#i will ask my groupmates to edit the final version

[bunnikida]

I feel bad because I didn't do much for the group protocol but also can!t bring myself to care rn

[livingbutamireally]

AY2020/2021 Y2S1 Module Reviews

This semester proved to be a pain as expected. Said pain coming mostly from BT2101 and CS2030. Everything was conducted online with the exception of the weekly lab sessions for CS2030 so I only had to go to school for 1 day. F2F CS2030 recitations were optional so I gave up and just watched the recorded zoom session instead of going to school just for a class half way through the semester. I usually miss the live zoom sessions because mine was at 1pm and I am almost always still having lunch at that time and not ready at all. Also i missed about half of my BT2102 tutorials because I simply forgot I had tutorials at that time (2-4pm). They still awarded me nicely for participation much to my surprise (7/10).

BT2101 Decision Making Methods and Tools

BT2102 Data Management and Visualisation

CS2030 Programming Methodology II

GEQ1000 Asking Questions

IS1103 Ethics in Computing

CS2030: Programming Methodology II in Java

Prof: Dr Henry Chia, A.P. Terrence Sim

Weightage:

Weekly labs (5%)

Individual project (15%)

Practical assessment #1 in week 7 (15%)

Practical assessment #2 in week 12 (20%)

Class participation (5%) : includes lab participation, piazza discussions and peer learning activities

Final exam (40%)

CS2030 proved to be intensive not only in the aspect of planning code design but also the actual implementation itself.. (thinking about how to solve the problem and/or get the expected outputs)..  Really struggled my way through the start although that really was only the tip of the iceberg because I had no prior experience in Java and the introductory Winter Workshops were reserved exclusively for freshmen or I missed the deadlines can’t remember.. The first few lectures got us familiar with Java Programming before diving deep into Functional Programming which is a lot harder to grasp vs Object-Oriented Programming which was introduced to us in CS1010S already. The hardest part comes with Streams but honestly after learning streams so many processes can be coded so much more efficiently as compared to OOP, really simplifies some of the tasks when using FP rather than OOP. Interesting to note that this streams part ties in well with BT2102′s coding part where we learnt aggregation pipelines in MongoDB and MySQL i believe the concepts felt similar??

Weekly Labs

Pretty manageable imo , compared to the project ofc (rolls eyes)

This semester they changed things up a bit and shifted all the weekly labs deadlines to finals so we had more control in terms of time management and our progress in the labs. Naturally we are expected to do them every week but say we are busy in a certain week for other modules we can always come back on another. I was always behind by like a month compared to my friends who were more on task.

Individual Project

Project part 1 was still okay for the Discrete Event Simulator (DES) basically designing a system for customers to queue and be served and recording the relevant work done at the appropriate times using OOP.

The hardest part was project part 2 where you had to rewrite the whole chunk in part 1 FP style and also they added a lot of more complex simulations and cases which I really just gave up entirely after completing level 2.

It was so hard it was traumatic. Level 3 had something to do with importing a random number generator and the test cases only get more confusing and long i just really had no brain cells left for the work worth only 7% before deducting late submissions penalty (bc brain slow LOL) and the code design criteria and checkstyles. I was so mad that it takes up so much time and effort just to be worth a petty 7% that I gave up entirely didnt even finish reading the questions (which was also pretty darn long). Sorry i am dumb. Please be proud of me I am trying my best.

I have zero idea who in the department decided to rig the difficulty of this project by so much up compared to previous semesters. They really expected too much out of us i am so sorry to disappoint.

Practical Assessments 

Basically similar to weekly lab exercises but you have to do it within the time frame during a lab session. You get to take home and re-edit the code to get the full marks and are moderated according to the changes you made compared to the one submitted during the PA itself. That also means if you do not submit the correct full marks version of the code in a week, you do not get moderated and will be awarded with the marks scored in lab which is obviously 0 for me I had over 70 compilation errors and you might be thinking how. But trust me i am too, confused how. Most people will score around 0-2m in lab but taking it home and refining the whole code with minimal changes and will be graded according to the amount of changes made to get the final code. Tests you how close you can get to the correct outputs within the time frame whether you already had it in your head.

