Dean's List Academic Year 2016/2017 - Mathematical Sciences

Linkedin Lim Min and NTU

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NTU Convocation 2017

NUS and NTU 2016/2017 Semester 2 Exam Results

Lim Li's CS honours module

Lim Min's Final Year Project grade and her 6th consecutive perfect Semester GPA. Her final GPA is 4.97.

Dean's List Academic Year 2015/2016 - Mathematical Sciences

Internship with DSO

Source: Internship with DSO - CN Yang Scholars's Club

With many university undergraduates sourcing for internships in various industries, we are privileged to have Lim Min, a third year Mathematical Sciences major, share with us her experiences in DSO.

DSO National Laboratories (DSO) is Singapore’s one and only national defence R&D organisation. It innovates technological solutions to create the critical edge in the Singapore Armed Forces’ combat capabilities.

With more than 1,300 research scientists and engineers working seamlessly across the domains of air, land, sea and cyberspace, DSO researches into emerging technologies, matures promising ones and integrates them into innovative system concepts to meet Singapore’s defence and security capabilities.

Without further ado, let us find out more about Lim Min’s internship with DSO.

1. How did you first hear of DSO National Laboratories (DSO)?

While participating in activities of the CN Yang Scholars’ Club, I was approached by DSO Human Resources (HR) personnel who introduced me to the internship.

2. Why did you decide to join DSO’s internship?

The DSO internship was compatible with my schedule and I could rank my interests, allowing for the internship to be catered to my preferences. They also allowed me to intern at the end of Year 1, and not many companies/organisations allow that.

3. What were your roles as an intern? Did you join a lab? If so, how were the labs like?

I coded using C (programming). The aim of my internship was to build up a cryptographic library. My main task was to implement Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), which is a cryptosystem, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman cryptographic functions. Throughout my internship, I learned many things like coding in C, safety measures to implement in codes, security standards, and different protocols.

4. How different is an internship at DSO compared to research in school labs?

In DSO, there are fellow interns whom you can discuss your project with, as compared to the individual research I did in school. This made things more exciting and interesting.

5. What were some highlights of your internship?

I was very well fed during my internship (laughs). But the main highlight would be learning more about mathematics and computing by talking to the supervisors and interns there. Some projects include automatic error detection for codes, noise reduction techniques for multiple purposes such as voice recording, underwater autonomous systems, Application Programme Interface (API) to track all registered ships, detection of hidden artillery etc. We were introduced to these systems and were also free to ask and find out more if we were interested in them.

6. What was the biggest takeaway?

I learned a lot from my project in DSO. Some of these include knowledge on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, elliptic curve, RSA, various fast multiplication/squaring algorithms, use of Wireshark, certificates and more. They proved useful in the later modules I took in NTU (e.g. MH4311 Cryptography) and for Cryptanalysis studied at University College London during the semester exchange.

7. How are the skill sets learnt during your internship applicable to daily life?

I learnt how to interact with people of different ages and from different faculties and schools better. Since some of the interns were from overseas universities, I got to learn more about foreign cultures as well. This helps me in my daily interactions with people from diverse backgrounds.

8. What was your first impression of the internship? How did you eventually feel about your experience?

Initially, I thought that it would be a boring and mundane job where I would barely learn anything as I had heard from friends participating in internships where you only “photocopy papers” and complete administrative work. I was pleasantly surprised that the internship turned out to be the opposite. Not only did I learn a lot from my project, there were various presentations in DSO that gave me insights into other projects as well.

9. What was the most attractive feature of the DSO internship?

The intern pay is good (the best that I have come across so far) and the number of projects available is vast to cater to your interest.

10. How has the internship influenced your attitude towards future career prospects?

I had always thought that working would be stressful and boring, but DSO has shown me otherwise. It made me feel that working in DSO is a possible career option for me when I graduate.

