NTU 2014/2015 Sem 1 Modules and Comments

This is posted by Lim Min.

Year 2 Semester 1 2014 (24 AUs)

BU8201 Business Finance (3AU) (Gerpe-bm)
Lecturer: Dr. Kong Yoon Kee
Tutorial: Marina Lee
Grading:
Class participation: 5%
Class presentation: 15%
Quiz: 10/10 (20%)
Final (27 Nov 2014, 1700-1900): 60%
Overall Grade: A+

Note for this module, it is best to get a financial calculator or a graphic calculator (It SAVES LOADS of time! Really!). Personally, I used a GC (so I don't have to spend extra $$). Under apps->Finance (the first app for my gc) it has stuff that does exactly what a financial calculator does. I think. (I'm not sure cause I didn't use a financial calculator and I am not sure what exactly can it do, but for this mod, the GC is definitely sufficient.) I refer to this for instructions, but there are plenty of other websites with instructions for you to follow.

I think the lecturer is good. He is humorous, and he gives life lessons. He loves to say stuff outside of recording, e.g. quiz topics. If you miss any of his lectures, it's fine to just watch his recording, although I don't recommend using an earpiece to listen, because he coughs into the mic, which can be pretty loud :P. I heard he has been coughing for 2 years already :/. The notes are pretty self explanatory except for some parts. An interesting quirk of his is, he will say: "please start recording, please start recording" at the beginning, and "please stop recording, please stop recording" at the end of every lecture.

The tutorial teacher is also not bad. Her explanations are rather clear. She wants everybody to do ALL the tutorial questions. So if you don't plan to do the tutorials, don't bother joining her tutorial class. In the first few tutorials, she may just ask your neighbours to help check if you have done your work, but one fine day she may check it herself.

Class presentation is about presenting solutions to tutorial questions (1 or 2), or presenting a summary of that week's lecture. You probably need less than 30mins of preparation (mostly to do the slides). So presentation is easy for this mod. 

Quiz consists of 10 mcq from their ultra large qn bank.

Final paper was ok… so far I have 1 MCQ which is confirmed incorrect. The bad thing about non-math paper especially with all the questions on picking the most correct sentences is that you don't know roughly how many marks you will get after the paper. Final paper is 2 hours, 20 mcq (80 marks) and 3 structured (20 marks). I finished the paper in 1.5hrs.

Here is the link to lectures, tutorials, and some answer. Password is bu8201.

MH3101 Complex Analysis (4AU)
Lecturer: Dr. Le Hai Khoi
Tutorial: Dr. Le Hai Khoi
Grading:
Midterm test: 29/30 (30%)
Final (26 Nov 2014, 0900-1100): 70%
Overall grade: A

Prof Le likes to give a lot of chance to weaker students, it appears. The midterm test was really easy; 8 students scored full marks. I think his lectures for this mod is one of the most useful. His writings, especially those on the whiteboard, explains a lot. Really must go, cannot pon.

The final paper was less straight forward. I still could not believe I did not solve the very standard 25 marks question. I realized it was such a straightforward only after the exam… what in the world was I thinking during the exam?  This is the only paper which I did not manage to complete. Besides the standard 25-mark question and the last 5-mark question, I could only prove one direction in one of the questions… pretty dead… Among all the papers I took this sem, I consider this a killer paper as it was the most challenging :). Surprisingly I ended up getting an A. :D

MH3101 Complex Analysis Past Year Paper Solution. Password is mh3101

MH2500 Probability and Intro to Stat (4AU)
Lecturer: Dr. Thommy Perlinger
Tutorial: Paiseh but don't know his name
Grading:
Midterm test: 23.5/25 (25%)
Quiz 1: 7/7 (7%)
Quiz 2: 8/8 (8%)
Final (1 Dec 2014, 1300-1500): 60%
Overall grade: A+

This tutorial person dresses pretty sloppily and always mumbles to himself. To the extent that on some days, only my 2 friends and I attended his tutorial slot.

Lecture notes are self explanatory. In the worst case, if you don't understand, you can always go watch his recording for that particular part. His lecture is really REALLY slow. Tutorial - go or don't go, seriously I don't think it matters.

The midterm test wasn't trivial but nevertheless I could do the questions. However, I got 1 mark deducted, which I thought was rather unfairly. I stated as a concluding statement given a random variable bla… since the question already states that it was a uniform random variable, but the marker subtracted my 1 mark for not writing the word 'uniform'… :(  odd… but I guess I wasn't that clear. The prof told us the highest score was 25, the mean was 14.54, and the standard deviation was 5.73. The distribution was pretty much symmetric about the mean.

For Quiz 1 and Quiz 2, the teacher doesn't even care if you copy your answers from others. 

The final paper is quite easy, loads of marks are given away freely. It is 2hrs long. I could do all questions and finished the paper in 65 mins.

MH2500 Probability and Intro to Stat Past Year Paper Solution.

MH2401 Algorithms and Computing III (2AU)
Lecturer: Prof Chua Chek Beng
Grading:
Assignment 1: A+ (10%)
Assignment 2: A+ (10%)
Midterm project: A- (30%)
Final group project: (50%)
Overall grade: A

The lecturer is very patient and nice. But I don't really like this mod. It doesn't test your coding skills or thinking skills much. The grading is super picky. One cannot write in point form, cannot have grammar mistakes and when printing, should print in matrix not in sentences because it looks better (then why never say earlier, I got deducted so many marks. :( I am super sian.) A- is average grade for the midterm project… I feel it is more like a presentation mod than a math mod. Especially since everybody can do all the questions. If you can't, you can always ask around. Like that test what?

Assignments and midterm project consist of submitting a report only.

