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HelpICantThinkOfAName:
Time to kick off T2 2021!

Subject Code/Name: ECON3101 - Markets and Frictions (Microeconomics 3)

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

Assumed Knowledge: ECON2101. Be very comfortable with micro 2 and calculus. I'd also recommend having taken ECON2112 and one other third-year micro course before this (behavioural, organisational, or IO)

Assessment:

4x10% homework assignments. Nothing too difficult, just a lot of algebra

4x5% journal entries. These are short 300-500 word journal entries similar to ECON1401, but with more engagement with the course. You can't say "in week 1 we studied x and I found this interesting because...", you have to talk about where the topics discussed fail in the real world, or connect it to some other course, or even to literature (apparently someone related consumer theory to Dostoevsky???)

40% final exam. Nothing too difficult, about the same level of the problems discussed in the tutorials, not quite as hard as the homework quesitons.

Lecture Recordings?  Yes.

Notes/Materials Available:  Full slides. Would recommend having a copy of the Varian textbook handy, always nice to have a second explanation of these topics.

Lecturer: Gautam Bose, 3.5/5. Fairly decent lecturer, with good explanations of the topics. I feel that the lectures towards the end of the course would've benefited from more time.

Year & Trimester of completion: 2021/T2

Difficulty: 3.75/5 for the whole course

Overall Rating:  3/5.

Your Mark/Grade: 86 HD

Comments: This course is a marked improvement over micro 2, but also suffers from some similar failings. Namely the lack of examples done in lectures and tutorials. This time the lectures went much more in-depth with the material than micro 2 did, so it was never really a problem until later into the term, where it would've been nice to have some more concrete mathematics shown. If you like micro or are planning on taking economics honours, this is a course that you can't miss.

fun_jirachi:
Subject Code/Name: MATH2901 - Higher Theory of Statistics

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

Assumed Knowledge:
MATH1231 or MATH1241 or MATH1251 or DPST1014 (or, in program 3653, MATH1131 or MATH1141

Assessment:
5% Mobius Quiz
15% Assignment
20% Midterm
60% Final Exam

Lecture Recordings?
Yes

Notes/Materials Available:
Lecture slides, R manual, course formula sheet, tutorial questions are provided and sufficient

Textbook:
Above materials

Lecturer(s):
Dr Donna Mary Salopek

Year & Trimester of completion:
21T2

Difficulty:
3/5

Overall Rating:
0.5/5 (down from pre-exam 2 because of the exam)

Your Mark/Grade:
80 DN

Comments:
Wanted to do this first while I'm still a little bit mad, don't want to waste energy later getting mad again.

If a course's saving grace and only salvageable positive is the course content, you're doing something wrong. It's a prized asset that should ideally make courses great. Unfortunately, that was the case for this particular course. I want to stick to slagging off the course but it's really tough to do without putting my toe across the line, so I'm going to stick to two main issues:

Problem 1: Assessments
A potential final with a portion on Mobius? That angers me and a lot of the students (from the little I have heard). (also the reason why the 2/5 rating remains tentative). This also comes after the uproar surrounding the midterm on Mobius. While some of my problems with the midterm include some self-sabotage marks wise, it's tough to objectively ignore the associated issues with a) demonstration of knowledge and b) results distribution.

Problem 1a) Mobius is such a reductive platform that is good only for quizzes that were basically free marks anyway. For actual demonstration of what you've learned, it's genuine garbage. For maths, you need to show thought processes and working out, which was only available on one question in the midterm. Hearing that it will likely compose a part of the final pisses me off a lot. Again, the platform is reductive as hell and marks a huge departure from in person exams. The best way to mimic these and allow to you use the skills taught in each course is to have moodle submissions of pictures of your work (which literally every other course uses; I've done this in every maths course after math1a/1b (admittedly only two) and it is so much better).

