NTU 2015/2016 Semester 1 Exam Results and Module Comments

Lim Min's Year 3 Semester 1 Exam Results:

Her 4th consecutive perfect GPA of 5.0. Well done, Lim Min!

Comments by Lim Min (be warned, plenty of Singlish!)

Year 3 Semester 1 2015 (27 AUs)

BU8641 Cultural Intelligence: How to be an Explorer of the World (3 AU) (Gerpe-ls)

Lecturer/Tutorial: Hoo Hui Teng, Thomas Rockstuhl

Grading:

Group Project: 35%

Paper Test (Week 9): 10%

Experiential Learning Journals: 40%

Class Participation: 15%

Overall Grade: S

This mod was done at the hive (south of NTU). If you follow the rubrics for all the assessments and study for the test, I think it is not hard to get A/A+. But then it is really time consuming. Even though I just required a pass, I feel that the amount of effort I put into this is more than other SU modules, as there are so many tasks to be completed.

Class participation is easy to score, since the 4 criteria are: class attendance, punctual completion of surveys, posting of more than 5 posts on facebook and the more subjective contribution of ideas in class.

There are many journals to write, I can’t remember how many, perhaps 5 or 8? But everything should be fine if you follow the rubrics on what to write. I was too lazy to refer to that long rubrics and may have gotten C for majority of them.

There are many exchange students taking this module, and you need to go 2 outings with your group. It could be fun for some people, to make new friends. But after this module ended, I haven’t met up with any of them, unfortunately.

If you just want to SU and clear the gerpe, this mod is a little too time consuming. But if you want an A/A+ for gerpe and have time to spend, or if you just want a fun mod, this mod may be for you.

CZ1005 Digital Logic (3 AU)

Lecturer: Dr Chan Siyin (First half), Dr Lam Siew Kei (Second half)

Tutorial: Dr Chan Siyin

Lab: Jagath C. Rajapakse

Grading:

Quizzes (4 of them): 25% (8/8, 5/8, 6/8, 8/8)

Online tasks: 5% (5/5)

Final exam (20 Nov 2015, 1430-1630): 70%

Overall Grade: A+

Both lecturers are really good, very clear. I didn’t attend or watch any of the lectures. But I watched all the pre-recorded lectures. For this module, I quite like the system where all the pre-recorded lectures (all contents for this module) are uploaded at the beginning. You can take your time to watch them at your own pace, but there is a recommended time to watch them (e.g. which week to watch which video). The real life lectures (there are uploaded recordings of these too) are mostly for recaps only, and maybe some lab info.

The only thing I don’t like about the pre-recorded lectures is that it is so slowwwwwwww (the spoken) and there is no x1.5 or x2 speed button!! (And I can't download it too!!!) I kept falling asleep while watching it :(:(:(.

I think the tutorials are really useful to attend. (I think I skipped 3 of them though, due to various reasons, such as, it is a Friday class, or I had Laos Project fundraising, or sometimes Cryptography module got cancelled and I went home on Thursday instead etc). For this mod, the uploaded answers are not as pretty. It is like tutorial scribbles which you can probably understand better if you attend the tutorials. So the answers are not really printable.

All labs are compulsory, with a 8-mark graded quiz at the end. I can’t believe I lost so many marks for the quizzes. For example, it asked for the 2’s complement representation of +40, I was probably too noob, but I thought they wanted 2’s complement of +40 which is the -40 one. So I typed the 2’s complement representation of -40 instead, which costs me 2 marks. The other 3 marks I guess I "legitly" lost them hahaha.

Final paper was finished in 1hr 50mins. It was okay… but for one of the questions, I was not sure about the order of things in "synchronous always block". It was said that order matters. But then I'm not sure what happens when i do a<=b then b<=a (does this b get the old a or the new a (which is b now). I was tempted to create another register… but then the qn says according to the circuit as shown in the figure which has only 2 registers… so… I decided to wire it outside then. I assumed the synchronous always block will “finish running” before the assign statements get “done” outside, since it is supposed to act like solid wire.

