Uni Stuff > University of New South Wales
UNSW Course Reviews
RuiAce:
Subject Code/Name: MATH1251 - Mathematics for Actuarial Studies and Finance 1B
Contact Hours: 2 x 2 hours of Lecture, 2 x 1 hour of Tutorial
Assumed Knowledge: The precursor course MATH1151 is a prerequisite.
Assessment: Spread out across online quizzes, tutorial quizzes and computing (MATLAB - to be self taught) quizzes + laboratory test. Final exam is weighted an ugly 64%
Lecture Recordings?: Calculus - Yes. Algebra - Audio only (lecturer uses blackboards)
Notes/Materials Available: The course pack offers all the notes required for the course, including past exam papers. However, the past tutorial papers are outdated and somewhat irrelevant, in fact, too easy more often than not. My tutorial papers are available upon request.
Textbook: Similar to 1A, however the textbook wasn't even brought up this time round.
Lecturer(s): Denis Potapov (Algebra), Thanh Tran (Calculus)
Year & Semester of completion: 2016/2
Difficulty: 3/5
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: 90 HD
Comments:
Same as first paragraph of MATH1151, albeit now with MATH1231/41. Note that MATH1251 learn two topics that the other two courses do not - functions of several variables, and double integrals
The aim of first year second semester mathematics is to take the now formalised concepts and start applying them to methods in mathematics. The shift in emphasis has resulted in a trend that students finding this course easier than the previous (however definitely not always the case). Only some knowledge of MATH1151 calculus is required for MATH1251 calculus, but all the algebra (excluding probability - used in ACTL1101) should be known here.
A step up in abstraction occurs in algebra, but a step down happens in calculus.
RuiAce:
Subject Code/Name: MATH1081 - Discrete Mathematics
Contact Hours: 4 x 1 hours of Lecture (painfully disgusting), 2 x 1 hour of Tutorial
Assumed Knowledge: MATH1131/41/51 serves as a corequisite. It is recommended that a combined mark of 100 was achieved between Mathematics and Mathematics Extension 1. (Whilst not specified by the school, a combined mark of about 140 is the corresponding value to between Extension 1 and Extension 2)
Assessment: Four online quizzes as with MATH1131/41/51, however no more computing component. The final exam is weighted a massive 80%!
Lecture Recordings?: This semester, half yes half audio only
Notes/Materials Available: The course pack offers all the notes required for the course, including past exam papers. However, the past tutorial papers are outdated and somewhat irrelevant, in fact, too easy more often than not. My tutorial papers are available upon request.
Textbook: None, but the following textbook has been recommended: Franklin and Doud - "Proof in Mathematics". Not really needed, but a good read, since tutorial problems have been taken out of here.
Lecturer(s): James Franklin, Peter Brown
Year & Semester of completion: 2016/2
Difficulty: 3/5
Overall Rating: 5/5
Your Mark/Grade: 91 HD
Comments:
Unlike MATH1xx1, success in high school mathematics has generally no impact whatsoever on success in this course. The course places an emphasis on clarity in mathematics, requiring far more carefulness with setting out proofs, as well as the more computational and algorithmic side of mathematics. Whilst students majoring in mathematics need to take this course, the main focus is therefore to people studying a degree offered by the school of CSE.
Abstractness is essentially the same as for linear algebra, but in a different manner. Whilst some computer scientists are still hammered down by this course, in general they like it TREMENDOUSLY more to how they feel about MATH1xx1. The course is designed to be more friendly towards them.
The huge weighting on the final exam speaks for itself; consistency is key but relatively speaking, a greater focus towards the end will be required here.
This course, on the other hand, sometimes hammers down on people who are good at maths otherwise. It is nonetheless a 'fun' course to take, and many interesting things are taught here, which usefulness is far more than what meets the eye.
RuiAce:
Subject Code/Name: ACTL1101 - Introduction to Actuarial Studies
Course overhauled in 2017.
Contact Hours: 2 hours of Lecture, 1 hour of Tutorial on lecture topics, 1 hour of Tutorial on R software
Assumed Knowledge: MATH1151 is a prerequisite for this course. It is expected that you are good at handling matrices, integration and especially probability and statistics.
Assessment: An open-book weekly quiz served free marks, but people seemed to get anxious all the time so this may be abolished. Other than that, a mid-sem and an assignment is included. Finals are weighted only 40% - this will not happen for second year ACTL courses and onwards.
Lecture Recordings?: Yes
Notes/Materials Available: A bunch of past papers were posted on Moodle; some more can generally be found by asking actuarial students in older years (ASOC is a tight bunch).