Problem 1b) This is somehow worse than problem 1a). We were told we weren't allowed to review our midterm because a) questions were going to be reused in later course offerings and b) it wouldn't have helped us learn anyway. If there's anything I've learned in general from school, it's that everyone learns differently. Not even getting the choice to review our midterm and instead having the choice made for us was nothing short of bullshit. I don't even know where I screwed up (and I screwed up heavily, as mentioned). I wanted to improve by looking at my mistakes and making sure I document them so as not to make them again, this is impossible because of the aforementioned situation. It's also telling that I'm still fuming about this three weeks after the midterm.

Problem 2: Exam practice
I am also still fuming about the lack of exam practice usually provided by other mathematics courses. While I get that the onus is on the student to prepare, I don't think it equates to poring over lecture slides and a completing a painfully limited set of tutorial problems which you can only do so many times. The wishy-washy excuse for not being given past midterms and finals was 'the questions will be different, it won't be relevant anyway'. Again, the part that irks me is that the student was not allowed to make the choice as to whether this practice would be beneficial or not (which personally, it is, practicing concepts makes them click more intuitively). Applying concepts proves you've learned them, when little or no such opportunity presents itself it's hard to justify to yourself that you've learned anything at all. It's just been a frustrating ride overall, only the cool content has really salvaged anything, at least I can say it definitely had me paying attention.

A lot of these issues can be attributed to the administration of the course, so hopefully the course itself remains unsullied if the administration improves. There is plenty more I can delve into but won't because it's not pertinent to the course itself and rather the way it was taught. Like many courses I've reviewed previously, stick around just for the content, but you'll really have to stick it out. Unfortunately it's a key course for mathematics, so I can't not recommend it - but if it was avoidable I wouldn't take it in its current state.

Post-final edit: The only creditable aspect of the course was that the final had a better format than expected ie. file submissions.  That is the only part which I will give any credit for (the relevant pre-exam criticism can be rescinded). It should still be noted that Mobius file submissions have limitations on filenames and is in general clunkier than a Moodle submission (personal preference only). However, the organisation of the final was still disastrous. Key edits to the paper (for example a probability distribution function that wasn't actually a probability distribution function) came frustratingly late and forced me (and I presume at least a few other students, if not more) to lose time both fixing my answers to reflect the edits and on other questions since I had to fix my answers. It's telling that I wasn't surprised by this, nor the fact that there were no immediate concrete concessions made to alleviate potential losses. I quote: 'No one will be penalized if you did not see the corrections', which sounds to me like errors that reflected the original paper on the questions that had typos were not penalised, but other questions would be; hence, the second point I make (about losing time on other questions by altering answers to reflect corrections) was not accounted for by any publicly announced concession. While the exam was more than doable, the organisation of it was essentially a microcosm of the course as whole.

fun_jirachi:
Subject Code/Name: MATH2601 - Higher Linear Algebra

Contact Hours:
1 x 1 hr tutorial
Prerecorded lectures ~ 3-4 hours in length weekly.

Assumed Knowledge:
MATH1231 or MATH1241 or MATH1251 or DPST1014, each with a mark of 70 or higher

Assessment:
2 x 6% Mobius Quizzes
2 x 15% Class Tests
1 x 10% Assignment
48% Final

Lecture Recordings?
Yes

Notes/Materials Available:
Lecture slides, past class tests, practice tutorial set, past finals, weekly tutorial problems

Textbook:
None, the above is sufficient

Lecturer(s):
Dr John Steele

Year & Trimester of completion:
21T2

Difficulty:
3/5

Overall Rating:
3/5

Your Mark/Grade:
83 DN

Comments:
It's really hard to screw up a course like this, which makes the above review somewhat more scathing. The assessment structure was exactly what you'd like (can't complain really, any Mobius element was supposed to be free marks, which works for most people), class tests actually testing people. The course content makes you go 'oh, that's pretty cool' occasionally but often regresses to a love/hate dichotomy. In a lot of ways, I could get away with copy-pasting the first paragraph of review from last term on MATH2111. Also, while the prerecorded lectures allowed for flexibility, they were often really dry. There's not really a lot to say since this is a compulsory course and was definitely a stock standard maths course. Special shoutout to David Angell who took my tutorial, absolute treasure to UNSW maths and stats and made the experience that much better :)

fun_jirachi:
Subject Code/Name: COMP3121 - Algorithms and Programming Techniques

Contact Hours:
2 x 2hr lectures

Assumed Knowledge:
Prerequisite: COMP1927 or COMP2521

Assessment:
4 x 10% Assignments
60% Final

Lecture Recordings?
Yes

Notes/Materials Available:
Lecture notes, slides, exercise set for each topic (with solutions)

