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livingbutamireally · 4 years

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AY2019/2020 Y1S1 Module Review

AY2019/2020 year 1 semester 1 review

Started school around august after orientation camp in july, and had to study after doing nothing for months after a levels and finally had the taste of the rigour of this major.. semester 1 went by too quickly..

Modules taken this semester:

CS1010S

MA1101R

MA1521

BT1101

GER1000

CS1010S Programming Methodology (Python)

Prof: Ben Leong

Exam Dates: 2 Oct (Midterm) / 16 Nov (Practical Exam) / 27 Nov (Finals)

Weightage:

Coursemology – 25% (25%)

Participation – 5% (5%)

Midterm test – 15% (-)

Practical exam – 15% (20%)

Final assessment – 40% (50%)

(those in brackets are for those taking alternative final)

S in CS1010S is for science students, most students are either science students (DSA/ Life Science plenty) or BZA students.

Overall this module easily had the highest workload compared to other modules, having to rush missions every week, complete tutorials (this is pretty standard duh) and lecture trainings before deadlines for bonus points on a gamified platform. One could sit at their table wracking their brains for the whole day and still not be able to come up with a feasible code, or have their codes stuck with some bugs and not knowing how to continue. Really, without the help from fellow friends this module would be hard to get through. Luckily my TA was kind (and patient!) enough to explain such that my brain could get it. Ended up having to IP this module sadly… This module really requires your wholehearted devotion and really tests your patience i must say, especially for people who are not too intellectually inclined (aka me)..

They introduced a new scheme this semester aka Alternative Final, meaning you get to retake your midterm and finals by tabao-ing it into the next sem except you do your finals during the recess week instead of the finals, kinda like a half-retaking a module? Your grades for finals are IP-ed (in progress) rather than letter grades and the finals and midterms will be accounted for in the following half a semester albeit under different weightage components.

They said its a introductory module, but …………..

This year’s practical exam was particularly hard i think i had friends (even the zai ones) getting single digit marks… banked full in on the Method of Life question (Q5) of finals which is a giveaway question asking you how you can apply the concepts to other parts of your life and your main take-aways from taking this module (filled up the whole page and got full marks for it 4m) without this question i would have failed the paper..

Now i have to work hard the next sem… its kinda sad for us BZA students because CS1010S is a prerequisite for those wanting to take BT2101 and CS2030/2040 modules in the following semester (y1s2). Future students (esp BZA) please take the advice to consider this when deciding whether to IP…. because guess who didnt and regretted not thinking deeper…..

Ah one more thing to take note is the weightage is quite different for those IP/ alternative final people, theres higher weightage for the papers :_D

Ben Leong is a pretty good lecturer, hes solid in delivering concepts except my brain may be a little too slow for him.. Theres also lecture videos online that you can refer to and thousands of papers (with solutions!!) waiting for you to do.. something uncommon for many modules i heard? also, you get to see your final (scanned) paper through a website, in ben leong’s words “how cool is that?” he also uploads the mark scheme for your reference which is pretty cool imo. He’s a very interesting lecturer.

MA1521 Calculus for Computing

Prof: Leung Pui Fai

Exams: No midterms, just an online quiz (4 questions, most get full marks for), and the finals

Weightage: cant really rmb the weightage but i think its 40-60? i think tutorial attendance isnt graded..

They said this was just a repeat of H2 maths with more stuffs well boy i must say this wasnt as easy as they said.. okay maybe for me, ive always struggled with maths for a really long time. Surprisingly got a B for H2 Maths, i got a B3 for O levels really the blemish in my results. Got a B- for this module. Many people will say this is an easy module, you can trust them a little different in my shoes i guess. I didnt turn up for lectures for the half part of the semester since he talks a bit too slowly so i just watch the webcast sped up. But being a procrastinator i’m really behind on webcasts by the time the exams came.. i think i spent too much time on CS1010S and its still not enough.. if you dont have the discipline to watch them religiously at home, i would suggest you go for the lecture even though he may talk abit slowly but it forces you to not miss out on them. I dont really had the time (is it i wonder?) to do the tutorials either so i was also behind on them.. most of the time i just sat for tutorials and took the answers down to only work on them many weeks later (much regrets) so i didnt really understood what was going on as the TA went through. please dont be like me… the recess week was for sure not enough to revise/ learn all the content for all your mods for both midterms/finals so please dont be lazy like me…. this is the suffering i brought upon myself TT