11. How were your colleagues and supervisors? Was the focus more on independent or guided learning?

For me, it was more about independent learning. I’m not sure about my other fellow interns. From this independent learning, I got better at finding my own answers online (and not over-relying on others for help), which is especially important in Research and Development. But of course, my supervisor was there to ensure that I was on the right track through frequent updates, and help was readily available when I faced difficulties. They provided general directions to help me find answers and explained important concepts to me.

12. Are there any advantages to being a CN Yang scholar while interning in DSO?

Everything was relatively equal amongst all interns.

13. What attitudes would you advice others to adopt should they be interested in joining a similar internship?

Be independent and open-minded.

14. Bonus Question: How would you rate your experience at DSO (Scale of 1 to 10)?

10. We were given a lot of space and time to explore our interests. DSO was also very flexible, from working hours to pursuing our interests in our projects.

Throughout the various presentations I had seen and the interactions I made with the people there, I have always felt that DSO is quite an exciting place to work in. The technology and software they have developed there are all very interesting. These include drones (sea/air), image analysis (to detect the distance of an object from the camera, or whether a person is sitting/standing, or to detect vehicles/persons from a video footage etc.), automatic code repairing and more. I was and still am extremely interested in these initiatives. Before my internship in DSO, I would have never considered the existence of such technology but now, my thoughts on the possibilities of technology have broadened.

Many of my fellow interns at that time have graduated, and are now currently working in DSO. Not only do you get to do interesting work, DSO also provides a good work-life balance. There are flexible working hours (you can come later and leave later), and there are also various events held for you to bond with fellow colleagues or your family. Sports Hour is also available for staff to utilise any day of the week. During this period, office hours end slightly earlier for you to play sports with your fellow colleagues. Also, during my time as an intern, there was a puzzle competition (which I took part in with other interns) among many events for National Day.

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.

Volunteering Work @ Laos

NTU 2015/2016 Sem 2 Exam Welfare Packages (EWP)

CN Yang Scholars Programme EWP

Crescent Hall EWP

NTU Student Union EWP

School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences EWP

....

Dean's List Academic Year 2014/2015 - Mathematical Sciences

NTU 2014/2015 Semester 2 Exam Results

Lim Min's Year 2 Semester 2 exam results:

