University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings

[beaudityoucanbe]

Subject Code/Name: BLAW30002

Workload:  1 two-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial

Assessment: 30% group assignment and 70% exam (non-hurdle)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, but only audio. There are very rarely any extra slides, if there are its just photos when the lecturer explains the facts of a case - not needed. I always attended lectures but I dont think it would be too hard to follow if you just listen.

Past exams available:  Yes, theres a lot held by the library, only a few are relevant but none were provided by the lecturer. However, she does go through EXTENSIVELY whats on the exam. Told us 2 questions with multiple parts and basically tells you the questions you will be asked. However, it doesn't make it much easier because you have to apply the facts to legislation - thats the tricky part off the subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  BUY BUY BUY. Theres two you need to get, the textbook and the legislation. If you want to do well, buy it. Its not a difficult subject but if you want to find extra things then you need  it (explained below).

Fundamental Tax Legislation (Thomson Reuters, current edition); AND
Sadiq et al, Principles of Taxation Law (Thomson Reuters, current edition)

Lecturer(s):  Sunita Jogarajan

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 75% on assignment (yet to do exam and will update after exam)

Comments:
Lecturer: Sunita is an awesome lecturer. Slides are great and have pretty much all you need is on them. She explains every beautifully. her slides are basically summarised legislation. But if you want to get the "bonus marks" there is some legislation nearby the legislation shes said you need which may be relevant and applicable. That will get you an extra mark if you manage to find it.

Tutor: I had Kayla Milone. Shes also awesome. Knows the content incredibly well and provided summaries and short quizzes for knowledge/retention and then went into the questions in good detail.

Tutorial: You HAVE to prepare. If you dont, its a waste of time and you will struggle. This is my first law subject (commerce major and principle of business law doesnt count as a law subject given its all multiple choice). The content is very straight forward and very easy to understand, theres not a lot that tricky (aside from FBT and CGT which can be at times because of the amount of work required for them which needs pretty much a good knowledge of the whole subject to do). Looking back, i very very highly recommend that you write dot points applying the legislation to the case, go to the tutorial, correct yourself and add anything you missed. Then after the tutorial, write out a proper answer. You can bring ANYTHING into the exam.

Assignment: Was very straight forward, nothing surprising. The structure and wording was very similar to the tutorials. Its done in pairs which is a little annoying. You get the exam very early and you will realise that you havnt done the content required. What I did was after the lecture, id make notes and then do the part of the assignment which was relevant. This meant i was working on it like 2 times a week. I kinda regret this. Towards the end i was getting so sick of it that i started to get lazy and dropped marks because i wanted it over and done with. Maybe do it in 2 sittings (its really not that hard) then read over and fix it up as many times as you want. Otherwise, its not a very tricky assignment.

Exam: Will update when i sit it
In the final lecture, Sunita gives you A LOT of info about the exam. She outlines what the question is and how many marks. She is very generous.
e.g. she said:
Q1 a) residency b) CGT c) assessable income
Q2 a) "specific question" (we assume a theory question cause she said it doesnt apply to the facts) b) tax consequences (literally the whole subject)
We know what the exam is, its not hard to figure out the questions because theres only so many things she can ask before it becomes repetitive. She also gave use 2 sample questions with the exact same format as question 1. Like i said before, the challenge of the subject (and any law subject) is to apply facts to legislation. If you have been practicing with tutorials throughout the semester and did well on the assignment, youre all set. She also said that Q2 "was to reward you for the work done on the assignment" so my guess is that most of it will be similar facts to the assignment with a few new facts/trickier facts to differentiate a H1.
Now some bad news. Sunita never gives out a 90%. She said 80% to 90% is already incredible work. If you want a 90%, youre dreaming. To get 90% you need to write everything was looking for PLUS some stuff that she wasn't expecting. This is annoying but it does not change my opinion of this subject. Its a great subject.

!!Making Notes!!: OK. making notes in any law subjects is incredibly important. You have to do it as you go. For every subject i recommend this rather than cramming and freaking out in SWOTVAC. In my notes, i basically copied and pasted the slides and added what ever was said in the lecture that i thought was useful. You can bring in any amount of notes, books, papers. There is absolutely no requirement on what you bring in. My friends are bringing their notes, the textbook and legislation. That ridiculous. You only have 2 hours to write and it can be very time consuming, especially if your looking for cases that apply or legislation. I plan on doing the same thing. BUT my notes INCLUDE the legislation and summarised cases. Theirs dont. Im bringing em in as a backup or to make myself feel better. I wont need to touch them. In your notes, do this as well. This way, you have everything you need together. When youre answering a question, i have everything together - the theory, legislation, cases, tutorial.
The reason why i recommend buying the textbook is if you want to do well. You can easily get away without them - sunit provides all the legislation references (and explains them). She tells you what the cases are and when they are needed (so you can pretty much just drop em after a sentence).

Overall: Its a great subject. Im probably the only one who enjoyed tax. Some subjects can be incredibly draining. During the lecture, Sunita would read out the facts of the case after the theory and would ask us what we think the courts decided. You just vote by raising your hands and then she tells you the outcome. This was genius although she didnt do it often (told her to do more in SES). Its so great becasue you get a list of facts and then can quickly answer it. (plus it was fun for me... thats kinda sad but yea..)

[beaudityoucanbe]

Subject Code/Name: ACCT20007 

Workload: two 2-hour lectures and one 1-hour tutorial

Assessment:
4 SAP assignments (due weekly toward end of semester) (10%)
Group assignment (20%)
Tutorial (10%)
Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes with screen capture

Past exams available:  Yes, 3

Textbook Recommendation:  No point in buying

Lecturer(s): Matt Dyki

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating:  a solid 0.2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
SAP: 100%
Tutorial: 100%
Group assignment: 79% (fuming i didnt get that H1)
Exam: TBD

Comments:
Lecturer: TERRIBLE LECTURER. Confusing. Inconsistent. Boring. The slides are confusing to follow. You do a LOT of poll everywhere WHICH IS ASSESSED and is part of the tutorial mark. It doesn't recored correct answers, just participation. The poll everywhere was confusing and pointless. most gave up towards then end and just entered random shit, especially when he dosent give you enough time to answer.

SAP Assignment: The worst assignment I have ever done. You are given about 20 steps for each set (theres 4) and you just have to follow the steps on some software. Its easy but an absolute waste of time. Easy 100%.  made the mistake of blindly following the steps (it just gets too difficult to care about it. Especially when some dumbass takes your code and screws everything up the NIGHT before its due. I wa stuck in Giblon till 11pm redoing it). There are questions on the exam that ask you to directly reference/discuss the SAP.

Group Assignment: So stupid. This semester, you do a videos presentation. You have to wear formal business attire. Its a 10 minute video. A lot easier than a 2000 or 3000 word assignment. After the video submission, theres a Q&A where 2 people ask questions about your videos and critique it. You have the opportunity to explain why you did something. They will make you feel like you have done something wrong - you need to defend yourselves, but then if there is a flaw they are trying to pick up on, accept it and provide a recommendation on the spot. It a very calm "interview" you dont have to be nervous.

Tutorial: A COMPLETE AND UTTER MESS. WASTE OF TIME. I ripped my tutor to shreds in the SES survey. She wasted 30 minutes of it talkign about something from the lecture and it never made sense cause she didn't even know what she was talking about. You need to do a 5 minute presenation summarising the lectures which was supposed to get you some short feedback to work on for the group assignment. This always took like 10-15 minutes. We rarely went through the tutorial and when we did, she would say "i think its better to show you HOW to answer rather than give you the answer". I think this is absolutely ridiculous. You SHOW how to answer as you go through the answer.

