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livingbutamireally · 5 years ago

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AY2019/2020 Y1S2 Module Reviews

AY2019/2020 year 1 semester 2 review

Wew this semester was more of a honeymoon period for me still since I cant advance past CS1010S - this is only the first CS mod i have to take big oof. First half of the sem was spent mostly on (re)doing CS1010S AFAST and the rest went to catching up on other modules that are of relatively lower intensities compared to modules i imagine i will have to take next semester? The most challenging mods this sem goes to CS1010S, EC1301 and also.. ST2334? About half of the semester was done at home though due to the COVID-19 pandemic and so the never-ending heap of online lectures to review (for which i am always behind on unfortunately). I have no need to S/U any module this sem fortunately but that also means I might have effectively wasted my last COVID S/Us. I’m also the kind that is happy enough just to pass.

Modules taken this semester:

CS1010S (AFAST)

GEH1031

GES1041

EC1301

ST2334

MKT1705X

CS1010S Programming Methodology (Python) – AFAST

School of Computing

Prof: Ben Leong

Exam Dates: 16 Jan (Midterm Mock - not graded) / 24 Feb (Practical Exam) / 28 Feb (Finals)

Weightage:

Coursemology – 25%

Participation – 5%

Midterm test – NA

Practical exam – 20%

Final assessment – 50%

Since i took the alternative finals i have updated the final weightage for this module (last sems CS1010S had different weightages).

As we already know, this module (or any CS modules in general) easily has the highest workload compared to other modules, except this time without needing to complete missions every week? Also since its a re-module, there were no lectures/tutorials/recitations for this module and the prof spent lesser time than the first module with us. There is just one consultation slot per week that lasts about 1.5-2h, where the TAs/ prof Ben goes through exam questions over the past years and where students get to voice any doubts they might have. Hence, a lot of self-discipline is required on our part to grind past year papers consistently and drill our brains. Not sure if i’ve mentioned this before, but it’s nice of them to provide comprehensive worked solutions for about 50 exam papers (or maybe more) the profs claimed it was the only module in NUS to be doing this. Prof mentioned he was a bit disappointed in our batch as many werent putting in considerable effort right from the start aka ponning consultation slots arranged over the holidays (in December) - which is a lot of effort coming from the professor to arrange this just for our batch (first batch of CS1010S AFAST). Just name me any prof who does this for their students, coming back over the holidays to teach unpaid. Those who were not at level 50 in Coursemology had more time now to finish the missions/side-quests needed to achieve level 50 and get the full points for Coursemology (as we were expected to in Sem 1). Things were a bit rusty after the holidays at the start but it became better with practice. Was a bit disappointed at not being able to get question 2 right during the written paper (finals) it was a bit of an IQ-ish problem solving question. Anyways winged the 4m what-did-you-learn essay question (as usual) at the end as a saving grace and passed albeit by a very bit. I improved by 2 marks ?? compared to the last semester for finals, not the nicest thing to see after so much effort being put in but still. I think I’m just better at writing essays than coding....

Results for the PE

Mean is 14. Median is also 14. Standard Deviation is 7.6. Highest grades was 30/30 Question 1 turned out to be harder than we had intended, but Q2 was quite easy and most of Q3 was doable by most, as you can see in the results. Passing mark for PE is roughly 10/30.

Mean is 51/10, median is 53/100 and standard deviation is 14.4. Highest was 81/100. Generally, the performance was much worse than we had expected. Pass grade for Finals is roughly 40/100.

Basically, if got 10/30 for PE and 40/100 for Finals and you have done your Coursemology assignments you can expect a C grade. If not, then prepare to SU. CS1010S is not graded on a curve. We set question to test that you have mastered certain concepts and your final grade is a reflection of what you seem to have mastered as reflected by your exam performance.

This whole module was done by recess week so we have more time to focus on other mods. Honestly will be happy enough just to pass. Now, how do i survive CS23030 and CS2040 rip.