For CY1500 Grade S - S/U module with Satisfactory.  Semester GPA 5.0, cGPA 4.96

Well done, Lim Min. She obtains a perfect semestral GPA of 5.0 for the third consecutive time.

~~~~~
Below are comments on the modules, written by Lim Min, for the benefit of her juniors.

Year 2 Semester 2 2015 (29 AUs)

Overall, not sure if my brain deteriorated or not, but this sem’s exams are harder than last sem’s.

HW0203 Research Writing in SPMS (3AU) (Ger-Core)

Lecturer: Dr Sujata S Kathpalia

Tutorial: Ms Audrey Cheng

Grading:

Class participation: 20%

Individual Critique Writing: 40%

Final Group Project Report: 40%

Overall Grade: A+

I attended only a few of the lectures. Maybe 4? Even if I attended, I might also sleep in it. I think you can totally not go for any of the lectures.

The tutorial teacher is really nice, friendly, and VERY approachable. She can be really funny too!! Hahaha.

I think this is the last time they are offering this mod. Yay! (\^o^/). After all, I think this is quite a pointless module. It is more towards humanities research writing than science research writing I think. A lot of the marks go to language (e.g. grammar). And the research project you do is like those where you use surveys or human samples to gather your data. It is like a mini PW project. Maybe it would have been better to have SPMS profs guide us, like agree/disagree with our project proposal, or let us choose a topic from their list. But of course this is not possible since there are too few profs for too many students.

Unbelievably, I got A+ HAHAHAHAHA!!! Must be because my 2 best friends helped me check for my grammar and sentence structure (and corrected quite A LOT)!!! All these grammar Nazis. This was possibly the most unexpected grade.

CE9001 Java and the Internet (3AU) (UE, minor-Computing)

Lecturer: Dr. Li Fang

Tutorial: Dr. Li Fang

Grading:

Test 1: (20%)

Test 2: (20%)

Final (29 Apr 2015, 1700-1900): 60%

Overall grade: A+

The notes are really detailed and self-explanatory. But going to the lecture can be a little useful. The lecturer can be really funny sometimes. Like the stuff she says can be quite cute.

Test 1 consists of 5 MCQs (3 marks each, that is like 3% of your overall grade each!! (XoX)) and 1 open-ended (which was really easy) for 5 marks. The MCQs are quite tricky, also, they test on some memory stuff like what will happen when you run this code? (runtime error? compile error? it runs fine? etc) So you got to know the meaning of the different errors. For this test, I suspect I got 17/20 as I didn’t know if it is compile or runtime error (I only know the code had error) and guessed wrongly.

Test 2 have no MCQ. It tests more on your understanding. Like fill in the codes, or what will this code output.

The final paper standard is similar to any other years. And the only thing you possibly need to memorise (other than coding syntax) is the 7 layers of OSI. If you can program, it should be quite easy to score. This is a 2 hour paper. I think I finished it in 1hr 45mins, because I wrote explanations which might not have been necessary, but just to play safe. But it's quite tricky though. Like some outputs are decimals, thus, have to remember to add a ".0" at the end.

MH4310 Coding Theory (4AU)

Lecturer: Dr. Fred Ezerman (first half), Dr. Nguyen Ta Toan Khoa (second half)

Tutorial: Dr. Fred Ezerman (first half), Dr. Nguyen Ta Toan Khoa (second half)

Grading:

Midterm test: 93/100 (25%)

Homework 1: 85/100 (12.5%)

Homework 2: 92/100 (12.5%)

Final (24 Apr 2015, 0900-1100): 50%

Overall grade: A+

The notes are self-explanatory, but going to the lecture helps as the lecturer writes stuff on the board which can be quite insightful at times. But there are too FEW people taking this mod!! So there is NO recorded lecture. I heard SPMS will not open the class if there are less than 10 students. Why are people not taking this mod??!!! I ENCOURAGE people to take this mod. The stuff you learn is quite cool, and the questions set are mostly direct application of what you know.

For the midterm test, this is the given stats:

Marks: 52, 88, 53, 32, 88, 43, 93, 26, 55, 71, 40, 58.

Mean: 58.25.

Standard Deviation: 22.39.

The last 20 marks question was really hard. Even reading the solutions, I find it quite hard to digest.

Homework 2 stats:

Marks: 95, 95, 50, 64, 88, 80, 36, 92, 72, 73, 90, 85, 76

Mean 76.62

Standard Deviation: 17.92

I think they changed some syllabus, thus, past year papers might not be really applicable. The final exam was really easy though. You can do all if you really understood everything in the lecture. The final paper was definitely way easier than the midterm. Choose 4 questions to do out of 5. I couldn’t do question 3 part b), So I left out question 3.

Since MAS didn’t have solutions for the past year papers, I did some questions of the 2014 paper (I could only do 4 out of 6 T.T). My solution can be found on the right. (MH4310 Coding Theory Past Year Paper Solution, some.) Password is mh4310. Not guaranteed correct.