Exam: Will update
Overall: I absolutely loathed this subject. i gave it .2 for the effort they go through (which is pretty terrible anyway). I really hop they change coordinator or just piss the subject off completely. Im in my 2nd last semester and id rather drop out and not finish my degree than repeat the confusing, irrelevant mess that is called AIRcon. My deepest condolences for those that have to experience the absolute crap fest that is this subject. (I get so triggered when i talk about this subject...)

[M909]

Subject Code/Name: ECON30019 Behavioural Economics

Workload:(per week) 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:
Assignments, 4 × 5%
Group Presentation, 10%
Tutorial Participation, 5%
2 Hour Exam, 65% (Hurdle Requirement)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  No, standard advice was that tute/assignment/lecture questions were enough. I also found some old exams (2011 was earliest) on library website but these were hardly relevant.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing is required, the subject references certain books outlined in first lecture, but they're definitely not needed.

Lecturer: Siqi Pan

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2019

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (87)

Comments:
Overall, if you've done and enjoyed Intro and Inter Micro, and are looking for a relatively easy and light elective/breadth, this one would be a good choice. It was also pretty interesting as it extended on some standard (neoclassical) economic models, and introduced the behavioural versions, making them (somewhat) applicable to the real world.

Topics:
1. Introduction
2. Preferences and Choices
3. Beliefs and Probability Judgement
4. Choice under Risk and Uncertainty
5. Intertemporal Choice
6. Behavioural Public Policy
7. Fairness and Social Preferences

Lectures
Mainly involved Siqi talking through and explaining the slides. I feel she explained things well and added onto what you would have just gotten by reading through the slides, so definitely worth listening to or attending lectures. Assignment answers were also talked through during lectures (worked solutions also given though), and we did a few behavioural experiments/surveys. As I mentioned above, this subject was relatively light in content, and even with the assignment discussions and surveys, lectures pretty much always started later and finished earlier than the standard 5 min after/before advertised times.

Tutorials
Standard tutorials from weeks 1-5 where you'd get a tute sheet before, are encouraged to give it a go beforehand, then the tutor would take the class through it during the tute. From week 6-11, the first half of the tute would involve a group presentation and questions/discussions, and then the second half would be back to the standard format where the tutor goes over the tute work.

Assignments
Pretty straightforward, 3-4 questions similar to tute/assignment questions that we had about 2 weeks to work on. Don't know if this will be continued, but in 2019 when I did this subject, to prevent people copying each other's work and encourage people to actually give it a proper go, marks were based solely on if we put the effort in, showing full working ect! I got things objectively wrong and still secured the full 20%, and from what I heard many others were in the same boat That being said, they still served as good practice for the exam.

Group Presentation
There are 6 behavioural economics based papers available on the LMS in the tutorial section. At the start of the semester, you're required to form groups within your tutorial and let your tutor know your preference of paper (according to my tutor all the papers were all of equal difficulty). From there, you and your group need to present a paper one week during the second half of the semester (each particular paper was allocated a week). An outline was given about what to talk about regarding the paper, then your group needed to create their own application of the main theory discussed in the paper.

Participation
A bit different the usual ECON tute participation mark scheme. In each of the 5 weeks there was a group presentation that wasn't our own, we were required to read the paper and make 2 comments/questions/critiques ect. on it and hand this in to our tutor. Our participation marks are based on these submitted comments. Presumably each sheet of comments handed into our tutor was 1%, but this wasn't explicitly stated and I didn't think to ask.

Exam
A few harder questions, but overall I didn't find it too bad (although I don't know my mark yet!). I don't think the lack of past exams would have impacted anyone's score. Exam mainly involved applying the knowledge rather than memorising things and no major surprises which was great.

[Mischi]

BIOL10003: [https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/biol10003[/url] 

Workload: 3 x 1 hour lectures a week, 1 x 2 hour practical a fortnight, 1 x 1 hour tutorial a week

Assessment:  5% ILT, 5% MST, 25% Practical, 5% assignment

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  Only a sample exam unfortunately, but Dawn provides a lot of practice questions for her part of the course.

Textbook Recommendation:  The recommended textbook is the same as it was for BIOL10002: Biomolecules and cells. I personally didn't get much use out of it this semester at all.

Lecturer(s): Dr Alex Idnurm (Lectures 1-6), covering: animal classification/taxa, fungi, protists, bacteria, medical mycology, parasitic protists
Prof Rob Day (Lectures 7-14), covering: disease/history of disease, parasite strategies, evolution of parasite resistance, new technologies in biomedicine, and evolution.
Assoc. Prof Dawn Gleeson (Lectures 15-26, 33-35), covering: mendelian genetics, epigenetics, sex determination, blood typing, extensions to Mendel, independent assortment and gene linkage, genomic imprinting, pedigrees and lots of problem solving questions for genetics.
Dr Patricia Jusuf (Lectures 27-32), covering: DNA transcription, translation, mutations, mutant case studies, gel electrophoresis

Year & Semester of completion: I completed this subject in 2019 semester 2

Rating:  3.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: Not out yet

Comments:
Overall I found this subject less enjoyable than its semester 1 counterpart BIOL10002. But I think that is because I preferred and was much more interested in the content taught in semester 1, especially the physiology aspects. I must say, the genetics part is taught very well in my opinion and I enjoyed the problem solving aspect to them. To me from everyone else in the course the overall impression of this subject is mixed, those who are like me didn't exactly dread it, but found it a step down from last semester. Then there were others who much prefer this stream of biology and found it much more interesting. For someone who did not complete biology in year 12, I found that first year biomed (and I'm sure subsequent years) has helped me narrow down where my passion is in biomedical sphere.

Anyway, now for lectures:
Alex's lectures started us off for the semester, he only does a single lecture regarding animal taxa and classification yet it popped up as a 15 marker on the exam, so don't disregard it! This also means that what Dawn says at the end of sem that the marks are allocated proportional to how much they are covered in lectures is a lie. We barely saw any of his other content in the exam, maybe a MC or two on fungi? I found the best way for me to study his section of the course was to compile a "Disease Files" as well as a brief report on the rules and semantics of classifying organisms. My friend made Pokemon-like cards for each parasite on them and then their strengths, weaknesses, life cycles etc and I thought that it was really creative and effective.

Rob's lectures are probably the most frustrating to learn. Whilst he does have less content than what Alex has, he claims that a lot of what he examines cannot be found on the lecture slides or in the textbook, we kind of have to magically infer it all. His two lectures on evolution also had more questions allocated to them on the exam than his other 5 or so on parasites. So don't disregard them either. For his evolution lectures I made my own cladogram following the different species of primates, how they changed physiologically to adapt to new conditions, etc etc. His other lectures were okay to study, because for parasite strategies and resistance the things you need to know are more clear cut. However for his questions about disease history and what leads to disease, he is very vague in the answers and it could genuinely be any one of them, so make sure you practice those.

Dawn and Patricia's lectures were probably the best in my opinion. Dawn is a very captivating lecturer and always relates all the genetic concepts to disease to keep your interest. I found that sometimes however her lectures are hard to compartmentalise in the sense that sometimes they don't follow a logical order so it is hard to imagine some of the concepts. Patricia's lectures are also very good, and what I loved about her lectures is that she makes it very clear what is actually examinable and what isn't. For both of their lectures, I think problem solving and practice questions are the best way to go, and both of their lectures are heavily assessed in the exam relative to Rob's and Alex's, so keep that in mind when you plan your study.