CZ1007 Data Structures (3 AU)

Lecturer: Prof Hui Siu Cheung (First half), Dr Owen Noel Newton Fernando (Second half)

Tutorial: Han Jing

Lab:

Grading:

Lab Test (Week 8): 25% (100/100)

Assignment (Week 13 due): 25%

Final exam (23 Nov 2015, 1300-1500): 50%

Overall Grade: A+

Prof Hui has a Hong Kong accent!! This teacher is super hilarious. One of the few lectures that I can stay awake hahaha. But afterwards I also ponned and watched at x2 speed or faster, or just read the notes. The lecture notes are actually quite comprehensive. Both lecturers seem rather friendly!!

I took this mod because it is a necessary pre-requisite for CZ2001 (and maybe for some other mods I intend to take in the future). But since I already knew quite a bit of the contents for this mod, I could just read the notes, and watch parts of the recordings. It got harder to discern what was said at x2 the speed especially for Dr Owen. But I learned quite a lot from this mod too.

Going for lab and doing the lab worksheets at home is the same though (other than if you don’t know how to do maybe you can go to the lab to ask?). So lab can totally be ponned. Lab quiz is like a giveaway. 4 questions, 1 question from each category A,B,C,D. Before the quiz, he will provide 6 questions from each category. And 1 EXACT question from each category will come out for your lab quiz. So a lot of people got full marks for this.

For the final exam I think the paper was harder than the past 2 sems. (Or any other sems according to other students.) But I like it as there are plenty of thinking questions. Hahahaha. Finished in 1hr 45mins. I was quite stunned at qn 1a) because it's like codes that you will never code e.g. for switch, if I have a continue, does it continue to the end of the switch, or continue the for loop? Since break breaks from the switch and not break from the for loop so perhaps continue continues to the end of the switch? Idk. I assumed it would continue to the for loop. (It can't be that continue and break does the same thing in switch??) And then they just had to put default case before the last case ‘c’. So what, if I switch(‘c’) does it go to the last case or the default case?? I just assumed cases in switch are like jumps. It jumps to that case. And the 5 marks qn to correct the code. Was I supposed to find 5??!! I didn't. I find 2 confirm and 1 possibly. But other than these qns… I think it's okay.

This paper quite paiseh as I asked the both profs 1 qn each. 1 because he didn't have k=0 as initialization for one of the question. But ya, he said it was possible to code to handle it, so ya, I realise you can code it to handle it in later parts of the code. Sorry for making you walk all the way to my table Prof Hui! The other one was the qn state “remove node” of the binary search tree then do some transversal. So I was quite stunned, because I was like what am I supposed to do after removing??!! I can't transverse a broken tree right?!!! So I asked Prof Owen Noel Newton Fernando (I don't know what's his name/surname hahaha, they all look like possible names) if I should remove the entire subtree, he said “No, I mentioned it in lecture, did you attend the lecture?”. I was so paisehhhh to say I didn't go and I hardly watched the recording. So my brain started recalling the notes and I got it, so I said: “oh, you mean like fix the binary tree after removing?”, he said ya. On hindsight it's like so duhhh right??  You remove of course fix la. Or else do what. But… idk… when I saw the remove I literally thought remove and do nothing. Hahaha so paiseh for him to walk all the way to my table also. First time I raised my hands twice in an exam T.T.

CZ2001 Algorithms (3 AU)

Lecturer: Prof Tan Ah Hwee (First half), Prof Zheng Jie (Second half)

Tutorial: Prof Elvis Liu (I think)

Lab: Prof Tan Ah Hwee

Grading:

Lab (4 assignments/presentations): 20% (5% each)

Mid Term Quiz: 20% (38/40)

Final exam (2 Dec 2015, 0900-1100): 60%

Overall Grade: A+

Both lecturers are really good and clear!! I watched most of the videos at x2 the speed though. Prof Tan went through some of the teaching feedback for him, and I think he was quite amused by the x2 comment!! Hahahaha!! Prof Tan, that comment was made by me!! He kept saying “he”!! How come you assume is a guy!!! I am a girl!!