Textbook: Sherris, Principles of Actuarial Science - Good if you make good use of it. But because it is so old and has no formatting whatsoever, it was too painful for me to read and I gave up after a while.
Lecturer(s): Benjamin Avanzi
Year & Semester of completion: 2016/2
Difficulty: 4/5
Overall Rating: 3/5
Your Mark/Grade: 87 HD
Comments:
There is a wide variety of things taught in this course. Being a legend among actuaries, Benjamin has taken action to reduce the content, but this course is inevitably going to be a bit over the place. The course is definitely introductory - whilst mathematics is definitely involved, it isn't outrageous yet and most calculations are kept to a reasonable difficulty. Can be a bit painful to study due to this nature of being over the place. The direct consequence of this is that there are heaps of methods that you need to remember.
The introduction of the R tutorials add one extra annoying contact hour, but pays off. Any actuary will need some skill in computing to stand out in modern society, and this is one way to get it going.
(I have to break a guideline and talk about the lecturer here: If you ask many people in my cohort they may evoke hatred for Benjamin. But if you ask ANYONE else, they'll say he is the best, which I believe.)
(This course does NOT contribute to obtaining Part I exemptions. Note that CT2 is fulfilled by ACCT1501, ACCT1511 and FINS1613, and CT7 is fulfilled by ECON1101 and ECON1102. You may only commence fulfilling other CTs in second year. For reference, CT stands for 'Core Technical'.)
RuiAce:
Subject Code/Name: ECON1101 - Microeconomics 1
Contact Hours: 2 hours of Lecture, 1 hour of Tutorial
Assumed Knowledge: Nil, but I've heard that knowledge of Preliminary (Year 11) economics is beneficial. General maths skills would also help.
Assessment: 20% of the marks are free because you just have to play through a game to get them. Other than that, essentially every mark counts, because the 15% weighting quizzes are out of 15, and the 50% weighted final exam is 50 multiple choice.
Lecture Recordings?: Yes
Notes/Materials Available: Extremely limited. Usually gotta count on higher years having scavenged hard enough.
Textbook: Dobrescu et. al., Principles of Microeconomics - An online textbook written by the lecturers specifically for this course. You will need it. Note that it also comes with some video recordings.
Lecturer(s): Scott French (LIC), Alberto Motta (Other lecturers include Peter Nichols, Sarah Walker)
Year & Semester of completion: 2016/1
Difficulty: 1/5
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: 96 HD
Comments:
By nature, economics builds upon itself. This course is somewhat hard to self-learn, but regardless of how you learn (I seriously liked the lectures) you find that everything links to each other. It is not content heavy, and is in general, regarded as the easiest of the first year business courses.
This course is mandatory to all students undertaking a degree offered by the UNSW Business School, with the exception of B Information Systems.
Some courses are nice to give free marks, but I haven't seen them "as freely" as here. All you're doing is playing a game, and it actually helped me understand economics concepts better. The final exam is a bit of a shocker because it shows you how difficult multiple choice is, but for many people it still isn't hard enough to push them out of an easy HD.
This was my favourite course. It was the first time I loved something over my life-long passion for maths.
RuiAce:
Subject Code/Name: SCIF1121 - Advanced Science: Professional Perspective and Practice
Course removed in 2017 - All students now take SCIF1131, which was overhauled.
Contact Hours: 2 hours of Discipline Stream, 2 hours of Graduate Attributes
Assumed Knowledge: Nil
Assessment: Split evenly across the two. Each have 5% devoted to participation. The discipline stream varies depending on which discipline you chose (e.g. biology). Graduate attributes feature a classmate biography, followed by an interview with a scientist video task. NO exam.
Lecture Recordings?: N/A due to nature of this course.
Notes/Materials Available: N/A. You have to find your own materials for all assignments.
Textbook: N/A
Lecturer(s): Graduate attributes - Sue Schibeci. Math discipline stream - Pinhas Grossman
Year & Semester of completion: 2016/1
Difficulty: 1/5
Overall Rating: 1.5/5
Your Mark/Grade: 84 DN
Comments:
This course was free marks, but was dry for me. Graduate attributes was really just talking about general life skills e.g. interview preparation, ethics. The assignment for the discipline stream was too broad; nothing specific.
It's not necessarily a bad course. But definitely not my cup of coffee. It's also hard to describe because it's completely different to what you're used to at university, AND it changes too often.
This course is one of two options that all advanced science students must take (unless they combine with engineering and have done ENGG1000). The other option is SCIF1131.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version