Pracs:
Pracs for this subject in my opinion were a lot harder than the pracs in semester 1. They require a lot more background research and work, definitely do study for pracs as you would an assignment or for the MST, as an individual prac weighs almost the same as them! Also, losing marks here and there in prac can really reduce your overall score in the subject, so keep that in mind!

Tutorials:
I have never found bio tutes helpful at all, I think its a much better use of my time to study in that hour on my own, but I did go to the majority of them anyway to be a good student and I think the only info they hold that may actually give high yield info is the prac advice they give, other than that, for content learning it's not really worth it.

Overall: tl;dr
I gave this subject a 3.5/5 primarily because I found that although some lecturers did teach their aspects quite well, others did not. Tutorials were not a good use of time (other than for prac advice), and pracs were for the most part pretty boring.

Don't hesitate to PM me if you have any questions

[tiredandstressed]

Subject Code/Name: [https://handbook.unimelb.edu.au/subjects/phyc10007/]PHYC10007 Physics for Biomedicine

Workload: Contact hours: 3x one lecture per week, 1x problem-solving class (tute) per week (starting from week 2) and 6x two and half hour laboratory sessions + 1 take-home experiment (up to 6 hours of work)
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

Assessment:  Ongoing assessment of practical work during the semester (25%); ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%).
Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject (i.e. attendance and submission of work for at least 80% of workshop sessions together with a result for assessed work of at least 50%).

Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture. However, Professor Prawer often failed to use the recording system correctly, meaning the lecture wouldn’t always be recorded, would recommend attending his lectures at least

Past exams available:  Yes, all the way back to 2008, however solutions were limited for more recent exams

Textbook Recommendation:  Physics for the Life Sciences 3E, Martin Zinke-Allmag, Ken Sills, Rezza Nejat and Eduuardo Galiano-Riveros, Cengage Learning: ISBN 9780176558697
Very important as the lectures do not go into enough depth of what is examinable, and the suggested problems are often featured in the exam

Lecturer(s): Dr David Simpson: Weeks 1-6- Kinematics & Dynamics, Energy and Transport Phenomena, Vibrations & Waves
Prof Steven Prawer: Weeks 7-12- Electricity & Magnetism, Radiation & Imaging, Optics (but Steven fell very behind schedule so Optics was removed for 2019)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semster 2

Rating: 1/5

Your Mark/Grade: TBD

Comments: All the reviews on here are quite outdated, Physics for Biomedince has changed quite a bit, so hopefully this is helpful for future students.
The first big change is Physics for Biomedicine only has 6 labs instead of 8 (woo yea!) instead we do a take-home experiment that is worth the equivalent of two labs. I think the coordination is much better compared to previous years, as rumours have suggested and our lectures although not amazing were sufficient.

Before I begin my review, its best I reveal that I hated physics before going into Biomedicine, I’ve always enjoyed sciences (bio & chem) but I could never understand physics and ended up not doing it in VCE and chose to do psych instead (best decision ever) even though my parents weren’t so happy I was doing a “fake science”. So as you can see I was not looking forward to this subject and after completing the horror of Chemistry for Biomedicine, Physics was not looking appealing.

Dr David Simpson takes you for the first six weeks and teaches you on Kinematics & Dynamics, Energy and Transport Phenomena, Vibrations & Waves. He is a great lecturer very clear and interesting, I personally never slept in his lectures and found is slides quite detailed and clear to read. The only problem was since he was a new lecturer he often uploaded his slides very late (like an hour before the lecture) which wasn’t ideal since I wanted to print the slides and write on them (which I would recommend for Physics for Biomedicine- handwrite your notes- so you are actively learning. David’s content looked scary at first but once you took some time to go over his slides and the textbook it wasn’t too bad. And many of us found his stuff easier compared to Steven’s (which I’ll go into later…). Make sure you try to over his lectures after each one and practise a question or two in the suggested problems to ensure you understand what is going on. It very easy to fall behind as the lectures build up for each other, so consistency is key, physics is hard but doable if you take the time to understand the content. In the lectures there always a demo- which is sometimes cool quite boring but they do illustrate the content being learnt so try to take notes of what is happening and why it occurs since the demonstrations are very much examinable in the final exam (popped up in the 2019 exam lol)

Steven then takes you for the final six weeks his content is Electricity & Magnetism, Radiation & Imaging, Optics. Steven was a boring lecturer his voice ended up getting annoying and was quite unengaging- however his long explanation is examinable and his questions focused more on the theory than the calculations. The great thing about Steven is he is very transparent he will tell you if something is important and will be on the exam (he told us that neurons would be 20 marks on the exam and this was indeed true) so there were no surprises there. However, his content was quite challenging and after doing the subject I still don’t know what was going on xD. For Steven’s content it is very important you attempt the suggested problems as he tends to just copy questions from there and put it on the exam, rewarding students who do the extra work.

The problem-solving classes were similar to math tutorials- answering question in a group on the whiteboard, my tutor was George and he was okay at explaining some of the stuff but often I would leave the class more confused going in, if you can try to have a look at the questions before going into tute and familiarise yourself with the formula and theory relevant to the tute, otherwise attendance is not compulsory, but recommended problem-solving questions have been on the exam before.

The seven practicals you complete are not all that fun, and can be draining- in your timetable it says the practical go for three hours- but it is only 2.5 hours. Before each practical, there is a pre-lab however they are not too challenging (except for the radiation one) and they contribute to your practical mark. Make sure you get the logbook and handbook as they are essential for the practicals.
Different demonstrators prefer different things in your report, all of which usually want you to follow the Predict-Observe-Explain model which is covered in your lab book and not hard to understand. My demonstrator, particularly wanted me to emphasise the conclusion (limitations and improvements for the experiment).  When you pick your lab time you will also be randomly allocated in one of four groups; groups 1 & 2 do their labs in odd weeks, groups 3 & 4 do their labs in even weeks. I was in group 4 meaning I got to my lab after learning the content for the relevant practical, people in groups were 1 or 2 were unlucky because often we had not gone over the content for the lab. Now I will go over each practical. Being concise is key in your report, and often they marked quite nice for physics labs.

Experiment 1: Linear motion
As your first experiment, this is probably one of the toughest to finish on time (since none of us did) but the demonstrators are nice and they tell you this before the lab that they don’t expect you to finish so don’t stress. This experiment was probably the easiest theory wise you are simply moving the cart (similar to lectures) and recording position-time, velocity-time and acceleration-time graphs and understanding the relationship between all three. You will also explore Newton’s second law but this is not too bad you will find the force is proportional to the product of mass and acceleration.

Experiment 2: Energy conservation 
Here, we investigate the difference between kinetic and potential energy and how energy is conserved- it is very easy to predict that you will be equating equations. Just keep in mind the formula for kinetic energy and you should be fine. I this experiment, you will be bouncing a ball and recording the curve and establishing the relationship between potential and kinetic energy and then you will compare this with an inclined plane.

Experiment 3: Gas laws
Probably one of the easiest experiments, as everything is centred to the ideal gas equation, here you will be blowing to a pipe and observing and how far deep will you no longer blow bubbles (be careful don’t blow too hard because water will flow out and you might get your lab partners wet). In the next part of this experiment, you will investigate the relationship between volume pressure which all relates to the ideal gas equation.

Experiment 4: Thermal effects
This experiment was pretty crap, least biomedical one there is. You will first explore heat transference which relates to colour spectrum and you will find which colours are absorbed more at different temperatures. Then you will look at energy absorption and cooling and simply comparing the absorptions of a black disc compared to a white disc.

