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Monash University - Subject Reviews & Ratings
TrueTears:
Subject Code/Name: AFC3340 - Options, Futures and Derivatives
Workload: 1 hour tutes per week
Assessment: Within semester assessment: 20% Examination (3 hours): 80%
Recorded Lectures: yes
Past exams available: around 2-3 papers with answers
Textbook Recommendation: read the textbook, options, futures and derivatives by hull 6th or 7th edition
Lecturer(s): not sure didn't go to any lectures
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 semester 2
Rating: 5 of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 99 hd
Comments: Hands down, best undergraduate finance subject at monash -- it is the hardest and most useful finance unit. I suggest people who take up this unit to have a very strong mathematical background, you will be cover lots of mathematical financial theory, eg, option pricing model, black scholes model, futures pricing model etc etc some maths that are involved are stochastic calculus, limits and lots of algebra. The assignments are all done in excel, you will need to program mathematical models and do lots of financial modelling (very important skill later on in the finance industry), the exam is quite hard, with 30 multiple choice questions and 8 long answers, the majority of the exam is mathematical calculations with a tiny bit of theory questions. I HIGHLY suggest reading the relevant chapters in Hull's text in addition to the lecture notes. The explanations and examples provided in the text provide a lot of intuition and will definitely help you understand the concepts better.
Mao:
Subject Code/Name: MTH3060 - Advanced Ordinary Differential Equations
Workload: 3 Lectures + tute
Assessment: Two assignments, hand-in tute questions
Recorded Lectures: Yes/maybe, never understood the fascination about recorded lectures, or lectures in general. Notes are uploaded on blackboard though.
Past exams available: Yes, one.
Textbook Recommendation: Go with the lecture notes
Lecturer(s): Simon Clarke, Paul Cally
Year & Semester of completion: 2011 S2
Rating: 4/5
Your Mark/Grade: HD
Comments: Very rewarding subject. Also one of the most difficult ones I've done. Unlike other applied math units, which tend to be the trivial 'this is the theory, and this is a formula', this subject puts a little more focus understanding the mathematics, such as when certain theorems apply and what conditions are necessary. There are a lot of power expansions, so make sure you like summations and recursive equations and such. The assignments are definitely the hardest I've ever encountered, these are not trivial at all, requires actual thinking, and is very refreshing after years of engineering-esque style of learning.
slothpomba:
Subject Code/Name: Philosophy: God, Freedom and Evil
Workload: 1 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tute. Seriously light workload compared to what im use to.
Assessment:
(according to the handbook):
Expository exercise (1000 words): 20%
Essay: (2500 words): 40%
Exam (2 hours): 40%
According to what i actually did and what is in the unit guide:
1. Expository exercise (500 words) 10%
2. Expository exercise (1000 words) 20%
3. Essay: (1500 words) 30%
4. Exam (2 hours) 40%
Recorded Lectures: Recorded video lectures available.
Past exams available: Not needed. Exam questions are given out at the start of the year in the unit guide.
Textbook Recommendation: The recommended textbook is written by the lecturer. Even though it intends to be a general purpose book on this area, it closely reflects how the course at monash is run or maybe the course reflects how he wrote the book. We'll never know.. It covers all the readings you need with analysis by him. I think it's a not an absolute necessary purchase, you can get it from the library if you need to use it on the odd occasion. It's not a bad book though.
Lecturer(s): Graeme Oppy.
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2011.
Rating: 5/5
Your Mark/Grade: Can't remember.. Credit or Distinction (pretty good considering my essay was like 15 days late)
Comments: Fairly well put together unit. It covers a lot of the main topics in philosophy of religion. It seems to me though, to more focus on the proofs that are most commonly used by believers and non-believers against each other, rather than more abstract philosophical notions. These might be found in the separate philosophy of religion unit but there seems to be a fair amount of overlap.
My tutor remarked she was a believer at the time and the course use to have a few crummy arguments for God and more than a few really good arguments against God. She said it was fairly better now.