Textbook:
Kleinberg and Tardos: Algorithm Design
Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein: Introduction to Algorithms

Lecturer(s):
Dr Aleksandar Ignjatovic

Year & Trimester of completion:
21T2

Difficulty:
2.5/5

Overall Rating:
4.5/5

Your Mark/Grade:
93 HD

Comments:
Will start by praising the lecturer who made lectures worth showing up to - personable, clear, appropriate amounts of detail for literally everything.

As for the course itself, it was a great course! Probably one of the most useful courses I've taken to date. Course content and the course itself were really well set out and I don't recall ever being lost. While I can have my complaints about the course forum, that's about where the complaints stop. The assessments were relatively chill and the workload was comparatively low; any stress I had with this subject was due to other subjects having assessment due dates converging, and was not as a result of this subject alone. What feedback I got on assignments was valuable, and the tutorial questions covered most variations of concepts taught, with good solutions that explained pretty much everything. It's impossible not to come away from this course having learned nothing of value, and having not enjoyed it (with the caveat of some engagement). While some students can claim to have been confused at one point with the content, the administration of the course is something I feel cannot be complained about, everything ran smoothly. Any enjoyer of COMP2521 should definitely take this course, as should any other interested party :)

Opengangs:
Subject Code/Name: COMP3153 - Algorithmic Verification / COMP9153- Algorithmic Verification (postgraduate equivalent)

Contact Hours:
- 2 x 2 hour live lecture.
- 1 x 1 hour tutorial.

Assumed Knowledge:
The official pre-requisite is MATH1081. Recommended courses to take before COMP3153: COMP2111 and/or COMP4141.

Assessment:
Original assessment schedule (see comments):
- 4 x assignments (2 x 15%, 2 x 10%)
- Final exam (50%)

Lecture Recordings? Yes.

Notes/Materials Available: Lecture slides are sufficient.

Textbook:
A list of texts can be found at the end of each week's slides for further reading.

Lecturer(s):
- Lecturer: Dr. Paul Hunter

Year & Trimester of completion: 2021, Term 2

Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Rating: 2.5/5

Your Mark/Grade: 85 HD.

Comments:
In short, the course was a huge interest booster marred by poor management by the administration team.

This course serves to be the more practical side of theoretical computer science course. The original plan was to be introduced to a range of verification model checkers, such as SPIN/Promela, nuSMV, and SLAM/CBMC which helps to verify algorithms to solve different tasks (including satisfiability and LTL model checking). The theory of the course introduces students to concepts in modern day static analysis and logic in time (temporal logic), which is crucial to algorithmic verification (hence, the name of the course).

The theory was interesting and has definitely been one of the better computer science courses as far as the content goes. Although there wasn't a lot of mathematical concepts, I found myself enjoying the study on topology of behaviour spaces and found that engaging. The assignments weren't too hard and it definitely helped grasp the concepts of the course a lot better.

However, this course has been a nightmare to manage and study for. Assignments were released late, tutorial problem solutions weren't released at all (or at least, they were released extremely late). As a result, assignment marks were released extremely late. Assignment 1 marks were released a few hours before the extended census date - even then, I had to email Paul himself to see where he's up to in terms of marks. To give a taste for how late assignments were released, assignment 3 was meant to be released in week 8. However, delays happened and it was released around the end of week 10 and due on Wednesday of STUVAC week. I am sympathetic to the fact that this is Paul's first time lecturing this course (after Liam's departure) and I have no doubts that the next few offerings will be better.

With the way that assessments have been laid out, there has been a massive overhaul in the distribution of assessments. Assignment 4 (still yet to be released as of writing this review) is now optional, while the previous three assignments have been scaled accordingly. If you were to do assignment 4, then Paul will consider the final marks with and without assignment 4 and take the maximum of the two.

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