Experiment 5: Ultrasound
One of the easiest experiments (and you’ll finish early) unfortunately you won’t be using medical ultrasound. Instead you will use some bootleg one, it is important for this lab you know before going in how to use each setting as this will save you plenty of time in the lab, this lab centres on the speed of sound which is great since you know you will be trying to achieve a value/ gradient of 343.

Experient 6: Radiation
I will not go into much detail in this lab since I wasn’t really sure what was going on but the physics demonstrators are nice and they marked quite nicely and I got full marks in it. 

Experiment 7: Take home (group) experiment
You will either be given the muscles experiment or the worms experiment
In which for both you will be looking at some type of neural activity, once receiving your box you will decide on an experiment to do and perform ad submit a report of 500 words per person. Most of us did not know what was going and somehow managed to get good marks in it so do not stress about it. Our groups were not able to get any numerical data and we were still able to do well in just follow the lab manual and the BackyardBarns website and you will be fine. If you get a worm box you will need to use diluted vodka to anaesthetise them but be careful too much vodka and you will kill the worms. The group experiment is work\th two practicals (you will receive a group mark), the estimated time to complete the experiment is 3 hours but we were able to do it an hour, and the report won’t take you long.

The weekly assignments were an easy 15%, you three attempts to get it right which was nice, but some of them were quite hard and took over 30 minutes, they aren’t too bad just know that you should not just be doing the weekly assignments in order to do well in this subjects it is imperative you also do textbook questions.

The great thing about physics compared to Chem is that the exam is only 60% so it is not as stressful as compared to Chem.
The final exam is three hours in duration and worth 60% of your grade. It consists of short answer questions only, with a total of 120 marks. Each major topic is assigned a question on the exam, the exam is all short answer, with an even split of calculation and theory questions. Many of us were very stressed as the past exams were challenging and I went into to swot vac only able to answer 2-3 questions at most, but as previously mentioned the physics workshops during swot vac were great and the support the tutors provided was amazing they really did help to tackle each past exam question and get you into the mindset that you should approach each type of questions- with my favourite tip “If it is a theory question and you don’t know what’s going try to use common sense and bs an explanation and you might get a mark”.  The exam was challenging, but I was able to have a go in every question which was nice I know I got some totally wrong but I was still able to attempt every question (except for the 2019 exam the radiation question was horrendous) but otherwise use swot vac wisely and you’ll be able to answer many questions in the exam. The exams follow a similar pattern and they tend to ask similar things every year, which is why it is important to do past exams as early as you can to familiarise yourself with the style of questions you will face on the exam. Three hours is not a lot of time I wasn’t able to finish the exam keep your eye on the clock and if you are stuck you are better off moving on to the next question.

Physics for Biomedicine is a pain, but if you were able to survive Chemistry you will be okay! Take some extra time to learn the content, apply it questions and you will do well. It is a challenging subject but very doable.
Good luck

[Sutanrii]

Subject Code/Name: PHYC10004 Physics 2: Physical Science & Technology

Workload:  For each week: 3x 1-hour lecture, 1x 1-hour tutorial, 1x 3-hour lab (although we needed to be dismissed after 2.5 hours)

Assessment:  10 Weekly Online Homework (15%), 8 Lab Practical (each with an online prelab) (25%), 3-hour Final Exam (60%)

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but lecture demonstrations are usually not recorded

Past exams available:  Yes, Final Exam 2008-2018 along with the solutions.

Textbook Recommendation: The prescribed textbook is Halliday & Resnick, Fundamentals of Physics, 11th ed., Wiley 2018, which we were recommended to buy in the subject's LMS FAQ. I personally didn't buy any textbook, but one of my mates who had it didn't find it very useful and instead recommended Physics for Scientists and Engineers.

Lecturer(s): Prof. Christopher Chantler (Week 1 - Week 6), Prof. Elisabetta Barberio (Week 7 - Week 12)

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Sem 2

Rating: 2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:
Around the start of the semester, you can purchase a handbook and a lab book for $12 and $10, respectively. The digital copy of the handbook is available on the LMS so it is not necessary to buy the handbook. If you a leftover lab book e.g. from Physics 1, you can reuse it for this subject. Otherwise, it is compulsory to buy the lab book for $10.

Lectures
The first half of the semester involved Chris covering the topic of Electromagnetism (including the four Maxwell Equations). Chris was a light-hearted lecturer. He tried to make the lecture entertaining while encouraging the audience to participate in answering questions on the slides. In my opinion, his lecturing style was suited for students who are new to the topic to get them interested. The drawback to this was that Chris tended to make the lecture content much easier than it was in the exam.

The second half of the semester involved Elisabetta covering the topic of Fluids, Thermal, and Modern Physics (although particularly in this sem Prof. Geoffrey Taylor served as a replacement lecturer for the Fluids part for one week). Compared to Chris, Elisabetta was a much more serious lecturer and it'd be best to not generate any noise/distraction during her lecture. She'd pause whenever this happened which perhaps may be reasonable but certainly tensed up the lecture atmosphere.

The issue I see in the lectures was that we were mostly taught the theories and would rarely solve any problem. In fact, a lot of these theories weren't actually examinable, especially the Modern Physics part (in the exam we were just expected to use sophisticated formulas and plug in the unknowns). This issue was expected to be resolved by doing the tutesheet and the online homework, but I still think that they were insufficient. I guess this is where the textbook shines as stated by Hancock.

Tutorials / Problem Solving
We sit in groups of 3-4 and then attempt to solve the tute sheet problems in our groups. There was also a tutor who would supervise the progress of our discussions and help answer our questions. A more detailed solution would be posted on the LMS at the end of the week.

One thing I could appreciate of this subject was there were standby tutors in the Laby Ideas Centre every weekday from 11am-3pm, so it wasn't difficult to get help.

Lab Practical
Before each lab session, we needed to finish the Online Pre-Lab questions. The questions were usually quite easy and straightforward but some can be tricky.

At the start of the lab, a demonstrator would brief about the experiment and gave possibly some warnings or tips. We then got into our lab partners (whom we were free to choose) and started doing our experiment. We were required to take down our observations, publish results (mostly using excel), and give analysis and discussion in our lab book, which would be graded by our demonstrator.

This is honestly my most hated aspect of this subject. Since most of the practical marks are based on our lab book, I personally felt that the whole purpose of doing the experiment was to compose a well-written report rather than doing the experiment itself. It was common to see students rushing to finish their report before 2.5 hours have passed, and it was just painfully hectic.

Another annoying part was that the marking of our report was subjective to our demonstrator. There were times when I think I wrote really well but got lower than I expected. I found it hard to improve my report as my demonstrator barely bother to give any comment/feedback. There was one time where I get to have my report checked in front of my demonstrator and I was told my report was incomplete, only to realise that he/she forgot to read the last page of my report (which may explain why I got lower than I expected?) .-.

Online Homework
The weekly online homework consists of more or less 10 questions which we were to input the final number and the corresponding units for each question part (although sometimes it can be multiple choice). We were provided with 3 tries to obtain the correct answer along with a hint which if used would set the maximum score attainable for that question to be 80%, although I felt that the hints were most of the time blatant and not really helpful. It's worth noting that the questions were all taken from the exercise questions from the prescribed textbook (with the numbers altered, but the question wording is preserved) and were generally harder than the exam questions.

Final Exam
There were a lot of past papers provided and the School of Physics was generous enough to provide us with the solutions. These past papers were very valuable for the final exam because many questions were recycled, if not reused. They also served as an indicator of what may not be examinable. Having done really well in Physics 1 and observing the question styles on the past papers, I was confident that I could ace the final exam, but oh boy how wrong I was.