Final Exam

Comes in MCQs, a few case questions consisting of subparts if i remembered correctly some of which required you to write out a possible code (2-3 lines) converting oop to streams, synchronous to asynchronous etc. There are plenty resources (pyps) floating around in the gc so you can use them well for revision.

Theoretical content was tested i dont really know how to put in words but you may be able to code well even though you may have some of the concepts wrong

We only did pure coding work in labs, projects and practical assessments so this really reinforces your understanding of the material

Considering I didnt finish project part 2 this is quite a decent grade already really thankful i dont have to go through this ordeal again. See you never.

BT2101: Decision Making Methods and Tools

Professor: Rudy Sentiono, A.P. Huang Zhiyong

Weightage:

Group project (20%)

Written assignments - 3x 5% (15%)

Tutorial participation (5%)

Midterm - open book (20%)

Finals - open book (40%)

This is the second module that I have been struggling with since the start of the semester. Tutor changed after the first session, the former tutor was much better and clearer in her explanations. This is quite a math-intensive course and requires some knowledge of linear algrebra and thus the pre-requisities. Maths has never been my strong suit (well except in primary school) so I struggled hard with this module. Nearing the end we learnt about deep learning neural networks which was pretty interesting and really broadened my perspectives on the future of machine learning. The pace was okay, but the lecturer seems to just repeat the words on the lecture slides in his lectures. The lectures were seemingly simplified from the reference texts he used but is nevertheless still daunting to look at to revise. Project was a 4-5 people groupwork where we had to conduct all the stages of data analytics from data exploration, cleaning of data to data mining, conclusions etc. There were an additional 3 assignments that we had to do together with our groupmates by the stipulated deadlines. This module requires a lot of work and preparation. Am glad to be able to pass.

BT2102: Data Management and Visualisation

Weightage:

Assignment 1 (Group):  25 marks

Assignment 2 (Individual): 35 marks

Assignment 3 (Group):  30 marks

Class Participation: 10 marks (Participation in Tutorials and Group Assignment Discussions)

IS1103: Ethics in Computing

Weightage:

FPAQ (50%)

Missions (50%)

Expected Grade: B+

Final Grade: A-

For this module, all 13 missions are to be done by the last date of submission for finals which was a 300 question quiz held on LumiNUS. Missions are assigned weekly where we go to the WordPress website the professor has built, a server that he regularly does maintenance on and in it he uses a tracker to track our progress through clicking links and submitting short answer questions sometimes. Most of them were done by clicking of links and we were told to disable our Adblockers if any to prevent interruptions or his system not capturing our data. We were encouraged to do it weekly although the deadline was the end of the semester. One of the missions included us doing some Linux practice penetration questions on Kali, it was a bit tough but other than that the other missions were pretty simple and straightforward. After every mission done we were to do a practice PAQ which is not graded and upon submission would give us the model answers to study in preparation for FPAQ the final week submission. PAQ consists of 5 themes * 7 questions = 35 questions, whereas FPAQ has 300 over questions to be done over the span of a week, the reading week. Carpal tunnel.

GEQ1000: Asking Questions

Weightage: 

Tutorial attendance/participation (36%)

Forum participation - forum 1 and 2 (14%)

MCQ quiz (36%)

Final paper (14%)

This is a general education module everyone in NUS is required to take. I dont think I learned much so I am really only there to go through the motion. There are a few pillars that the department touches on mainly Physics, Engineering, Design, etc to show how the different disciplinary courses are interconnected and how/why is questioning important. Really low maintenance course, we do a 6 or 10 MCQ quiz every week prior to the lecture for that pillar. Tutorial was online via zoom and really low workload in general. Final week was on design and we had to make a wallet for our partner and explain why or how we chose the designs, and also submitting a word essay on our reflections of things we learned.

Update. I only pray to hover above or maintain at this current CAP lemao PLEASE YOU NEED TO