Graeme Oppy (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/) is one of the relatively few atheist philosophers of religion, in Australia at least. He seems to be pretty well known in the field, i've personally come across several papers by him and he's been cited a fair few times. As far as im aware he's also head of the philosophy department, so, you're in good hands.
Even as in his other works he seems to focus more on applicable arguments rather than the more abstract.
Workload is very manageable.
I hadn't done any Tertiary level philosophy before but i was very familiar with most of the arguments from my own prior reading and things like that. That said it has no prerequisites and i think most people would be able to manage it, if they're so inclined.
Overall, a good enjoyable unit. Little bit more thin than what i'm use to and i wish it covered more of the arguments but it definitely a well executed summation of all the main issues.
Things covered by week:
Concept of God (Is God all loving, all powerful, all knowing, are these things compatible or possible, ect)
Arguments (What makes a good argument? What makes a logically consistent argument? How to construct arguments, ect)
Ontological Argument: Anselm
Cosmological Argument: Aquinas
Teleological Argument: Paley
Critique of Teleological Argument: Hume
Argument from Scale: Everitt
Pascal’s Wager
Logical Argument from Evil: Mackie (1)
Logical Argument from Evil: Mackie (2)
Evidential Argument from Evil: Rowe (1)
Evidential Argument from Evil: Rowe (2)
eeps:
Subject Code/Name: AFF1000 - Principles of Accounting and Finance
Workload: One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.
Assessment: Assignment (20%), Online quizzes (10%), Tutorial tests (10%), Exam - 3 hours (60%).
Recorded Lectures: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: Yes. Four past exams are available - from the previous two years.
Textbook Recommendation: Carey, P. (Ed.). (2010). Principles of accounting and finance (2nd ed.).
Lecturer(s): Ellinor Allen, Keryn Chalmers, Nigel Morkel-Kingsbury and Axel Schulz.
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Comments: Interesting subject content-wise, however, it can get quite dry at times. Starts off with the basics of accounting and in the later weeks, the lecturers touch on management and financial accounting. The tutorial tests (3 tests) are easy enough if you keep up with the tutorial work; hence buying the textbook would be a good idea because that is where the questions in the tests come from (there are second-hand copies of the textbook). The tests can come up in any week from week 3 to week 11, and they take the best two scores from the three tests. The assignment is broken up into parts A, B and C and isn’t too bad - if you read the textbook, all your answers are in there. The online weekly quizzes should be easy as all the answers are in the textbook again. The exam itself is quite similar to past exams with slight variations in the questions. Only real downside is that the lecturers aren’t that engaging. If you have done VCE Accounting, this unit should be relatively straightforward - however if you haven't, it doesn't really matter because they teach everything from scratch. This unit is also a core unit as part of BBus.
eeps:
Subject Code/Name: BTF1010 - Commercial Law
Workload: One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.
Assessment: Mid-semester test (20%), Online quizzes (20%), Exam - 2 hours (60%).
Recorded Lectures: Yes, with screen capture.
Past exams available: No. Sample exam questions are available though.
Textbook Recommendation: 'Law in Commerce' 4th edition by Brendan Sweeney, Jennifer O'Reilly and Andrew Coleman.
Lecturer(s): Mark Bender.
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1, 2012.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Comments: Thoroughly enjoyable unit. First few weeks touch on the basics of what the law is etc. and then moves onto areas such as consumers’ rights and supply, agency, partnership and company law. The mid-semester test involves chapters 2 and 3 of the prescribed textbook: negligence/ACL and misrepresentation & commercial misconduct. It is open-book and there is one scenario-based question. I think the key to this unit is citing cases and/or legislation to back up your points, and also to look at everything; whether a party has a right of action/defences and the remedies available to the party/parties. The weekly online quizzes can be somewhat tricky as they are not as straight-forward and there are errors in some of the quizzes as noted by the lecturer. The questions in the exam are quite similar to the tutorial questions in the textbook (scenario-based) and the sample exam questions as well. Again, the exam is open-book so you can bring in any notes you like. There is an exam hurdle requirement of 45% to pass the unit. The workload for this unit is very manageable. Overall, I think this unit is a good introduction and look into the different aspects of law and the lecturer isn’t too bad either.
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