This year they decided to dramatically increase the final exam's difficulty level. They added several questions that were very unconventional relative to the past papers' questions, and many of us were just speechless. One example was that in the past papers, there were usually questions asking about R (resistor + emf) circuit analysis and perhaps questions about capacitors, both are very straightforward. This year they combined both topics into one big question where we were to analyse an RC (resistor + capacitor + emf) circuit + a switch. Many of us were just hoping that our exam mark would be scaled up. (I myself skipped around 15% worth of the exam lol) Update: They did!

Conclusion
In my opinion, this subject was harder than Physics 1 and involved a lot of calculus, especially in the Electromagnetism part. I was particularly disappointed with us having to use Maxwell's Equations without having to know how to use Vector Calculus properly, and how most of the Modern Physics questions were just using formulas and plugging in the unknowns.

As I've stated, I definitely loathed the practicals in this subject, and it's primarily why I gave this subject a low rating. The things commendable about this subject were probably the availability for help through the standby tutors and the abundance of final exam papers and solutions.

Due to the long contact hours as well as online homework and prelab every week, I don't recommend taking this subject if you don't have to unless you have a strong interest in the topics in this subject.

[stevenhuyn]

Subject Code/Name: COMP30020 Declarative Programming

Workload: 2 lectures, 1 hour tutorial

Assessment:  2 assessments 15% each, 70% exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes 2 were give, 1 sample. only 2010-2014 available from library.

Textbook Recommendation:  Any Haskell intro book would get you through the first 6 weeks. I didn't use a textbook however, resources from the classes are enough.

Lecturer(s): Peter Schachte

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: You study Haskell and then Prolog. Both are interesting, I enjoyed Haskell as it felt more like a modern language. Have been told by many to do this subject as it opens perspective as you finally learn a language that is not C like. It definitely was enjoyable. Hard to motivate without knowing a little bit about the content.

Exam had no abstract theory in it and so it was more applied theory as it was all coding questions, so if you become king at Prolog/Haskell the examination will be a breeze for you.

I enjoyed Peter (the Lecturer), however he does use a laser pointer which won't show up on lecture capture. It aids a little bit being able to see the point he's specifically talking about but you can infer usually.

1 assessment on Haskell, the other on Prolog. 160 lines of code and 100 respectively (this is including documentation). These languages make you feel powerful. They are dense languages so you do not have to write as much code but it can still take you a long time. The Prolog one was made trivial this semester because he said we were allowed to use a library and due to the nature of Prolog (that you will learn if you pick this subject) just stating the question and the constraints solves the problem for you, i.e. you don't have to write specifically on how the solution is crafted.

If you attend the tutorials, the material is just questions, that you can access at home so what tutor you get will impact the value you get from the class. I stopped attended after like 6th week but doing the questions weekly is very useful at getting actual practice on the content.

This semester was the first time we had Haskell and Prolog on Grok, (which you should have used for COMP10001?) Did its job, I used that rather than the tutes but some of the questions were recycled from Models of Computation this semester. Might change, but they were pretty good questions.

Overall a good intro to some declarative langauges.

[stevenhuyn]

Subject Code/Name: COMP20008 Elements of Data Processing

Workload:  2 lectures and a 2 hour workshop

Assessment:  2x 20% assignments, 1x 10% Oral, 50% Exam

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes

Past exams available:  Yes plenty

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing

Lecturer(s): Pauline Lin, Uwe Aickelin and Chris Ewin

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1

Comments: Subject could be renamed Data Wrangling and gives the the appreciation of dealing with data, processing it, combining data sources, privatising and some intro to creating predictive models from it. You learn basics of correlations, blockchain and ethics too which I thought were interesting subjects.

In the workshops you learn how to actually use Python along with Numpy, Pandas and some other libraries inside the Jupyter Notebook to do the above mentioned things on the data. The workshops are pretty handholdy if you got the right tutor, but the assignments... if you know how to google Python documentation, you will find alright.

Feels much more like a practical science subject than any other computing subject I've taken so far. You still learn some high level algorithms, some math, but there's a lot more theory involved.

Exam is all theory short answer, no programming knowledge expected.

Each of the assignments is like a take home prac, except you are equipped with your data and your programming skills. Googling and your practice from your previous workshops is essential. You end up with a long report showing your findings after following the specification.

This semester was the first time you could do assessment 2 and the oral in a group project (same group). Good change.

There were some great guest lectures on privacy, that alone was pretty TED talk worthy.

Since this is a prereq for Machine Learning, this subject a pretty good intro to data wrangling and what that entails, lecturers were great in my opinion. Apparently a previous lecturer was terrible and fired a year ago.

[hums_student]

Subject Code/Name: HPSC10001 From Plato to Einstein

Workload:
   - Lectures: 2 x 1 hour per week
   - Tutorials: 1 x 1 hour per week

Assessment:
   - Source Analysis: 10 x 200 words [50%] (Separated into 3 separate assessments worth 15, 20, and 15 percent each)
   - Take-home Exam: 2,000 words  [50%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: Subject reader available from Co-op, but is also for free on LMS

Lecturer(s): Kristian Camilleri

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H2B (72)

Comments:

HPSC10001 is generally taken by BSc students as breadth. I was one of the few arts students taking it as my elective. There is quite a lot of science concepts involved, and while the lecturer/tutor explains them as they pop up, it is much more beneficial if you know them already.

This subject starts off with pre-Socratic philosophy in Ancient Greece to modern physics. The subject is split into different time periods: ancient/medieval, early modern, and modern science. There is a heavy emphasis on maths, physics, and astronomy, with not much on other areas of science like chemistry or biology (alchemy gets brought up in one lecture but that's about it).

Lectures

Lectures are ran by the subject coordinator Kristian, who is very experienced, very knowledgeable, and very enthusiastic on the topic. Lectures are very content heavy and Kristian moves through quite quickly, but he always pauses in the middle for questions. Overall, lectures are very interactive and you get the most out of them if you attend.

Tutorials

For tutorial readings, you're given a PDF each week which contains both primary and secondary sources. There is a fair amount of reading, but generally if you just do the primary ones, you're set for tute discussions. Tutorial discussions are incredibly useful because 50% of the assessments (the 10 source analysis tasks) are all based off of the readings set.

Assessments

Source analysis: Throughout the semester you're given 10 different primary sources to analyse, each worth 5% of your total grade. Each source analysis is 200 words and you're required to identify the author, date, summarise the text, and briefly talk about its historical significance. They are given out in three different sets and four days are given for each set.

Final Exam: The final exam is a 2,000 word take-home research essay. Exam topics are released at the start of the semester in the subject guide. There are 10 topics in total, the first 5 are due during the middle of the semester and concerns content from the first half of the course (antiquity and medieval science), the last five are due a month later during the exam period and covers content from the second half (early modern and modern science).

Final Thoughts

HPSC10001 is definitely a great subject for students majoring in physics, maths, or history. The subject is very well organised and the content was very interesting. There is a larger emphasis on the history over the philosophy of science so if you're looking for a subject that looks at philosophy and ethics, this isn't the best option; however if you want to learn more about how science and maths developed and became the way it is, then I highly recommend.

[hums_student]

Subject Code/Name: POLS10003 Introduction to Political Ideas

Workload: 
   - 1 x 2 hour lecture per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - Source Analysis, 500 words  [12.5%]
   - Research Essay, 2,000 words  [50%]
   - Take-home Exam, 1,500 words [37.5%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: N/A. Readings made available online.