Final group project consists of report and presentation. Presentation happens on the last week of school. The presentation has an individual understanding component where the prof will ask each person individually a question (or 2) during your presentation and you have to answer it. It might be related to your presentation or from his bank of questions generated beforehand. It can range from extremely easy to extremely tough question where you need to ponder quite a while.

After the result's release, my stance changed a little. Final presentation understanding component seems to play a huge role in the grading. My 3 other group mates who got A/A+ for all the assignments and midterm ended up with a B+. Group report we will have the same marks. The only difference is they couldn't answer Prof Chua's question but I could. Seems like a large portion of your marks goes to if you can answer his question or not.

MH2200 Groups and Symmetry (3AU)
Lectuer: Dr. Lim Kay Jin
Tutorial: Raphael
Grading:
Midterm test: 25/25 (25%)
Tutorial participation: 5%
Final exam (5 Dec 2014, 1430-1630): 70%
Additional bonus: 9/10 (+5%)
Overall grade: A+

Lecture notes were from previous year, by Prof Frederique Oggier. He rewrote chapter 7 though. I like his lectures a lot. I can like see the thinking process of the stuff as he goes through it. The only paiseh part is he calls out my name during one of the lectures and another one. Super scary and Paiseh. All because I was pointing at the screen because I could not decipher the words and was asking my friend what that word was. And he asked: "Lim Min is everything okay?" And there was awkward silence, laughter, my weird shouting replies. Hahahahahaha. But thanks Prof Lim for taking notice of me ;).

Raphael is an extremely good TA!! I love the extra questions he gives and the summary he gives in each tutorial. It is like after every tutorial I understood the whole chapter. And more.

Prof Lim says the average mark for midterm test is 10… not sure if he rounds it down or not. But in MAS the mean is always lower than the median it seems. And I think he was quite lenient? I wrote “by eye power” and no marks were deducted. :P. Though there is a very elegant way to show it without eye power.

For final exam Prof Lim likes to stand beside students' tables (to look at their paper perhaps?) At least if he knows you. (This was the case for me and my 2 other friends taking this mod). So when that happens just look up smile at him or stare or just have a short convo. Our convo went something like this:
Me: Prof Lim… the working is so long…… :(:(
Prof Lim: Ya~ Ya~. (In his usual Yaya tone Hahahaha)

As I was not sure how much I can assume to know, I ended up writing a lot (9 pages), possibly one of the most among all the papers I have written. Final is a 2hr paper, I finished it in 1hr 40mins. Questions were not hard, pretty straightforward, but a lot to write. Given Prof Lim's preference for elegance, I think maybe there is no need to write so much. But oh wells~ I wrote that much just in case. 3 questions, 40m, 30m, 30m. I thought for quite a bit for question 3a). It seems his way of setting papers is to set all standard questions and only 1 question that requires a bit more thinking.

He gave an additional bonus 5 marks to be done roughly 24hrs before the final exam to help students improve their marks. 10 mcqs, and everyone will have the same 10 questions. 1 try, and answers will be revealed after submission. So you can actually ask your friends (those who have submitted) for the answers before taking the mcqs.

MH1300 Foundations of Mathematics (4AU)
Lecturer: Prof Chan Song Heng
Tutorial: Prof Chan Song Heng
Grading:
Test 1: 31/30 (15%)
Test 2: 28.5/30 (15%)
Tutorial participation: 5%
Final exam (4 Dec 2014, 0900-1100): 65%
Overall grade: A+

Prof Chan is a very good lecturer. Funny, and very clear teaching. Really very funny hahaha.Too bad I ponned and didn't watch majority of his lectures. This is because after taking the mod Real Analysis… it seems FOM becomes too trivial to even be bothered with. He really planned his lectures well, even the jokes are planned and recycled. And if you notice, one of his fingers has a ring tattoo hahaha. He is a very popular prof amongst the students. 

Presenting 2 questions during the tutorial will secure 5 marks for you.

For the 2 tests, as long as you sit at the correct position and bring your matric card, you will get an extra 1 bonus mark. That's why you can have 31/30.

Test 1: mean 26.5, 3rd quartile 29.5, median 28, 1st quartile 24.5.
Test 2: mean 18.97, 3rd quartile 22, median 18.5, 1st quartile 15.5.

Prof Chan always gives chance for tests. He will upload the past 4 years' questions and solutions. And every year the questions are similar. You have to write very fast during the test as you hardly have time to pause and slowly ponder. Test 1 is 40mins long, Test 2 is 35mins long. For the final exam this year, question 4b was omitted because it was set wrongly.

For final exam, he also uploaded a lot of past year papers, questions etc with solutions. Students are quite spoon fed in this mod. 

Final paper 2hrs long. I could do all questions and finished everything in 1hr 20mins..

CY1203 Linear Algebra and Differential Equation (4AU)
Lecturer: Dr. Le Hai Khoi
Tutorial: Chen Lin
Quiz 1: 10/10 (10%)
Quiz 2: 10/10 (10%)
Quiz 3: 10/10 (10%)
Final (21 Nov 2014, 1430-1630): 70%
Overall grade: A+

I consider Chen Lin a good TA, the demure, gentle, studious type. Be attentive and you can understand everything.

With this mod, I see Prof Le 7hrs a week. His tone can be super funny and cute. We often (deliberately and unintentionally at times) imitate his way of speech: That important~ It can happen that…

I can literally hear his voice sometimes when I was reading his notes hahaha.

Prof Le gives plenty of chance for this mod. The 3 quizzes were easy, so was the final exam.

The final was a 2hr paper, I could do all questions and finished everything in 1hr 20mins.