MH3701 Basic Optimization (4AU)

Lecturer: Prof Chua Chek Beng

Tutorial: Prof Chua Chek Beng

Grading:

Labs: 4/3 (3%) (4 labs, each 1%)

Online quizzes: 12/12 (12%) unlimited attempts, 3 quizes, 12 qns

Midterm test: 24/25 (25%)

Final test: (60%)

Overall grade: A+

The lecturer is very patient, nice and clear. But his monotonous voice for the online lecture is really funny hahaha. The lecture is a MUST attend, because the slides have a lot of blanks to fill. But the slides fonts are really big, so I print 16 slides per page. He have notes and slides version, I think the slides version is sufficient. You don’t really have to touch the notes.

The midterm test is 100 minutes. 20 out of the 25 marks are giveaways. The mean is 16.65, median is 17. I spend quite long on the last question, luckily, I still managed to finish it. I lost 1 mark because my artificial problem had too many variables. (Note, artificial problem, make sure you introduce as little variables as possible).

The final paper was really HARD I think. 60 marks were really easy, anyone who studies can probably get all 60 marks. The last 40 marks was really hard T.T. There is not enough time!! I wrote quite a lot in front, (not sure if I could have done more short cuts). But the last 40 marks really require you to think quite some time. So I couldn’t finish thinking. It was 12m, 12m, 16m. The first 12 marks is 6 true/false questions, where they deduct 2 marks if you get it wrong. I didn’t dare fill in 2 of them because I was not sure what is the definition of a degenerate iteration and one of the question mentioned something about m non-zero and I have no idea what it was referring to. The b values or what?? I rather it be a true/false question with the requirement that we have to give an explanation on how we get it. The next 12 marks I could only prove 1 direction, it was really similar to the midterm qn but I didn't have luxury of time now. The last 16 marks I could show 2 solutions but didn't show exactly 2. I think I'm pretty dead for this paper. It was the most challenging paper among all the papers I took. I hope I can still get an A :/.

Just about 10 mins before the paper I actually sprained my leg -.-. So painful T.T. From the walkway to the road there EXISTS a step down. I end up having to spend the next week Lim-ping (the stupid pun a friend came up with).

MAS didn’t have past year paper solutions. My solution for the 2014 and 2013 paper can be found on the right. (MH3701 Basic Optimization Past Year Paper Solution, some. Tutorials and Lab.) Password is mh3701. Not guaranteed correct (there are some minor obvious typos that I was too lazy to change, final answer should be correct though).

MH3700 Numerical Analysis I (3AU)

Lectuer: Prof Viet Ha Hoang

Tutorial: Prof Viet Ha Hoang

Grading:

Midterm test: 100/100 (40%)

Final exam (7 May 2015, 1300-1500): 60%

Overall grade: A

This Prof the notes is REALLY self-explanatory. His notes, his tutorials, his solutions, are all extremely clear. So clear that you can totally skip all his lessons and not miss a single thing. But his lecture/explanations are really clear too. Maybe it is a 3AU mod, but the content for this mod is one of the least, I feel. I only spent about 1.5 days to study for the final paper. It is only 6 short chapters. It is a pretty straightforward mod.

The midterm has no programming question, and the final paper will have 1 programming question.

I couldn’t finish the last question for the final paper though. There is a bug that I haven’t correct due to the lack of time.

The solutions given by MAS website are mostly correct, but I think the 2013 paper was not well done. Or at least I couldn’t understand what was the solution about. This is especially so for Question 6, my solution for this question can be found the link on the right. (MH3700 Numerical Analysis I Past Year Paper Solution, some. Tutorials solution.) Password is mh3700.

I thought I was quite confident of an A+ for this mod but I got an A hahahahahaha. Maybe the bug was not a bug but I was thinking on the wrong track!!

MH3110 Ordinary Differential Equations (4AU)

Lecturer: Dr Fedor Duzhin

Tutorial: Dr Fedor Duzhin

Grading:

Hard Assessment: 24/24 (24%)

Soft Assessment: 24/24 (24%)

Final exam (27 Apr 2015, 1300-1500): 52%

Overall grade: A

Dr Fedor loves to give online surveys and ask for students’ feedback. Even the hard assessment was voted by students. Which turned out to be the best 3 scores out of 5 papers (8 marks per paper). Soft assessment includes homework, assignments, clicker questions during tutorial slots. From the soft assessment you can get like more than double the max score (maybe 50 or something), thus most people get full marks for this -.-. I think of the hard and soft assessment of 48%, around 40% of the people got the full 48%..... Which means the final kind of decides your grade.

