AY2016/17 Semester 1 Modules Review

ST3233: Applied Time Series Analysis

Lecturer: Alexandre Thiery

I took this module because I think it will be useful in the future. And luckily I took it! Although I don't think I learned much stuff from this module, the module was easy compared to my other modules this semester and the content was light too. It was a break I needed from the other mods.

The first few chapters were easy stuff and the harder part only came nearer the end. I think I managed to understand the concepts thanks to the good explanations and diagrams. I like the lecturer. Although he had a slight accent which made him hard to understand sometimes, he takes time to go through the concepts well and has a lot of examples which he goes through step-by-step with us, literally. He always give us a few minutes to think (which we usually spend slacking and not using our brains) and then writes down the answers while explaining. His examples were good as they are all basic questions that help us to understand the concepts. His handwriting is nice too :) This is probably why I still attend his lectures even though they are at 8am and webcasted. 

Workload wise, there were 2 group assignments (form your own groups) to be done which consisted of questions that made sure you understood the lectures. No biggie there. You can just split the questions within your group members. His midterms and finals were hard, but both were good papers as they had a range of questions, which is what I expect of an exam paper. Sadly, no cheatsheets were allowed, so I had to groan and memorise the all the formulas from the notes. Compared to the 2 other stats modules which I took this semester, this module was the best and I will definitely consider taking another module under this lecturer.

ST3236/MA3238: Stochastic Processes 1

Lecturer: Ajay Jasra

This is a compulsory module for stats students. It is taught under stats department in Sem 1, under math department in Sem 2. I found this module really tough, maybe since it is coded as a math module too? Well I am definitely not taking stochastic processes 2 after this.

Since this is a compulsory module, I thought that it will be slightly easier since previous compulsory modules were kind of easy too (gotta cater to students of varying calibre hehe). But it turned out otherwise. Gosh, this module was so hard. The lecturer was ok I guess, but his notes can be improved as the wording was really complicated and hard to understand. I felt like I was reading some new language. And the lecture timing was 6pm-8pm. I skipped every single lecture since I prefer to spend that time eating my dinner and there is webcast anyway.

So here's the catch. Apparently this lecturer is known for testing previous problems in his finals. Yup, that means if you somehow manage to copy all the tutorial questions and all the past exam questions and all his extra example questions onto that pathetic 1 piece of cheatsheet, you are very very likely to attain a super high score for the finals, maybe even full marks. I was lucky to copy a few of the correct questions, but sadly not everything. But seriously though, I think that this is really unfair since the finals does not really test what you actually know. I mean, finals was 60% and his assignment (which only had 2 questions) was 40%. So basically this means everyone scores about the same for the assignment and your grade boils down to the final paper. I hope he can revamp this next time.

ST4233: Linear Models

Lecturer: Yao Zhigang

This module is compulsory for stats honours students. I hate this module so much and it is all thanks to the lecturer. My friends will know how much I complained about him throughout the entire semester.

I was already a little afraid of tackling a level 4000 module this semester and the lecturer did not make it any better, he made it worse. His explanation sucks. At first I thought it was because he was teaching new stuff. But when he taught some parts which I already knew, that was when I realised that his teaching really sucks because I cannot understand what he is saying. And my friends agreed with me too. Sometimes I really wonder why I even bother to attend his lectures (maybe because no webcast) when I do not understand what he is saying. And it does not help that the tutorials are conducted by him too, so I just spend every tutorial lesson copying stuff which he will still upload onto IVLE at the end.

Workload wise, it was really tough for me as I did not understand the module and could not do the homework. He had 5 assignments in total, and they were given out consecutively, so the moment one assignment is due, the next one arrives. I spent a lot a lot of time trying to do the questions and Googling for the answers. There was also supposed to be a midterm, but he cancelled it due to "logistics reasons" and changed it to a report instead. Great, now instead of suffering through a short exam paper, I need to waste more time doing this report that can totally pass off as a ST3131 report because the content in the report is the same. The finals had 2 pieces of helpsheets but they were useless because the tutorial questions I copied did not come out, he retested a few of the assignment questions instead plus a few new questions. Frankly, I regret taking this module under him and I am very afraid of my results...

LAK1201: Korean 1

Lecturers: Chi Seo Won, Shin Hye Jung

한국어를 사랑해요! Yes, I got influenced by K-pop and the Hallyu wave... but I finally racked up enough bid points to take this module! Overall, this module was super fun, definitely did not waste my points. 