For lab we got Prof Tan!! Yay!! I like Prof Tan a lotttt!! He is so niceee!! This was the only class that could fit my timetable, and since due to overload approval etc, I could only add this mod after school starts. So my friend asked (or was it me? cannot remember) if we (4 of us) could all form the same group if we all switch to his class (his class had many slots available), and he agreed!! Yay!! But what I don’t understand is, why did he add a china person into our group? (I have nothing against them ok!) Our group already had 2 Malaysians! And some other group were all Singaporeans. I thought there had to be a good mix or something. Since it was too troublesome to meet outside of class to code the labs, I did the whole thing, wrote the report and then sent to the group (it was mostly just tedious, not hard to do, and can be easily completed on my own). But for the last lab, I didn’t have much time, I asked my sister to help me code some parts hahaha :P.

I think the tutorials are totally ponnable. So I didn’t attend (other than for quiz purposes) after some time. The uploaded solutions are really good, and I don’t think the tutorial session gave any new insights. I think the tutorial teacher is a prof (from google), but he looks so young, so I’m not sure if it is the same person.

Final exam was probably easier than previous years. Can’t remember.

HP8006 Psychology of Crisis Stress Management (3 AU) (Gerpe-ahss)

Lecturer: Prof Jansen Ang

Grading:

Mid Term: 40%?

Final exam (26 Nov 2015, 1700-1900): 60%?

Overall Grade: S

This is probably the most entertaining lecturer I have ever encountered thus far. He is SO FUNNY, his stories are SO INTERESTING, and lectures usually end earlier! (1hr earlier maybe? Of a 3hr lecture). There is only a 3hr lecture every week, and there were only 10 lectures. There is no recorded lecture though, so I guess ponning a few is fine (I skipped 2 or 3), but one should attend most. Lecture Room was almost full house everytime I attended!! I was so shocked!! It was as if there's barely any empty seats!! If you are a little late, you have to look really hard to find where the empty seats are. And it was at LT7, not a very small LT either.

Mid term was 100 MCQ I think. The percentage I can’t remember, it was not in any slides. Finals had some MCQ, some short answers and a 2 choose 1 essay question.

If you intend to SU, this is probably the best mod to take. Attend a few entertaining lectures, study a bit, take finals. (I think I only studied 1 or 2 hrs before the final paper). Not sure if I can S it. Hopefully I can! But I think if you really study you can get A/A+. Because it is really mostly pure regurgitation e.g. what are the stages etc. Which I cannot remember mostly.

MH4311 Cryptography (4 AU)

Lecturer/Tutorial: Prof Wu Hongjun

Grading:

Assignment: 10% (120/100, 100/100)

Class performance: 10%

Midterm paper: 20% (95/100)

Final exam (23 Nov 2015, 0900-1100): 60%

Overall Grade: A+

This is a small class size, so lectures/tutorials are held in SPMS tutorial rooms, and there are no recorded lectures.

Prof Wu is one of the Profs whom you will be very comfortable approaching. Super friendly and approachable. Maybe it is because he is very small built. One thing is you cannot pon any lessons, attendance is graded. Also, tutorial solutions are not uploaded. So it is necessary to copy down the solutions! I didn't for the first few tutorials, but it probably doesn't matter much since I think i did the first few tutorials correctly. Also, assignments are not extras, the stuff there can come out for finals is what I learnt.

There are 2 assignments that are 5% each. And each assignment has a 20 mark bonus question. For the second assignment, the 20 marks bonus was to find the private key of ocbc bank, which of course, you are not expected to get it. If you can, you will certainly be famous.

For class performance, 5% is attendance (you can miss a few, maybe 2, and still get the full 5), the other 5% is tutorial participation which is graded as follows:

The full marks is 5. It follows the following calculation:  

1)  Each tutorial question 1 mark,  

2)  If a student answered 0 question,  then the student gets 5 marks

3)  If a student answered 1 question   (n1 marks, n1 <=1),  then get (4+n1) marks;  

4)  If a student answered 2 questions (n1 and n2 marks), then get (3+n1+n2) marks;

5)  If a student answered 3 questions (n1, n2 and n3 marks),  then get (2+n1+n2+n3) marks

6)  If a student answered more than 3 questions, we select the three with highest marks.