The homework/tutorial questions will not be gone through, instead, during tutorial slot, we have clicker sessions. Where there are 5 clicker questions to be done, and either Dr Fedor or his TAs will go through the clicker questions. As they go through, it is best if you copy down the solutions for most of it will not be uploaded.

The lecture might go a bit slow, but if you pay close attention, Dr Fedor does give loads of insights, with regard to how he thinks certain things. It is really cool. I love the clicker questions the most!! They are usually not your standard question, but really tests your thinking and application of what you know. Loads of the clicker questions are VERY insightful. The clicker questions are really fun.

Before the final paper, Dr Fedor will tell you what you need to study, which is really all that came up for the final paper. Out of 100, 90 marks are standard questions (very similar to clicker/hmwk question that he tells you to study). I think I didn’t do the 10 marks harder question properly, I think there is a huge hole in the claim I made. And one of the easier question I don’t know why I did it wrongly. It is like an illusion hahaha. That was worth about 5 marks? I am not sure. And many people did really well, so… hopefully I can still get an A. The questions are actually not easy, when you see it for the first time. But it is so similar to the tutorial/clicker questions that it becomes really easy because you just had to apply the same thinking.

After the final paper, Dr Fedor uploaded the solutions. It can be found on the right. (MH3110 Ordinary Differential Equations Past Year Paper Solution and Tutorials and Quiz and Assigment). Password is mh3110. EYNTK = everything you need to know.

I think getting full marks for the 48% and losing 15 marks for the final paper would bring you to the A- band already.

MH9000 Mathematical Problem Solving (2AU)

Lectuer: Dr Fedor Duzhin

Tutorial: Dr Fedor Duzhin

Grading:

I’m not really sure about the distribution, but there are attendance marks, class tutorial marks, homework marks, “final” paper which is the NTU Euler Math Competition paper.

Overall grade: A+

There are only 9 people in this mod. At the last lesson, Dr Fedor claims that everyone will get at least an A (even those who didn’t go for the “final” paper) because all of us put a lot of effort into the homework.

Every week, there will be a 2 hr class tutorial where 5 questions will be given and you solve in groups of 2-3 for 80 minutes, then each group will present certain questions that they have done. Every week, there is also a homework of 5 questions to be submitted online, and your peers will grade you. (This is quite cool especially when your peers have different cool solutions that you won’t think of). And of course if you are unhappy with your homework score, you can bring it up to Dr Fedor and he will grade it.

This mod is REALLY REALLY fun!! Especially when you can see how some of your peers solve certain questions, it is really cool!! I go OHH YAAAA so often in this mod.

The “final” paper has 5 questions, and like always, I can only do 1 out of 5. >.<

PS8001 Defence Science (3AU)

Lecturer: A lot of people from DSO/NTU

Final (30 Apr 2015, 1500-1900): 100%

Overall grade: Pass

This is a pass/fail mod. I didn’t attend a single lecture. But on the last lecture, the lecturer will actually go through 15 questions that will DEFINITELY come out in the final exam.

The final exam consists of 100 questions (of which many are recycled from previous years papers, so if you somehow have access to previous years papers good for you). I had an exam that ends at 7pm the day before, and I didn’t touch this mod at all until like 8.30pm on 29 Apr. So I only had like 8hrs to study everything. Which actually turn out fine. Just read all the slides, remember a bit here and there (I had some advantage as I know cryptography and those encryption things which was about 1/5 of the paper). I think there are about 10 topics, so about 10 questions from each topic. To pass is 40 marks, and the paper is really not hard at all. Even with my very bad memory and very bad guessing skills, I think I am quite confident of passing.

CY1500 Introductory Research Methodology (3AU)

Lectuer: Various CNYang Seniors

Tutorial: Various CNYang Seniors

Grading:

Can’t remember, confirm have report and presentation.

Overall grade: S

We were told we cannot SU this mod, but for some reasons, the SU option was available, so I just SUed it. Even though I heard that about 80% will get A/A+, but I was quite sure I am at the bottom 20%. Because I wrote my report pretty informally (thus losing a lot of marks), and my presentation was really bad. It started off well, but then my mind went blank and I had to flip the crushed script on my hand (I folded it really small as I thought I won’t need it) which ended horribly. The comment I got was “That long pause there was FATAL.”. Since it was so fatal, I just HAD to SU this. CNYang mods are SERIOUSLY PULLING MY GPA DOWN.

Haha I really could SU it… I ended up with an S…