Lecturer(s): Dr Clayton Chin

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (90)

Comments:

I did Intro to Political Ideas as an arts elective (I’m a history/economics major) and loved this subject. Students are recommended to have done the arts foundation subject MULT10018 Power, but it’s not necessary. IntroPol goes into so much more depth so students who have done Power are not really at an advantage.

Lectures

Lectures are definitely the worst part of this subject (the review will go uphill after this). There is one 2-hour lecture a week and it was often difficult to sit through the whole thing (the lecture theatre was practically empty after week 4). Lectures were also incredibly content heavy so often the lecturer could not get through all the slides.

The length is the only downside though. Clayton makes the 2 hours more bearable - he asks a lot of questions which makes lectures interactive. He is also one of those absolute legends who do not merely read from the lecture slides.

Tutorials

There is one 1-hr tutorial per week. In tutes we generally went through tutorial readings and discussed key ideas brought up during the lecture. As POLS10003 is mostly a political philosophy subject, there are less heated debates than subjects such as International Politics. Modern politics do still get brought up quite a lot though.

If you are doing POLS10003, try to get John Green as your tutor. He is extremely fair with in-class debates, marking assignments, and brings up a lot of points for all sides and different POVs. Finally, if that doesn't convince you, he takes his entire tute to the pub at the end of the semester.

Assessments

Assignment 1: 500 words, due early on in the semester. For this assignment you are given the writings of two political thinkers and you must discuss their views regarding a particular topic. As an example, I did "Karl Marx vs Thomas Hobbes - What is Human Nature?".

Research Essay: 2,000 words, due around the mid-sem break. Topics are given out quite early, there is a wide variety of topics so you're bound to find one that you like. The topics are quite arbitrary and broad so there are many different ways you can go about them.

Exam: 1,500 words. The exam is split into 3 parts: Part 1 is 3 short responses (150 words each) discussing  3 different political ideas. Part 2 and 3 are longer responses (500 words each) responding to two prompts.

Final Thoughts

Intro to Political Ideas is an amazing unit and it is a perfect introductory subject to the different political ideas and key debates. This subject is an absolute must for anyone thinking of majoring in politics/int'l relations, and I highly recommend it for other students too.

[hums_student]

Subject Code/Name: ANCW20025 Archaeology of the Roman World

Workload: 
   - 1 x 1.5 hour lecture per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - 2 x 2,000 word research essays [90%]
   - Oral presentation [10%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: Nope

Textbook Recommendation: N/A. Readings made available online.

Lecturer(s): Gijs Tol (pronounced 'high-zz')

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: H1 (93)

Comments:

Roman archaeology is a very small subject (in 2019, there were a total of 27 people) and there is also a higher proportion of mature-age students compared to other subjects, which makes it quite an interesting class.

Lectures

Lectures are 1.5 hours long and are run weekly by the subject coordinator Gijs (which is pronounced with exactly none of those letters). As it's a small subject (in 2019, there were 27 people), most lectures are very empty, which leaves a great amount of room for discussion. Lectures are quite interactive and Gijs usually leaves 15-20 minutes at the end for questions each week.

In week 6, the lecture is run by a guest lecturer who talks about how Roman archaeology was used by Fascist Italy in the 1920s-1930s. Other than that, the content is very much based in ancient times.

Tutorials

Due to the size of the subject, Gijs runs both tutorials. Tutes are very much discussion based, and unlike lectures, which generally only focus on historical aspects, tutes also look at political/social/ethical aspects of archaeology, so there is more of a focus on the present-day.

In week 5, there is a prac held in the Object-Based Laboratory in Arts West where we get to examine authentic Roman-era coins to try and date them. This is the only practical aspect of this subject.

From week 8 onwards, tutorials are dominated by individual presentations of our 2nd research essay topics. Each presentation goes for 10 minutes, with an additional 5-10 minutes of question time, feedback, and discussion.

Assessments

There are two assessments in this subject, which are two 2,000 word essays, one due in week 8 and another due early in the exam period. Each is worth 45%. The final 10% comes from your tutorial presentation.

For the first essay, you must choose from the prompts given, but for the final one due during the exam period, you come up with your own topic and it can be about literally anything as long as it relates to Rome. The tutorial presentation (which weighs 10%) is on your final research essay.

Final Thoughts

On the whole I thought Roman Archaeology was an amazing subject. There was a good balance between archaeology, history, and present day applications. It’s a small subject so classes are very interactive and you receive very detailed feedback for assessments.

[hums_student]

Subject Code/Name: ECON10003 Introductory Macroeconomics

Workload: 
   - 2 x 1 hour lectures per week
   - 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week

Assessment:
   - 2 x multiple choice tests [5% each]
   - 2 x group assignments [10% each]
   - Final Exam [60%]
   - Tutorial Participation [10%]

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture.

Past exams available: There's about 20 past exams on the library website. Only the 2016, 2017, and 2018 exams are relevant to the current course (as of 2019 semester 2) and they are the only ones which also have answers.

Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Macroeconomics by Ben Bernanke, Nilss Olekalns and Robert Frank.
Both 4th and 5th edition are fine for this unit.

Lecturer(s): Lawrence Uren, Nahid Khan

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating: 2 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Pass (53)

Comments:

Introductory Macroeconomics is compulsory for all Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Arts (Economics) students, so if you are reading this, chances are you don’t have much of a choice with picking this subject. If you are looking for a breadth subject, please note that Intro Macro has ECON10004 Introductory Microeconomics as a prerequisite.

Lectures

There are two 1hr lectures a week, and covers four main topics:
   • Keynesian Model
   • AD-AS Model
   • Economic Growth & the Solow-Swan Model
   • International Economics

I was in Lawrence's stream, he's a pretty great lecturer with a good sense of humour. I've never been to Nahid's lectures, but from going through both of their annotated slides, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference apart from the fact that Lawrence writes more legibly.

Tutorials

Tutes go for one hour each week and cover contents from the previous week. In each tute, there will be a worksheet which you will be given time to attempt yourself before the tutor goes through the solutions.

Each week there is also pre-tutorial work uploaded on the LMS which must be completed before the tute. Most tutors are quite relaxed with checking to see if you have done it, but it does account for 10% of your overall grade.

Assessments

Multiple Choice Tests: There are two online MC quizzes throughout the semester, the first one was in week 4 and the other in week 11. Both are worth 5% each and have 15 questions with 30 minutes to complete them.

Group Assignments: There are two group assignments, the first was due around week 6 and the other in week 10. They were worth 10% each and you could work in groups of up to 3 students from your tutorial. The assignments were incredibly short, but requires quite a lot of detailed explanations. The word limit for both were 1,000 words.

Exam: The exam is worth 60%, it has 60 marks and goes for 2 hours with 15 minutes reading time. There's 15 multiple choice questions (1 mark each), and 3 larger questions worth 45 marks in total.

Final thoughts

I found Intro macro to be quite a challenging subject even though the common consensus is that it is better than intro micro. To compare the two, macro has a much heavier emphasis on theory while micro has a bit more maths. I wouldn’t recommend taking macro if you are looking for a good breadth option. For a commerce subject, it's really not that applicable unless you plan to become a policymaker in the future.

