UNSW Subject Reviews. (6 Viewers)

[OVYO]

MATH2069: Mathematics 2A (Complex Analysis and Vector Calculus)

Ease: Variable
Lecturer(s): 10/10 (Peter Brown), 8/10 (Denis Potapov)
Interest: 10/10
Overall: 8/10

Summary:
A very interesting course, especially the Complex Analysis component. Vector Calculus can be a bit dull at times, especially when Potapov is lecturing. Peter Brown is probably the greatest lecturer in Maths, he has a way of engaging the students and a deep rooted passion for mathematics, his approach is very philosophical and can be quite amusing with the jokes he cracks. This wasn't the first time I had him as a lecturer and I noticed the emphatic conviction of the man. Potapov is also a tutor for Complex Analysis and he appeared to be one of the better tutors, and very helpful with email enquiries.

Vector Calculus
If you generally struggle with maths like I do, my advice is to get the Salas/Hille/Etgen prescribed Calculus book, you might have it from first year maths. Do not bother getting a pdf copy, get the hard copy. You might want to attend the initial lectures of Vector Calculus, but I soon found during the topic of double and triple integrals that it's pointless. I could not understand what was happening in the lectures any more. Potapov spends an unnecessary amount of time with formal side of maths which is all well and good, except this course is not meant to be a course of rigorous proofs. Furthermore, he posts annotated lecture notes with solutions so you can supplement your study that with the book, the book is KEY and more people in the course struggled with Vector Calculus than Complex Analysis.

Complex Analysis
Under no circumstances should you miss these lectures, for starters, Peter Brown posts the skeleton lecture notes at the start of the course, it's expected you turn up and fill in the examples whilst he teaches. Secondly, no one in their right mind would want to miss a Peter Brown lecture, even if you did not know any maths past 7th grade you'd find his lectures fascinating. I made the error of missing a few Complex Analysis lectures and it was a big mistake as even though some of the material is pretty easy, if you're not familiar with it you may end up missing out on easy marks in tests and the exam. There are two prescribed books for Complex, one is by Murray Spiegel. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS, IT'S A WASTE OF MONEY. You will learn almost nothing from it, it's mainly a reference book with some examples, it will not teach you much about Complex. The other book is Complex Variables and Applications (Brown/Churchill) which is significantly more expensive but far better, in a way it can be confusing as it's more theoretical, but it is thorough and has decent examples. I do not think you can learn Complex sufficiently through books, even though when I look back at some of the material now and do not see a great difficulty, some books tend to not go through basics well or go through them in longer methods which are not required and Peter Brown demonstrates what exactly you need to know.

TIP: Study the 2009, 2010, 2011 exam papers, and for those going to do Complex Analysis in the future, the 2012 exam paper. Those 4 papers are very similar in format, and some questions actually repeat themselves. Whether the course format is going to change in 2013 or not, I do not know.

PM me if you need material from the course and I'll see what I can do.

 

[Chowder_Head]

ECON1102: Macroeconomics 1
Ease: 7.5/10 It's hard but once you get your head around about Keynsian economics theory it get's pretty simple since all the importanat bits are from there.
Content: 9/10 I found the content to be very interesting and it's also got more mathematics behind it than micro.
Lecturer: No idea, didn't go to a single one lol.
Overall: 8/10

What? I didn't find it very hard. The format of the final exam was a bit annoying, there should have been more multiple choice and less marks in the short answers. Other than that, macro was about as easy as it comes in ASB.

I thought that the final exam barely tested anything. They should have either had more multiple choice, or they should have broken down the short answers. Having short answers worth 5,5 & 10 marks are worth too much.

 

[steffanie1]

a

 

[Mature Lamb]

Semester 1, 2012

FINS1612: Capital Markets and Institutions
Ease: 9/10 Skipped 11/12 lectures. I attended 1 lecture on Foreign Exchange (which was around Week 10-11) but still found that useless. The prescribed textbook had all the information you needed to get a HD in this course. The maths is also very easy.
Content: 9/10 A LOT of information to take in. Fortunately the final exam only examined content which wasn't already assessed in the first 2 tests, otherwise I would've spent a few days cramming for it. It was very interesting though.
Lecturer: ?/10 Can't comment, except for that one lecture I went to. The guy was great but he kept telling too many personal stories.
Overall: 9/10 A course about how the markets work. Before uni I had no business/finance/economics/etc. knowledge but now I find it all very interesting.