We had a teacher for the first half and another teacher for the second half. Both teachers were enthusiastic in their teaching and made their lessons fun. I really looked forward to the lessons each week.The good thing about learning a language in NUS is that there is homework every week and the pace is pretty fast, so it forces you to keep studying to avoid falling behind. And, that is precisely the trick to language mastery. You have to keep using it, through reading, listening, speaking and writing. Every lesson, we will practise the 4 main skills. It's all about practice, practice, practice.

Workload for all language modules are high, so you will need the passion to fuel your way through. Every week there will be an e-learning video to watch, which counts towards your attendance grade too. And every lesson we have some sort of homework, which is extremely easy and takes about 10 minutes to do. Then every fortnight or so, there will be some assignment to do which will be due in about a week's time. For the midterms and finals, there is a written and oral portion. The written portion will test you on the grammar and vocabulary learnt, while the oral portion will be reading out a passage(for the midterms) and primary-school style oral exam(for the finals) where you describe a picture. It was kind of easy in my opinion, but there will be fake noobs in every language class. So either you become a fake noob yourself first, or be prepared to work harder to catch up wih them. But overall, recommended module. I can see why the bid points are so high.

PR1301: Complementary Medicine and Health

Lecturers: Koh Hwee Ling, Lin Haishu, Chan Cheng Leng

This module focuses on Complementary and Alternative Medicine(CAM), which is basically stuff that is not your conventional western medicine. The module is really generic and it would be an advantage if you have any previous knowledge since the module is just about boosting your general knowledge in this field.

Ok, I shall admit upfront that I am guilty of skipping lectures and not paying attention even though there is no webcast. But the module is pretty much a memory-based module. So in my opinion (in my opinion only! Don't take my words for it!), it is ok to skip some lectures since most of the content are in the lecture notes. It is good to go listen to the lecturers though. They share some of their experiences and extra knowledge. There are 3 lecturers in total and they cover different topics. At the beginning, 1 lecturer will do the first lecture of the week and another will do the second lecture. Then somewhere near the end, the last lecturer will take over (she is from Health Sciences Authority). So you may have to get used to juggling between 2 different topics at the same time.

Workload is super light, which is why I took this module. There is only 1 assignment throughout the entire semester, which is take 2 pictures (must be self-taken) and add a description of not more than 200 words each about how the module has affected your life. Easy peasy. I did the entire thing in under an hour. The midterms was just 8 short answer questions in 40 minutes, and the finals was 125 MCQs in 2 hours. The finals was tricky though. It had stuff like:

A) Statements i, ii, iii are correct

B) Statements i, iii, iv are correct

C) Statements ii, iii, iv, v are correct

D) Statements ii, iv, v are correct

E) None of A, B, C, D

That's right! NONE OF A, B, C, D! Which means any other combination lah!

AY2015/16 Semester 2 Modules Review

ST3131: Regression Analysis

Lecturer: Wang Junshan

This is a core module for Statistics students. You should expect to learn about Regression and how to fit to your data to a suitable model.

The lecturer is a first-timer, so her teaching is lacking and she also uses last semester's notes. Thankfully, she understands her own shortcomings and encourages us to give her feedback, she also adds on her own comments to the lecture notes. I kind of pity her because she received feedback that students would prefer webcast, but after she started the webcast, students started skipping lectures(me included oops) and the LT became super empty. It also does not help that the lecture is at 8am, the ungodly timing.

Workload is easily manageable, there are weekly tutorials which are kind of useless. The only work is the group project, which requires you to form your own groups then find a dataset online and perform regression analysis on it. I knew that there was a project beforehand but the lecturer only gave it out in Week 9, and we had exactly 4 weeks to complete it..... I was lucky to be grouped with this genius guy who offered to do all the coding for us :) Midterm and finals were totally manageable too, cheatsheets allowed, the questions usually show you the output from R/SAS and then you have to calculate certain stuff based on the output. This also explains why I don't remember doing any coding for this module hehe. It is totally possible to not attend tutorials and still get a decent score.

ST3239: Survey Methodology

Lecturer: Kuk Yung Cheung, Anthony

WHY WHY WHY did I even use up 1000 of my bidding points for this stupid module? I thought that I would be learning how to conduct surveys and analyse the results (ok I actually did learn those stuff) but I felt like I gained nothing from this module.