[M909]

Subject Code/Name: ECON30011 Environmental Economics

Workload: 2 × 1 hour lectures, 1 × 1 hour tutorial (Generally per week, however 3 tutorials were replaced with presentation sessions in week 8, 9 and 10)

Assessment:
Presentation (8 minute limit), 15%
Assignment, 25%
2 Hour Multiple Choice Exam, 60% (Hurdle Requirement)

Lecture Capture Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture, but sometimes difficult to hear, especially audience discussions

Past exams available:  One mock exam, covering the first half of the semester to give you an idea of what to expect.

Textbook Recommendation:  Environmental and Natural Resource (11th ed) by Tietenberg and Lewis. I bought it because I was very interested in the content and would ideally like to apply it in a future career, but definitely not necessary to have.

Lecturer: Veronika Nemes

Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2019

Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 (now I know I've passed ), but feel this could vary greatly depending on what you're hoping to get out of it.

Your Mark/Grade: H2B

Comments: Overall, I found the content of this subject really fascinating to learn about, and really felt I got something out of taking it. Probably wasn't perfectly organised, but understandable given a new coordinator took over this year, so should only improve from here. It had a fairly small cohort size (around 65) and discussions were highly encouraged in lectures, giving it somewhat of a more intimate feel (if you attended). Ultimately, I'd only recommend this subject if you're actually interested in environmental problems. Don't take it thinking it sounds like an easy elective/breadth because it's definitely not.

Lecture topics were:
-Economic Approach to Environmental Problems (market failures and policy instruments)
-Economics of Pollution Control
-Global Air Pollution (Ozone Layer and Climate Change)
-Electricity Generation Policies
-Energy (Natural gas, oil, nuclear)
-Recyclable Resources
-Transport
-Fisheries
-Land Use, Conservation, and Biodiversity
-Water

Lectures:
LOTS of information to absorb for each lecture. Ideally you should be keeping up and reviewing consistently (I didn't do this, it caused stress in the exam period!). That being said, Veronika obviously really knew her stuff having worked in the industry, and I always found lectures very interesting. Audience participation strongly encouraged, as mentioned above. Grey non-examinable slides were also provided for interest.

Tutorials:
Also pretty interesting. The class would go through a problem set you'd have access to beforehand (sometimes with solutions), similar to standard economic tutorial questions. Also some discussion based questions, and we'd sometimes work on the questions in groups. While actual calculation based questions are not required for the MC final exam, most tutorial questions were still relevant/needed for the exam.

Presentation:
A lot of freedom was given in choosing your topic, as long as too many people weren't doing the same thing. You're given the choice between 3 presentation "types", academic, policy or pub, and can choose any "environmental economics" problem. A clear rubric was given, so getting a good mark was very doable with sufficient practice. The key point was to "extend"/add your own contribution and linked to/use the lecture content. Apart from your own, the other presentation sessions were optional to attend.

Assignment:
Required a good amount of effort (given it is 25%), but I enjoyed it overall and it wasn't too difficult. Some questions were similar to tutorial stuff and required graphs, calculations ect. Reviewing tutorial solutions helped here. There were also more open-ended type questions, requiring your own interpretations/opinions. Surprisingly the open-ended questions weren't too hard to score well in as long as you gave it your best attempt and linked the lecture concepts.

Exam:
Despite being MC, this was NOT an easy exam. 33 questions, each with between 3 to 14 possible answers (usually around 8 or so? but I didn't really pay attention to the "average" number of possible answers in the exam). Some answers could be easily crossed off, but for others it was quite difficult to choose between the remaining few choices, and you really had to know the details of the lecture and tutorials content. Based on my score, I think some scaling occured as I was kind of worried I failed the hurdle here. But based on my experience, one should be fine if they give it their best effort to learn the content.

[huy8668]

Subject Code/Name: MAST30026 Metric and Hilbert Space 

Workload:  3 lectures + 1 tutorial weekly

Assessment:  3 assignments, together worth 20% of the final marks.

Lectopia Enabled:  No. The lecturer insteads pre-recorded them and uploaded them on YouTube.

Past exams available:  Yes one exam from 2018. This is a new subject.

Textbook Recommendation:  Nope

Lecturer(s): Daniel Murfet

Year & Semester of completion: 2019 Semester 2

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Wow bro, hold your horses man? Jk jk, marks are discussed later, please keep reading

Comments:
   Briefly on what the subject is about
The motivation of the subject is that we don’t really know what space is. Most of the time, we think of space as \(\mathbb{R}^3\)or maybe \(\mathbb{R}^4\) if you include time. As it turns out, this notion of space is incomplete and is wrong in certain cases. However, some concepts in \( \mathbb{R}^3\) makes sense, like how we can measure distance on it or how we can “add” points together. Such fundamental concepts can be generalised and from such, we create different types of “spaces”. Thus, this subject is really just about studying these new kinds of spaces that we’ve defined.
    Content
The main topics about spaces covered include

• - Space which we can measure distance from one person’s location to another (metric space)
• - Space which we study what happens “near” a person (topological space)
• - Spaces with walls, in which you can only fit a finite number of people (compact space)
• - Space where everyone is separated from one another (hausdorff space)
• - Space which we look at people’s movements, particles’ trajectories (functional space)
• - (A revisit of) spaces which we can measure angles and distance and add points together (inner product spaces)
• - Space where we have a leader and everyone is given a ranking, based on this leader (normed space)
• - Spaces in which is home to all families where we believe here that everyone in the family should stays together (Banach space)
• - A combination of the above spaces, the big boss space (Hilbert space)

Some applications/tools topics include

• - Isometries
• - Banach’s fixed point theorem
• - Stone-Weierstrass theorem
• - Integral pairs
• - Symmetry dictates spaces

   

    Skills required to do well in the subject
Some minimal and necessary (but not sufficient) skills/knowledge to do well in this subject
   

• - You’ll be required to know your MAST20022 Group Theory and Linear Algebra content quite well. More specifically, basic results about groups and especially quotient groups
• - You’ll need to be in full command of \(\epsilon - \delta\) types of proofs. For example, know how to find the appropriate \(\delta\) given an inequality.
• - Know your sequences, Cauchy sequence definitions well. For example, how can a Cauchy sequence not converge?
• - Be able to work with definitions to come up with a proof. For example, you won’t always be able to use your intuition to come up with proofs. It is required that you can use ideas provided in lectures as well as work with definitions to come up with a proof.