GEH1031 Understanding the Universe

Faculty of Science (Physics)

Prof: Cindy Ng

Weightage:

Term Test 1 (3 Mar) – 25%

Term Test 2 (16 Apr) – 25%

Video presentation 5 Apr – 25%

Video critiques 17 Apr – 10%

Astrophotograph 17 Apr – 10%

Quizzes – 10%

Ng is relatively a slower-paced lecturer, which is good for someone like me who cant keep up with faster-paced profs. 2x on her elearning lecture videos makes the best pace imo. Her lecture slides are concise and simple, and will suffice in revision. While she does explain more in depth especially for concepts that are harder to grasp (not many) during the lecture i love that she keeps her lecture slides straight forward to the point. Everything was in point form, short and sweet much appreciated. Also if you pay attention to her lectures, you will do well for the quizzes at the end of each chapter for sure. Though i think you get the marks for quizzes as long as you did them before each deadline like participation marks kinda (?) rather than being graded on whether you answered them correctly. I didn’t do too well for term test 2 unfortunately and I also only just found out you can display the statistics of where you place among the cohort in LUMINUS and needless to say I didn’t place too well. It’s a relatively manageable module though there’s still a lot of content. Term test 1 consisted of MCQs and about 3 2m questions which she call “essay questions” which can be misleading for some (like me!). The MCQs are very tricky and most come in the format of these options: is A/ is not A/ is B/ is not B and you have to pick the right combination (2) out of these 4 options to score 1 point, which of course means less chances of getting them correct compared to the usual 25% in a typical MCQ. Term test 2 was held on LUMINUS at home, and this time since its an e-exam there was only 10mins to do about 25 MCQ, leaving only 0.4 minutes = 24s for 1 MCQ, which proved to be really stressful for many as voiced out by other cohort mates in the forum section (so very valid). The e-exam also had an essay component, 2m per question with 4 questions under 10 minutes. The implementation of this time constraint was to prevent cheating but the duration given was (I feel) unreasonable. As for the video presentation, we had to come up with a 7 min (at most) video most of which lasts 5/6mins on a news article in 2020 regarding astronomy. We had to form groups of 3 at the start of the semester, and were told to look for members on the forums if we did not have enough members. It is not necessary to show your face so you can be creative! For my group, we had a Germany graduate exchange student to work with us which was really cool. Our group’s theme was NASA’s discovery of exoplanets with the use of TESS which was wrapped up in March, before the deadline in April. Really thankful for him to prompt us each week for progress and have it done and over with instead of rushing it last minute when things get busy during reading week. (I think the guy was really done with us im so sorry Philipp if you are reading this.) Also since term test 2 was done by mid-April we had more time allocated for other modules to prepare for finals (swee). Video critiques were supposedly 50 words long if i remembered correctly but i didnt find out until i hit the submit button and :_D i left 1/2-liners for each. One of the criteria of this video critique was showing that you have watched the videos of other groups well but i dont rmb my critiques proving that ive watched the videos carefully though i really did. I think our group did the best in our cluster though! (based on the critiques). For the astrophotograph, we could take part in the astronomy sessions held on a Friday of every month to use the telescopes but there wasn’t any this semester sadly due to the pandemic.

GES1041 Everyday Ethics in Singapore

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Philosophy)

Prof: Chin Chuan Fei

Weightage:

4 Journal Entries – 20%

4 Reading Quizzes – 20%

Group Report – 10%

Group Presentation – 20%

Finals – 40%

Chin’s lectures are pretty enjoyable, his voice/tone really suits lectures. He is a very approachable person too and willing to share a lot of experiences relevant to the topic at hand. He includes snippets of related videos in his slides many of which are insightful that made me share with my friends too. There is a total of 4 main themes in the module which are namely inequality, meritocracy, multiculturalism and migration and he also introduced the use of an ethical toolbox to helps us reach a more definitive thought process especially for an abstract topic like philosophy. I didn’t realise this was a philo mod when bidding for it so I was really surprised when i went for the first lecture (like bro it clearly says ETHICS what was i thinking). I also thought it would be something similar to Social Studies but was proven wrong. There are compulsory readings to do each week, about 20 pages long usually per reading and they are all chapters from books written by other Singaporean philosophers regarding the themes gone through which helped to widen my perspectives and broadened my horizons, those were some really good selection of readings. I have learned more things than I previously knew about the foreign domestic workers, migrant workers, racism in Singapore among the many topics we have dealt with.