FINS2624: Portfolio Management
Ease: 8/10 Not a lot of content compared to FINS1612 and FINS1613. Tutorial questions didn't seem very relevant to what was taught in lectures and required additional textbook reading. Midsemester and final exam questions were straightforward unlike the tutorial questions.
Content: 7/10 I have a strong feeling that the theory we've learnt isn't applicable to real life. Fairly interesting at times.
Lecturer: 8/10 for Bang, 7/10 for Sahgal. Bang had trouble keeping the lecture hall quiet (this isn't high school anymore, I'm not sure why people still talk in class. Lectures aren't even compulsory) but other than that he was excellent. Sahgal had a boring tone and was slow at times.
Overall: 7/10 Can't complain.

MATH2111: Higher Several Variable Calculus
Ease: 5/10 Definitely my worst course of the semester. It wasn't easy for me because I didn't go to any of the lectures for the first half of the course.
Content: 6/10 for first half, 7/10 for second half. Didn't enjoy this course much compared to the first year courses. It took me a whole 14 weeks to fully understand Analysis/Topology. Definitely not majoring in Pure Maths. The Vector calculus part of the course was straightforward and mechanical.
Lecturer: ?/10 for Kress, 8/10 for Li. Didn't attend Kress' lectures. Dr. Li was great though, he always seemed happy so that made his lectures more enjoyable.
Overall: 6/10 If I could restart the course I would attend all the lectures and do all the tutorial problems. I'd definitely do better in my final exam.

MATH2301: Mathematical Computing

Ease: 7/10 Tran's lecture notes were really complicated and hard to understand. He'd often spend an entire lecture doing a proof and I'd be thinking oh my god what the hell is all this. I don't think any of the complex proofs he did were examinable anyway. The tutorial questions were fairly easy, and the written test was similar to the tutorial questions. The lab test was horrible. I had a MAJOR mind blank and forgot what an anonymous function is (Question 1) and that completely fucked me over for the whole test since the following questions required me to use the anonymous function. Final exam was very fair, wasn't too hard.
Content: 6/10 Each topic went like this: Here's a problem, we can solve it by doing this. We can also let a computer solve it for us, but there will always be a local truncation error involved when we use MATLAB.
Lecturer: 7/10 for Tran, 5/10 for the other dude (I don't even remember his name). Tran was good for tutorials but I fell asleep in lectures. The other guy... I couldn't understand him at all.
Overall: 7/10 I wouldn't recommend taking this if it's not compulsory. It's pretty much a course on MATLAB and its inaccuracies.

 

[InterNut]

ECON2112 (Game Theory & Business Strategy)

Ease: 6/10 You should be fine if you attend all the lectures.
Content: 6/10 Interesting, albeit somewhat poorly structured and presented.
Lecturers: 6/10 One of those bumbling nice guys who you knew to be well-versed in the subject despite a frequent inability to clearly and concisely convey his message.
Overall: 3/10 90% of the course consisted of negative marking (which admittedly was a clever utilisation of the behavioural concepts learnt in the course).

ECON3109 (Economic Growth, Technology & Structural Change)

Ease: 6/10 As a Commerce student, I don't think I've ever done more work for a course.
Content: 8/10 It could be renamed "development economics"; it's a peek into the developmental state and the political/economic/institutional structures shaping such differences, and it also takes a slight philosophical bend when we examine the potential futility of economic convergence and a utopian world where there are no poor, starving children.
Lecturers: 8/10 Peter Kriesler is very enthusiastic about the content, and I believe he has an extensive background in heterodox economics.
Overall: I have no idea how to rate this; possibly the most interesting course I've done in my degree, but also the worst mark I've ever gotten.

FINS3630 (Bank Financial Management)

Ease: 9/10 One of the easiest Finance courses you could do.
Content: 6/10 It's not interesting, hard-hitting material, let's be real.
Lecturers: 7/10 Your average Finance lecturer.
Overall: 9/10 Why not do it?