Overall i think. it is not that hard a mod if you do your work consistently.. things got a little confusing towards the end i heard they dropped a whole chapter this semester glad they did.

MA1101R Linear Algebra I

Prof: Wang Fei

Weightage:

Finals (28 Nov, 2h)— 60%.

Mid-term test (4 Oct, 2h)— 20%.

3 homework assignments (4% per assignment) — 12%.

An in-class Lab (MATLAB) quiz — 8%.

This was one of my most hardest period in my life and i say this on PERIODT. As if maths wasnt tough enough, this will really declare a survival of the fittest among your remaining brain cells. Friends told me maths came into their dreams… pls extinguish my soul. You must be thinking i am crazy for wanting to take 2 math mods in a sem right? ?

Yeahh no one really does that but it was my idea because i didnt want to do maths together with all the core core mods (BT and CS) next sem so i decided ah i should just get maths over and done with ( hAH real joke bc i couldnt clear CS1010S and i cant take 2k level mods for BT and CS and unlocked clown outfit because theres one more ST2334 core mod that involves probability and stats so much for thinking i will be over and done with for dealing with maths– someone tell me why did i choose this major again?)

Somehow along the way i realised the bell curve for this was surprisingly high i think those who chose this mod intend to delve even deeper in mathematics, mayhaps i joined the wrong major. The R in MA1101R actually stands for rigorous i didnt realise until my friend read the fine prints in the SOC Course Curriculum for BZA or sumn. Pure hell. There are 3 homework assignments (graded mind you) and most of the students get around 50++/60 i think i was the one of the rare few who flunked quite badly and always eyeballed by my TA (who is a prof for some 3k or 4k level maths, not for this mod though). I approached him for consults and for help and he was nice enough to sit me down and explain slowly. He’s pretty good at explaining slowly although he’s pretty fast in class (and most of the semester i had close to ZERO idea what was going on in class for pretty much most of the mods). Shockingly managed to pull out a C from my butt. The intellect of the students are no joke.. Homework assignments are every 3 weeks starting week 6 i think (so week 6, 9, 12) and i think are there to make sure you catch up with the work.

Oh lectures-wise, i sat for ½ of his classes, i really absorb almost nothing.. the rest of the lecture hall seem to get it though or so it seems. so i stopped attending my own lectures to watch the webcast for Prof Victor Tan too. His webcasts/lectures are really popular and it really owe it to his teaching, apparently he taught Wang Fei before and of course had over ten more years of experience. WF’s lecture turn-outs are comparatively less compared to VT. And on panopto (webcast platform) i think it was almost always 360++ views for VT as compared to a 80++/ was it 30++ for WF if i recall correctly. VT slides are also more concise and simple to understand where as WF’s ones are similar to the textbook. You are also required to purchase a textbook for this module costs around $20 from the co-op store in science and i urge you to purchase it asap when the profs announce they are made available bc they run oos quite fast.. the tutorial questions are from the textbook and the textbook is very simple and straightforward and put together by some of the lecturers/profs in school.

BT1101 Introduction to Business Analytics

Prof: Dr Sharon Tan, Desmond Ong

Weightage:

1. Online Quiz & Datacamp Assignments — 7%

Tutorial 1-4 — 8%

Tutorial 5 onwards — 15%

In-class Assessment (Written) — 10%

Practical Assessment — 20%

Final Assessment — 40%

In class assessment is held 2ish weeks after your midterms week so its kinda like your midterms?