This module is for those who are :

Comfortable with reading a lot every week (i put a lot here because i dont usually read)

Comfortable with writing essays (journal entry) 500 words each

Proficient in English (some of the expressions used can be quite complex and may take you a much longer time to process and understand especially with the reading quizzes that tests your comprehension of the readings - really just comprehension in true GP fashion)

Have a lot of experience in this field, those under social work would have many and will be able to share relevant experiences in the journal entry

Interested about the aforementioned themes

Reading quizzes are like comprehension style questions: do your readings and the questions tests you on what you have read so you just have to look for evidence of each option, the questions will refer you to the specific page/reading that will guide you (nice of them to do so). Journal entries and reading quizzes occur on an alternative week basis so reading quizzes followed by journal then reading quiz again and so forth. Nearing the end, you will be grouped according to who you sit close with and you will work together with your group members to work on a project that will have 2 overlapping themes about any policies/ observations of Singapore. It is advisable for the scope to not be too broad. e.g. we chose to talk about offering Muslim food in school canteens vs non-Muslim food (fewer food options for Muslims) and this encompasses both the multiculturalism and inequality themes. The group report will be due before the presentation and it helps identify some main points you will then talk about later during the presentation. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group presentation this semester was done on Microsoft Powerpoint through voice-over slides. God bless, and there goes the need to memorise scripts especially with the finals season so near. The professor was really accommodating and gave us more time to prepare the voice-over slides when he announced that it will be held on powerpoint too. Finals was 20 MCQs in 1 hour on LUMINUS, the questions were similar to the reading quizzes (5 MCQs per quiz).

EC1301 Principles of Economics

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Economics)

Prof: Ong Ee Cheng

Tutor: Devika

Weightage:

Pre/post-lecture Quizzes

Class Participation

Midterms 7 Mar

Finals 29 Apr

Can’t find the actual breakdown of scores sorry!

Bell-curve is really really steep for this one since its purely MCQ. Divided into micro and macroeconomics so first half of the sem was micro then the other half was macro. Finals was about 70% macro and 30% micro since micro was already tested for midterms. Every week, there’s a pre-lecture quiz to be done before the lecture and a post-lecture quiz due before the next lecture to reinforce your learning. There’s also supplementary readings that were given but i gave up on it by the third week. The way it is taught is a bit different from what I was used to in JC the things they focus on is also a bit different. There’s more calculations than JC whereas JC economics was more conceptual? I took only H1 economics so a lot of concepts were fresh for me like monopolism, comparative/absolute advantages, income elasticity etc. Both midterms and finals was held on Examplify with a lockdown on everything including wifi. The lecturer also provides additional practice questions in the form of quizzes nearing the exams instead of exam papers. To be honest, I felt this module was hard?? Not sure if anyone else felt the same way, it was a struggle.. I thought it was a fluff mod and boy was i very wrong about this. Also important thing to note is though this mod has MCQ-only exam, the MCQs are not 4 options but 6 options long with many tricky options and of course time constraint. Finals was 70/80 questions long in 1h iirc. Midterms was 40 questions. After the 3rd (?) tutorial, there was no more physical tutorials held just zoom tutorial sessions which only 3 ppl in my slot regularly attended. Towards the finals, a lot more zoom sessions were opened up and we could attend other TA’s zoom sessions this was a godsend thank you. My tutor wasn’t really clear in her explanations or maybe it is just me her accent came off a bit strong. I emailed her some questions but even now I have not receive any answers from her, she told me next week, and the next week became next next week and so on. I guess she must have had a lot on her plate. I didn’t think she was a good tutor. I flunked my midterms (5% percentile) so I was a bit dejected.

