20% lab checkpoints, 2% online quizzes, 10% midsem, 8% assignment, 60% final exam Lecture Recordings? Yes Notes/Materials Available: - Textbook: None prescribed, a variety could come in handy as the topics do cover a fair few different disciplines of Elec Lecturer(s): Dr Rukmi Dutta Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2 Difficulty: 4/5 Overall Rating: 2/5 Your Mark/Grade: 88 HD Comments: Another semester, another course with Rukmi - Read any of my reviews above this one to get my opinions. She has still not ever done a full worked example in any of her lectures. Her explanations are, okay - But prepare for lots of work to make them actually relate to any realistic problem. Tutorials also handled by Rukmi, and she doesn't do worked examples there either. The content is interesting, I'll give it that. It's really fascinating to explore how our motors and generators actually operate, even exploring things like solar cells and thermal engines. It's cool - It's just taught in a really boring way. The labs are really good, though the instructional videos for it are laughably bad. Just give them a chance. This course normally has a huge fail rate - The quizzes and labs are fine, but the exams and assignment are brutal. However, someone must have been upset with so many people needing to repeat up above, because our final exam was the easiest exam for the course in years and years. So that was lucky. Not a highlight in the program, that's for sure #### jamonwindeyer • Honorary Moderator • Great Wonder of ATAR Notes • Posts: 10145 • The lurker from the north. • Respect: +3083 ##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews « Reply #42 on: December 22, 2017, 12:42:36 pm » +5 Subject Code/Name: ELEC3114 - Control Systems Contact Hours: 3 hours lecture, 3 hours lab, 1 hour tutorial Assumed Knowledge: ELEC2134, and second year mathematics Assessment: 4% quizzes, 12% labs, 30% midsem, 54% final exam Lecture Recordings? Yes Notes/Materials Available: Hendra provides a really great set of online video material, which is excellent Textbook: N. S. Nise, Control Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, 6th or 7th Edition, but they provide essential excerpts if necessary Lecturer(s): Dr Hendra Nurdin Year & Semester of completion: 2017/2 Difficulty: 5/5 Overall Rating: 3/5 Your Mark/Grade: 77 DN Comments: Control is probably the hardest course I've taken so far, but luckily I was warned how tough it was going in - Hopefully you are now as well. The content is really quite interesting, and Hendra teaches it decently well. Like Rukmi, some full worked examples on paper in front of us, and not just pointing at already derived results in sequence on a slide, would make things so much better. But anyway, he does a good job explaining things for the most part provided you are willing to work to fill in the connections to problems a wee bit. Tutorials in this course are amazing, if you get Arash (not that Hendra is bad I just didn't have him). He re-explains the theory as he does a single problem covering everything from the lecture that week - I had the tutorial right after the lecture, and my god did it help. There's a heap of extra problems given for later revision too. Labs were the let down for me in this course. There weren't enough demos, the demos we did have were not very good at all, and the links to our content were awkward at best and just non-existent at worst. Just a slog to me - If the labs were better I'd probably have a way better opinion of the course. Quizzes are fine, but tough. Big questions and the slightest mistake gives you zero, but they aren't worth much. Midsem and exam are tough but they have to be for a course like this - I didn't study anywhere near enough for our final though, it was tougher than the last few years It's a really tough course, but if you know that going in, it is manageable. Just grit your teeth, put up with the shitty labs, and get a heap of marks in the midsem because it is almost always easier #### Mechonics • Fresh Poster • Posts: 3 • Respect: +3 ##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews « Reply #43 on: January 11, 2018, 12:22:22 am » +4 Subject Code/Name: DATA1001 - Intro to Data Science and Decisions Contact Hours: A 2 hour lecture every Monday, and 2x one hour labs every week Assumed Knowledge: No formal prerequisites. But you will actually die if you don't know advanced statistics including things like Baye's Theorem, lots of probability theory, monte carlo methods etc. Assessment: 3x 15% assessments and a 55% final exam. Lecture Recordings? Yes Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides will be available on moodle. No other specific material that will help with the content. Textbook: N/A Lecturer(s): Three different lecturers for the three different parts (Business, Computing and Maths) Year & Semester of completion: 2017, sem 2 Difficulty: 4/5 Overall Rating: 1/5 Your Mark/Grade: 72 Comments: Not a very well designed course at all. Firstly, let's sort out the data science part. This course is not real data science, it is basically business intelligence and data analytics. Real data science involves machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence, which was not at all even mentioned in any aspect of the course. It was more related to SQL, business analytics and statistics etc. The ideal real data science course would have discussed ground-breaking advancements in AI such as deep learning, convolutional neural networks (and other types of neural networks), general AI, etc. Also, the mathematics section of the course had the cohort up in arms. The mathematics lecturer had a PhD in statistics and the content was extremely difficult, and definitely not suitable for this level - I would even argue that it would be at a masters level. The 3x 15% assessments were pretty easy, I ended up with like 90+ in that, but then the finals were brutal (partially because I didn't put much effort into that, but also because of the statistics part of the course being extremely difficult and unsuitable) - I'd hope they'll improve on this after all the criticism received. Overall, do not do this course if you don't need to (e.g. as a gen ed or elective). It is not worth it. « Last Edit: January 11, 2018, 12:25:44 am by Mechonics » #### Mechonics • Fresh Poster • Posts: 3 • Respect: +3 ##### Re: UNSW Course Reviews « Reply #44 on: January 15, 2018, 12:12:25 am » +3 Subject Code/Name: ECON1101 - Microeconomics 1 Contact Hours: 3 (2 hr lecture, 1 hr lab) Assumed Knowledge: None, but high school economics would help a lot. Assessment: 20% free marks from an online game called Playconomics (which you have to buy for like$30), 2x 15% short answer exams, 50% multiple choice finals.

Lecture Recordings? Yea

Notes/Materials Available:  Will be provided with playconomics when you purchase it.

Textbook: All playconomics!

Lecturer(s): Alberto Motta

Year & Semester of completion: 2017, Sem 1

Difficulty: 4/5 for me, 2-3/5 for literally everyone else

Overall Rating: 3