Mm i would say this module is the most ?? its hard to put in words but if you read up the confessions page (NUSwhispers) regularly you would see many complaints that the mod is structured not as neatly as CS1010S its quite here and there everywhere and personal opinion, sometimes i dont know what i am supposed to learn but i guess its like that? The profs seem to value not wanting to spoonfeed and us learning on our own and stuff like that. I heard the mod was much harder in previous years and they simplified it a lot compared to in the past (which i really thank god) but its still a bit ?? They split it into two halves, first half of the sem is taught by Dr ST (Descriptive Analytics) and the next half by DO (Prescriptive and Predictive Analytics).

There are online videos to be watched every week even though you get lectures once every 2 weeks when Dr ST teaches and tutorials to be submitted to your TAs that are graded only after about 6/7 weeks. They leave comments (½ sentences someitmes shorter) and your marks received and thats about all so you dont really know where you went wrong since they are not marked paper and pen way. The tutorials are coding exercises for questions using the R language. They also used Datacamp to drill some of the basics of R for a headstart. Her workshop style lectures are a lot of on the spot learning how to code and stuff which i lag behind a bit because she goes a bit fast in order to cover everything. We learn new content via the online videos that we have to watch every week and theres quizzes for them too weekly iirc.

The next half by DO had no online videos (great!! and no quizzes!!) but weekly lectures and graded tutorials are due every 2 weeks(!!). There are still weekly tutorials but its only graded for every 2nd one, wow this saved me a lot of time phew. I didnt get to do the tutorials for those that are not graded but read through the questions so that i get a gist of whats going on, and somehow i really dont have the time to do it? CS1010S really absorbed a large chunk of my time cries. Finals was a oK it was not that bad i think. There are 20 MCQs and then about 4 structured questions? Closed-book with 1 A4 sheet cheatsheet.

Oh and the bad part about the tutorials are the tutors wont provide you with the model answers/codes so you’re really just on your own. You either get it or nah. :_D

GER1000 Quantitative Reasoning

Weightage:

1. Tutorial — 10%

2. 10 Weekly Quizzes — 20%

3. Project —35% (Presentation 10%, Final Report 25%)

4. Finals (28 MCQs, 2h) — 35%

No lectures so no profs, just weekly online videos and quizzes.

Tutorials are every odd/even weeks depending on the slot you chose.

Groups are arranged by the TAs beforehand.

This was pre-allocated for us so (grits teeth). Honestly a waste of time. One of the mods i neglected till the end to focus on other mods (which was worth it). The workload was manageable, of course (if not how to neglect). Every 2 week you meet together wiht your groupmates to discuss tutorial questions (each group will discuss 1 qn) and every tutorial class ended about 30min earlier. Nearing the end theres a group project report and slides to be done. Report is in the form of QnA so you just answer the questions and slides/ presentation is going through an article of a topic you chose (theres about 10) and you analyse the QR part of it what is good what can be better, etc. Theres also a bit of the stats part with probability and stuff but its a OK. Bell curve steep for finals (40 MCQ, 2h) but most finished in 1h and left the hall, i was one of the few who stayed till the end even though i was just staring at the paper into the depths of my soul for reasons unknown) It’s a lot about experiments not really the scientific/ calculations part of it but understanding about coming up with experiments, the pros and cons of carrying things out a certain way in loose terms something like the art of crafting experiments? makes you think a bit deeper how and what people think and not so dry i guess.

Epilogue

i guess thats a wrap–new semester starts soon :( i think this might be the first module/semester review tumblr blog but i hope this can be of help to anyone, to anyone at all. the owner of many of similar review blogs get really stellar results which i may be too out of league from so i hope this brings comforts to those who are doing not so well and encourage them because im not any different we exist, and we’ll survive.

CARPE DIEM 2020 LETS GEDDIT

#y1s1

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