FINS3637 (Wealth Management Advice)

Ease: 9/10 One of the easiest Finance courses you could do.
Content: 7/10 This caps off the RG146 qualification requirements. Some of it's a rehash of FINS2643, but it's your run-of-the-mill financial planning content.
Lecturers: 7/10 The course consisted of a 3 hour lecture each week and no tutorial classes. Steven was great from what I could tell of slipping in and out of consciousness.
Overall: 9/10 Just do it.

 

[plasticities]

BABS1201 (Cells, Molecules and Genes)
Ease: 9/10 If you did HSC biology you should find most of this easy.
Content: 9/10 If you like biology, you'll find this course interesting however the labs can be tedious and boring. Content wise, it is almost identical to HSC biology, the only things that seem to trip some students up is photosynthesis and metabolism. Other than that you could pretty much study from your HSC notes.
Lecturers: 7/10 Dr Lutz-Mann and Dr Galea are amazing, they explain things so clearly that even if you don't have previous biology experience you shouldn't be lost. However Peter White put way too much information in his slides that wasn't even necessary and had small pop quizzes and turned down the lights, which made it difficult to stay awake. John Wilson is good but he really rushed through photosynthesis, which he noted was one of the more difficult concepts.
Overall: 8.5/10 A very gentle introduction to university biology and very interesting if you like bio.

CHEM1031 (Higher Chemistry A)
Ease: 6/10 I'm not too strong with chemistry to begin with, but this was the class I struggled most with.
Content: 7/10 The first few sections of the syllabus are pretty physics based but even though I didn't do physics in the HSC I still really enjoyed it and understood it well. A lot of it is based on HSC content such as acids and bases, redox reactions and equilibrium. A few new topics are introduced like thermodynamics and atomic orbitals etc. I would suggest brushing up on your basic chemistry skills and going over any HSC stuff you might have. Also if you don't understand something early on, it's advisable to fix that since it will probably lay the foundation for future content.
Lecturers: 6/10 I really liked Stride, he was the first lecturer and he explained everything in such a way that made it seem easy and I never got lost. However, it all went downhill with Marcus Cole who tried to implement twitter as a tool for asking questions. It pretty much only provided a distraction and I pretty much sat in the lectures with no idea what he was saying. Haines was really good, though the only thing I didn't like about him was that he didn't put the lecture slides online so you had to use the physical handouts.
Overall: 7/10 If you really put in the work you should be able to achieve at least credit. It's advisable to do the computer quizzes with a group of friends, or to ask someone for help if you don't know what to do since it's pretty stupid to throw away an easy mark. Although, they simply take questions from the tutorial sets and alter them, so since I had my tutorial early in the week, my tutor already showed us how to do it.

PSYC1001 (Psychology 1A)
Ease: 8/10 They can be super pedantic with their marking and questions, so go over everything with a fine tooth comb.
Content: 9/10 As an introduction to psychology, the content is really fascinating. You cover a variety of branches such as developmental psychology, emotion, motivation, consciousness, cross-cultural psychology, health psychology and social psychology (which was by far the most interesting). The concepts themselves are super easy to understand, it's really just a matter of remembering it and being able to apply it.
Lecturers: 9/10 There wasn't anyone that I didn't like and they were all really entertaining.
Overall: 9/10 The theory is easy, just be careful with how you structure and word your assignments. Also, for the mid-term, make sure you have access to a textbook since the exam is just a lottery of questions randomly given bases almost entirely on textbook content instead of lecture content. Most of the stuff I was tested on hadn't even been mentioned in the lectures. Although, they change it for the final and make it mostly lecture content with a small emphasis on the textbook. Also with the research participation, do it early and get it out of the way. It's pretty stupid to throw away the extra credit for early completion and extra hours so just do it.