ST2334 Probability and Statistics

Faculty of Science (Statistics and Applied Probability)

Prof: Chan Yiu Man

Tutor: Li Shang

Weightage:

1. Quiz 1,2,3 (CA1) – 30% (?)

2. Finals – 60% (?)

Prof was really funny and friendly. Although his tutorials left me confused (my friends would care to disagree), his lectures were still pretty good. He always emphasised knowing what we are doing rather than doing the math blindly. The tutor was fast in his replies whenever I asked him questions by email. This module is an extension of statistics in JC, probability and many more probability distribution (F, chi-square, t test, z test) with terms we have never encountered before too (unless you took BT1101 but this mod focuses more on deriving the values than having a program-R calculate it for you). Ever since the outbreak, the lectures were converted to e-lecture slide style but each lesson would take 4 lectures (4h), instead of the 2 lecture per week so we had to spend more time watching the videos than usual. It is easy to be behind on videos when there is only e-lecture videos so much discipline is required to stay on task.

Finals was proctored with zoom and held on Luminus in the form of a quiz. We were expected to scan and submit a pdf with our workings after the exam. I did not have time to finish about 8 questions (a lot of marks gone) there were a total of 30 questions, spent too much time in front on the easier questions. I did study for the later questions but had no chance to utilize what I have revised (sad). I am really dead for this module i hope i dont fail this.

Update. God bless, thought i was really doomed for because i lost so many marks from not being able to finish 8/30 questions that have the most marks rewarded. Guess i really took time to make less mistakes on the previous questions.

MKT1705X Principles of Marketing

Business School (Marketing)

Prof: Regina Yeo

Tutor: Ms Canley

Weightage:

Individual Assignment – 15%

Group Assignment – 25% due in tutorials 4/5

Subject Pool – 10% *

Class Participation – 10% *

Final Exam 30 Apr – 40% *

* not too sure, checked from other reviewers

Individual assignment questions (total of 5) for tutorials 1-3 are given at the start for which the tutor will go through in the allocated weeks. We get to choose the question we want to do and if that week, the question will be discussed that week will be the deadline for our IAs. The other questions in the IA do not have to be submitted but will be discussed in class. There’s class participation for this module so people were more eager than I was used to, to answer questions in class. I had no opportunity to though in this module (halfway into the semester it became elearning), the tutor had too many hands to pick. The tutor was very accommodating and knew our difficulties and was willing to work out compromise. However, her classes were centered mainly on her experiences (which can be a bit boring) it could have been better if she went through the content. Understand that it is a fluff module that requires many examples, but would be good to relate them back to the content we are expected to master. Tutorials are held every alternate week and we are expected to do the individual questions even if we do not need to submit so that we have something at least to share in class. Subject pool was giveaway marks basically do 6 research surveys and u will get the full marks for that. Final exam comprises of 3 essay questions (40m, 30m, 30m) that you have to submit in 1.5h (i thought it was 2h during the paper rip mad rush for the end), no references/research needed but there’s a plagiarism checker by TurnItIn on luminus basically testing the application of concepts to examples.

I got a B+ for group assignment, and A- for individual assignment. I think i can only do essay styled questions, is this a sign to do arts.....

Oh the presentation was changed to a one-shot video recording (no stitching of individual videos together) instead of an actual presentation in front of your tutorial mates. I think a lot of other groups also read off their scripts but ours was really obvious. The tutor grades (structures her own bell-curve) based on those who attempted the same question to be more fair rather than comparing among all the different questions so in a way, the difficulty of the questions won’t affect your grade.

Epilogue. this is probably the last and only time i could do this well.... even if it does not fit the conventional definition of doing well......

#y1s2

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