Suppose the highest three marks are h1, h2 and h3, then get (2+h1+h2+h3) marks.  

For tutorials where there is enough time, for each question (that he thinks is not really hard), he will randomly generate a student’s name using his random student name generator.

For the midterm, he was really lenient I think. A lot of my friends had 2/5 or 3/7 for questions they didn’t know how to do. But I got 0/5 for that one question hahaha, as the question asked what was wrong with the encryption or something and said to not mention about it being insecure. I interpreted it as 'don’t just say it is insecure, explain why'. So I explained why it was insecure. But actually you are supposed to say something like, the function is not invertible. I think 4 people got 90 and above.

Something funny happened. The random name generator has brought us countless joy and entertainment. Apart from generating my name on the day where I didn't really do the tutorial. (On that day, the first thing I said was: please don’t generate my name, and the first name it generated was mine -.-) So anyway, the funny incident. It generated this guy’s name, and he said: “I didn't do the question”, Prof wu: “ok”. *presses random name generator again. SAME guy name appears. Guy said: “I still didn't do the question.” Prof Wu: “I know, it has only been a few seconds.”. HAHAHAHAHA.

This is one of the mods that requires the most memory work I feel. But I really like the stuff I learnt in this mod!! It is so cool!! And very applicable if I am going into security field. For finals I think I finished in 1hr 50mins? And I still don't know for sure what I should do if certificate authorities are compromised, for that 5 mark question (was it 5?).

MH4311 2013 2014 past year papers & solutions or if it doesn't work, try this link.

MH4510 Data Mining (4 AU)

Lecturer: Dr Tang Wenyin

Tutorial/Lab: Tang Xingyu

Grading:

Homework (Lab/Assignment): 20% (5/5, 5/5, 14/15, 10/10, 14/15)

Mid Term: 25% (91/100)

Final exam (30 Nov 2015, 1300-1500): 55%

Overall Grade: A

One of the most memory work required for a Math module. But it is also one of the most applicable to real life situation I feel. As in you can possibly use it in work life.

I thought the lecturer was really unclear in the beginning. But then later, maybe I got used to it or she got better or maybe it was because I started watching the recording instead, I thought it was quite clear. Watching the recording saves a lot of time for this mod, because of the 15mins break in between.

There are 5 assignments though, so it was a little tedious to do them, because each assignment takes up quite a bit of time. How much % each assignment takes was not given.

Midterm has quite a bit of memory work involved also. It will ask about the advantages and disadvantages I think, and I cannot remember all, so lost a few marks here and there. We cannot get back our mid term paper. But I heard the average was 80+. They were very lenient I think. My friend got 100! :).

Final paper was 6 questions choose 5. Some regurgitation is involved. Sian. Wanted to SU it as I thought I might get A-, but decided not to.

MH4510 2015 Assignments and Answers or if link does not work, try this link.

MH4701 Mathematical Programming (4 AU)

Lecturer: Prof Chua Chek Beng

Tutorial: Prof Chua Chek Beng

Grading:

Assignments (8% each): 16% (28/30, 29/30)

Midterms (12% each, Week 7, 11): 24% (22/24, 21/24)

Final exam (25 Nov 2015, 1300-1500): 60%

Overall Grade: A+

The class size is small, so lectures/tutorials are held in SPMS tutorial rooms, and there are no recorded lectures.

I think finally, there were only 10 registered people in class. Usually less than 5 appear? I think there were 4 people who attended class regularly, including me. But as time passed it dwindled to 2-3. And the last few lessons had only me???!!! Omg… I don't know if I should feel honoured to have one to one teaching or paiseh to take up Prof Chua’s time, especially when I was 10-15mins late and he waited. I learnt a lot from him! Actually his notes are so good that Idk… maybe can totally pon horrr. But maybe by attending I can see the thought process. The tutorial questions are really nice I think. And when he goes through the tutorials I feel like I learnt a lot, especially for those few tutorials (or many) where I haven't looked at.