    Lecturer
As a lecturer, Daniel is very passionate and understand the subject at an extremely deep level. After all, this is his field. You can pretty much just mention any problems from the notes or any part of a proof and he’d be able to recognise it on the spot and help you with it. He knows his notes extremely well.
As a person, Daniel is very humble, calm and down to earth kind of guy. He is also a very good listener. He’d patiently listen to your question and answer them, not just jump straight to conclusion and assume what you’re asking.
You’ll definitely like Daniel as the lecturer.
   Lectures
Although the pace within the lecture is nothing out of the ordinary, you’ll likely find that the rate at which content is introduced is incredibly fast and that’s because in some sense, it is. A lot of people will say that this is due to the immense about of content in the subject. Personally however, looking back, it was not the volume of content that made this subject so fast for me. It was more that I was not used to thinking about this kind of stuff. Thus, each unit of content required a lot more time to process and while I’m still trying to understand one concept, another one which is built on it has already been introduced.
To do well, I think one just has to grind and devote time to the subject. Over time, you’ll improve and grow as a mathematician, during which you’ll find the subject much more manageable.
Daniel also mentioned that he witnessed how students go through a journey throughout this subject and change, as a mathematician.
Bottom line is, there’s no big secret, you’ve just gotta grind.
   Tutorials
The tutorials do not follow the traditional format of everyone working on problems in small groups. Instead, they are supplementary lectures that is intended to aid students with the main lecture’s topics.
The tutorials are not examinable unless otherwise specified.
   Assignments
The assignment is generally quite difficult and requires small but ingenious ideas to solve. This is why discussion with friends is so beneficial as bouncing ideas back and forth can really give birth to something completely new.
This year, the assignments got easier as the semester progresses. The first one was a killer and I only managed to get through it thanks to discussing it with a friend of mine who is very dedicated to the subject. The second one was more of a you-need-to-be-careful type of assignment and the last one was not bad at all.
The assignments take time to do so make sure you get to it early.
    Exam
The exam’s difficulty completely depends on how much time you devoted to the subject throughout the semester, especially during the revision period leading up to the exam. As a general rule of thumb, if you’ve done very question in the lecture notes, you’ve got pretty much no problem. Some people even went so far as to claim that you’ll get 90+ for sure if you’ve done all the questions in the notes.
The bulk of the exam is pretty much just problems from the lecture notes or problems very similar to those. There will be at least one proof from lectures that you’ll be expected to reproduce.
In 2018, this is consistent. The exam was 100% problems from the lecture notes + a proof.
In 2019, the lecturer is a bit more creative and made 68.75% of the exam marks just lecture problems + a proof. The other 31.25% were some new stuff. One question was on lecture definitions and coming up with an example, which was worth 12.5%. This was fine in the sense that if you studied the material, you should be able to do most or all of it. The remaining 18.75% was a new question which were not from lectures nor similar to anything found in the lecture notes. I think this question really screwed people. To earn these 18.75%, it is not enough to just know the material well. Instead, you needed to come up with a small but ingenious idea in the heat of the exam which I find to be very demanding. Personally, I think I only managed to solve this problem in this heat of battle out of pure luck. Honestly, I don’t think I could’ve done it again, like ever.
    Final comments
In general, this has been rumoured to be the most difficult undergraduate subject in the department of maths and stats in unimelb. I think it’s certainly lived up to it. The volume of the subject wasn’t not too bad, but the unfamiliar content is really what screws people over.
Now, I don’t have the distribution of marks, so these are just my guesses based on experience and anecdotal evidence. From pass to H3, I think it suffices to know definitions and be able to do assignments with help from friends. For the H2B – H2A range, generally you’ll need to know definitions, be able to follow proofs line by line and be able to do assignments with help from friends. For the 80 – 90, I reckon one needs to know definitions quite well, be able to follow proofs line by line and be able to do assignments completely on your own, with maybe exchanges of ideas with friends. For the 90+, I reckon it’s all the above + ace your assignment marks + but also lots of experience in studying in general. I think two people can spend an equal amount of time on the subject, but one will get a higher score (by about maybe 5 marks?) if that person has more experience in studying, especially maths subjects. In addition, at the 90+ range, the element of luck – something I firmly believe is involved in everything we do – plays a major role in determining whether you’re in the low 90, mid 90 or high 90.
Personally, I lost 1 mark on the assignments, but luck was in my favour on the exam so, thankfully I didn’t make any mistakes, putting myself at 99/100. This would not have been possible without not just lots of luck but also the immense effort I put in during the semester. I only got what I did because of the time and effort I put into this subject. If anybody else spent such an amount of time, they'd do just as well, if not, better than I did.

There was a 100, followed by me then a 97, according to the lecturer.

 

[huy8668]

Subject code/name: MAST30012 Discrete Mathematics

Workload: Weekly tutorial + 3 lectures

Assessment: 3 assignments, worth 20% of the final grade

Lectopia Enabled:  Yes, with screen capture

Past exams available:  1 exam from 2018 with solution. It is a rewritten subject

Textbook Recommendation:  Nothing needed

Lecturer(s): Richard Brak

Year & Semester of completion: 2019

Rating:  5 Out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Bruh, you gotta chill. Jk marks are discussed later, please keep reading

Comments:

Briefly about the subject
Discrete mathematics basically deals with things that can be counted (at most countable sets). It is arguably one of the most manageable level 3 maths subject in unimelb, especially when you get Richard Brak as the lecturer.
For those looking for the most chill third year maths subject in unimelb, I guess you could say that this is the one. The material is not too abstract, and it is somewhat familiar with what we’ve seen in earlier years of mathematics education. In saying that though, to say that you could do well without trying is a gross underestimation of the subject. The volume of the subject is still comparable with some of the difficult subjects like MAST30026 and MAST30020, in my opinion. I think this subject is deceivingly difficult as I’ve heard of people who were very confident with the exam, expecting a 90+ but ended up with low H2B. I suppose you could say that it is an easy subject to pass but still difficult to do well on.


Content
The course is divided into basically 7 parts
Counting stuff (Enumerative combinatorics)
How to walk around places (Lattice paths)
How to putting balls into boxes (Pigeonhole Principle)
Determining whether something is odd or even (Parity argument)
Putting sequences into the coefficients of polynomials (Generating functions)
Interesting sequences and their usage (Fibonacci and Catalan)
Solving sliding puzzles and rearranging stuff (Permutations)


Lecturer
Most of the students’ opinions about Richard Brak that I’ve heard of are extremely positive. The only negative thing I’ve heard of is “when he writes on the board, he covers the writing so I can’t see his writing”.
I’ve been taught by Richard Brak during 2 semesters, one for MAST20026 Real Analysis and one for this subject. In both cases, I found him to be a very good educator. He explains the concepts very well and in-depth, telling you exactly what you need to know for the exam. What’s much better though, is the fact that he constantly reminds you what the terms mean and what the concepts are when he first introduces it to you. It’s something like this: so in DM, the notation is that a k-subset means a subset of size k (it has k elements in it). Here’s how he teaches it to a newbie:
“Here’s a definition: an k-subset is a subset of size k.” *Goes on to explain stuff for 5 minutes* “So then number of k-subsets, which remember that it means a subset of size k, of an n-set, meaning a subset of size n is given by…” *Proceeds to repeat the same sentence again and again until it’s in our brain*
I find this to be very conducive to learning because one’s learning benefits a lot from seeing the same concept over and over again.


Tutorials + assignments
Tutorials and assignments follow the standard format of a mathematics subject at unimelb. Questions are fair and very relevant to the lecture content. They’re pretty much the same as examples provided in the lectures, with small variations. Some are also taken from previous years’ exams. Of course, you’d still have to think about the problem for a while, but you should be able to solve them if you put in some honest effort in studying the subject.


Exam
The bulk of the exam were questions very similar to ones you’d find in assignments and tutorial.  There were no shockingly difficult questions on the exam (unlike many subjects), really, as Richard has been known for making very reasonable exams. The generic advice is that if you’ve studied diligently throughout the semester, you should have no problem dealing with the exam, which is still true.
Both the 2018 and 2019 exams were fair. Richard tried to ask problems on as many topics as possible but unable to ask problems on everything, of course. A question in 2018 was asked again in 2019. There were no trick questions that required you to really think and figure out some tricks.  All questions were pretty much “if you studied, then you can do it” and things you’ve seen before during the semester.


Final comments
A good tip is beware that all material including things from the lecture notes are examinable so if you have time, go through examples and all concepts covered in the lecture notes even if they didn’t make their way onto assignments and exams. I made the mistake of not studying everything and skipping some stuff I thought was not important. To my luck, they had to goddamn appear on the exam and it nearly screwed me over. It took me like 45 mins to figure this 3-mark (out of 100) question out while my friend all did it in like 2 seconds because they’ve seen it in the lecture notes. Thankfully I did fine, lost 1 assignment mark and 1 exam mark, putting myself at 98/100.