I blame the lecturer. First, his notes are bad. I don't understand the explanations, and there were a whole bunch of useless stuff. Second, the teaching is boring. He keeps jumping here and there and I lose track of what he is saying. Usually I'm more excited for his tutorials because I actually learn more stuff by just copying the damn answers to the tutorial questions. Unfortunately, I was still forced to attend lectures since there was no webcast.

There are 2 assignments given out, which consist of around 2 questions each. For me, I just kept flipping through the notes until I think I found the correct formula, because that is what this module is about: using the correct formula. Midterm and finals were ok, but for me I forgot to copy a formula into my cheatsheet during the midterm and it was tested. Oh well, just blame my luck. The papers also had a question or two taken from the lecture notes/tutorials.


ST3247: Simulation
Lecturer: Vik Gopal

This module is hard but actually fun? Basically we learn how to generate distributions, Poisson process, how to do discrete event simulation, Monte Carlo integration, variance reduction, etc. Coding for this module is done using R Studio, so do not forget your stuff from ST2137, as well as some basic stuff like writing loops from CS1010S.

The lecturer rocks! His notes are straightforward, and he explains the stuff really really well. I always have a lot of stuff to copy during his lectures because his explanations are really good and I just had to write down all the things he says. My friends complained that he spoke too fast and they had to watch the webcasts sometimes, but personally I found the speed ok. I guess maybe he did go really fast though, he finished the syllabus early and kept dismissing us early during the last few weeks (yay for avoiding squeezing up the shuttle bus to the mrt!)

Workload might be a little high. There are 4 assignments, and all the assignments have a coding and a written portion. I spend quite a lot of time for each assignment, but luckily I still remember some programming skills so I could manage the questions. Midterm and finals were ok, the worst part was no cheatsheets allowed! I wanted to pull my hair out trying to remember all the various algorithms for generating the distributions. I have to admit that the questions were actually well set, with various difficulties that test your understanding of the various concepts. If I find that this lecturer is teaching other stats modules, I will definitely go take them.


DSC1007X: Business Analytics - Models & Decisions
Lecturer: Tung Yi-Liang

Ok, I took this module for an easy life. The first half of this module is basically statistics (probability and probability distributions) while the second half is about optimization. DO expect a lot of math, stats, econs, engineering students taking this module. If you do not have the relevant background, be prepared to do a lot of catching up.

The lecturer was ok I guess. I think he used the same slides as the DSC1007 module? Not sure about that. I cannot really give comments about the teaching since I have already learned most of the syllabus before, so regardless of the standard of teaching, I can still understand the module. The lecturer is really friendly though.

Workload is manageable. The work assigned are all easy if you have the relevant background. There are weekly group assignments which are easy, there is also a group project(same group) about doing simulation on Microsoft Excel, and there are individual quizzes fortnightly during the tutorial sessions. Despite this super easy module, I had a lot of trouble due to my lousy groupmates. The groups were randomly assigned and I got stuck with a bunch of... yeah you get it. Do you know how it feels to be able to do the assignment questions every week but you cannot submit your answers because you are forced to "discuss" with your groupmates who don't respond to your whatsapp messages? UGH, ok no more talking about the group, they don't deserve such a big space on my blog. The finals were totally easy, cheatsheet allowed, question topics already announced beforehand and we took the same exam paper as the DSC1007 people (but different bell curve!). Apparently, we scored better than the biz peeps from DSC1007 hahaha :P


LSM1301: General Biology
Lecturers: Loh Chiang Shiong, Wu Jinlu

This module is a popular module for its easy and slack syllabus. Only people without H2 Biology are allowed to take this module. Topics covered are similar to O-level and A-level Biology.

There are 2 lecturers for this module. The lecturer for the first half was not bad, he cracked a lot of jokes and the lectures were enjoyable. The lecturer for the second half was from China, so his lectures were harder to understand because of his pronunciation. But overall the lectures were fun, no webcasts but it was beneficial to attend the lectures as you do get to learn a lot of useful stuff. My interest towards Biology increased after taking this module, but not enough to take the Life Sciences stuff (oops hehe sorry).

Workload is super light. Only 4 assignments to be submitted online, just google for the answers and fill in the Word document. There was also a lab session where we get to explore stuff like using a microscope as well as the gel electrophoresis. Finals were all MCQs and open-book, so expect a steep bell curve. The lecture notes are insufficient to score well, so try to borrow your friend's textbook or something.