Since Prof Chua is always so serious, I remembered one joke he made. It's something like “So you see, the c, no pun intended…”. I think I was the only one who laughed, so paisehh, because it was really unexpected.

I learned a few words too, like perturbation, coercive, and hessian. Talking about the Hessian, so I called this thing the upside down triangle and Prof Chua said, “It's called a gradient.”. Then I “oh okay”, so I remembered it, then I called this other thing double gradient because I learned that I should call that triangle the gradient (I used to call it double triangle, or triangle square) then he said “It's a hessian.”. Then I started laughing with my friend (I think she was laughing too, there were only 2 of us in class that day), but Prof Chua was totally not laughing. And his straight face made everything 100x funnier so I laughed quite long i think. Oh gosh, I hope he was not miffed or thOught I was fooling around with math or something.

For assignments and midterms, the statistics are as follows:

Assignment 1: Average: 13.4, Median: 17

Assignment 2: Average: 11.6, Median: 8.5

Midterm 1: Average: 11, Median: 13

Midterm 2: No stats.

He scanned all the marked assignments and midterms and uploaded them for us though! Maybe it was because it was a small class size, thus possible. But still!! Quite a lot of effort. I was quite shocked at my midterm results though hahaha. For midterm 1 he gave 4/6 for a question I didn’t know how to do. And ironically, I thought I could do all for midterm 2 (But actually I missed out quite a bit of things), but got lower than midterm 1 instead hahaha.

There were no labs though (all became make up classes or mid term tests).

FINAL PAPER IS OMG!!! 4 questions 25 marks each. Then of the 4 questions 2 of them are proofs that are exactly from the lecture notes. And I don't know how to do these 2 because… well… I had no time to read lecture notes proof. The last time I read it was like 1 week+ ago (and I skipped a lot of the harder proofs too) and since then my memory has been replaced with stuff from 3 papers. Actually I realise it's in the tutorials too… Don't know how to do these 2 questions properly omg!!! Are these 2 supposed to be giveaway??? I think they killed me. I prefer the previous year’s paper. I think it was way easier. At least I could do close to all for the previous year’s paper. Why no augmented and no barrier?? I'm so sad. This time can only do 2/4, 50 marks??!! Furthermore usually when I think I can do I will still get a few marks deducted. Somemore I'm not entirely sure if what I wrote for qn1 makes sense. I can only confirm qn 3 is correct. OMG!!! I thought it's an unspoken rule that math exam will never come out something from the lecture notes/tutorials!! So I just remembered most of the results, to use them. Oh goshhhh and before Prof Chua collected the paper he was smiling!! Why!! I wanted to ask “Prof Chua why are you smiling?”. What's with that 灿烂的smile??!! Did he think it was a very easy paper?? T.T. It probably is to people with good memory? For people like me with poor memory and not good enough brain to prove those stuff it's a killer!!! :(:(:(. But surprisingly, when I checked the lecture notes, my approach to the 2 questions was actually kinda correct.

Oh, but it is cool that I was sitting on the last seat in the exam hall! And the seat before mine was a year 4 student, this means the other 9 students are >= year 4. Since seating arrangements are according to Matric Number. My friend said some were phd students? I'm not sure how accurate this information is. She can only guarantee that the 4 consecutive seats before mine are year 4. If there are no phd students… there will be less than 10 students?! Then the class probably would not open.

This is the 3rd time I take a lesson under Prof Chua. Actually I think his MH2401 Algorithm and Computing III is the most fun among ALL mods I have taken. From juniors I have seen that the questions are not reused!! (Some a bit similar but the major ones like final one is entirely different). But compared with other computing mods (e.g. CZ2001 Algorithm whose lab qns are rather irritating and standard) from school of computing, MH2401 is WAY better and MUCH MORE interesting!! I kinda hope to take it again (actually maybe not). Since the questions change every year. But i digress.

MH4701 Past Year Assignments and Tests Solutions or if link does not work, try this link.