SCIF1121 (Advanced Science: Professional Perspective and Practice)
Ease: 10/10 No knowledge required, simply knowing what to do and when it's due
Content: 10/10 What content? Pretty much know that team work, communication, peer review etc are all really, super important for scientists and you have the course covered.
Lecturers: 7/10 I was in the biology stream and there were some awesome lecturers, namely Professor Archer, but most of them just put me to sleep. If you get an awesome tutor, then you'll have a blast in the tutorials, otherwise you'll probably just suffer through them.
Overall: 9/10 Be on top of all the work. We had to use moodle, so make sure you actively participate in the online forums since apparently that counts to your assessment, consistently write in your online journal thing so you don't have to cram it at the end, do all the homework, and make sure you peer review everything, since everything is essentially peer reviewed.

 

[4025808]

Now when I read my subject review for ECON1101 and ARTS2450, I've changed my mind on those ones. Gone from good to bad :/

 

[CombustionManX]

MATH1141 (Higher Mathematics 1A)
Ease: 7/10. Easy in class tests, much harder final exam
Content: 7/10. Some of this stuff feels very redundant, like the whole definition of an integral/Riemann sums crap, and Gaussian elimination was tedious as hell, but stuff like hyperbolic functions I found interesting.
Lecturers: Cowling 5/10. Basically just read off the slides the entire time, kinda boring.
Doust 8/10. Much more enthusiastic, had "Maths trivia" breaks in the middle of each lecture, got yelled at once
Overall: 6.5/10. Made me go from liking maths to having a slight hate of it, and I'm doing 1231 this sem instead of 1241.

PHYS1121 (Physics 1A)
Ease: 4/10. The phys labs are absolute hell to go through. They give us 3 hours of work to do in 2 hours, then take off 1 mark out of 10 if we don't finish 20 MINUTES early. Biggest joke of a class. Luckily the two worst labs aren't counted. WebAssign quizzes can go die in a hole, most people used the cheat sheet (which I only found out about with one quiz left to go ) so you were extremely disadvantaged if you did it on your own. Final was very difficult, I came out of it thinking I just passed, and I did (just).
Content:6/10. It's mostly just the boring stuff from HSC Physics, without anything cool like semiconductors, CRTs, superconductors and nuclear physics. The theremodynamics and the "science of music" stuff at the end redeemed it a little though, I found that interesting.
Lecturers:Webb 4/10. BORING. Just read of the slides in a monotone voice.
Burton 8/10. Much, much better, did cool experiments, had a better accent, didn't read off the slides and seemed genuinely interested.
Overall: 5/10. Awful subject. Made me loathe physics (which I thought impossible). Glad I'm not doing 1B this semester.

ENGG1000
Ease:10/10. Did the bridge. Finished 2-3 weeks ahead of all the other projects. Got a HD. Awesome.
Content: 7/10. Actual bridge related stuff was interesting and tangentially useful, but the environmental stuff came on a little heavy and that CAD stuff was so boring it could put you into a coma.
Lecturers: Head Engineering lecturers 8/10. They were interested and helpful most of the time.
CAD guy: 3/10. Like I said. Coma inducing.
Overall: 9/10. Fun, easy (if you do the bridge ), relevant.

BENV1080 (Enabling Skills and Research Practice) (Architecture part of my course)
Ease: 2/10. Not really that difficult buy holy ****, it is SO RIDICULOUSLY TIME CONSUMING. Had 3 assingments to hand in over the course of the semester, each one took over 30 HOURS of work to get done. Not only that but you have to deal with stupidly pedantic and overly subjective markers who will go against literally everything your tutor has told you to do, who in turn says not to do anything Stan (our head lecturer) says. My final submission which I was extremely proud of got given a CR. Why? Because they accused me of plagiarism on just one phrase even though I had it cited. The head lecturer wanted to limit the grade for my submission (which my tutor said was going to get a distinction) to a P+ (Pass +) because I forgot to add freaking quotation marks around a couple of words in a first year subject. That's how bullshit this subject is. Luckily my tutor argued it to a C.
Content:1/10. Essentially worthless. Most of it had literally nothing to do with architecture, the first assingment was a tedious exercise in gathering information and organising it into an archive, the last two were basically designing magazine articles.
Lecturers:Fung: -4/10. The man is twisted.
Guest lecturers 2/10. Endlessly boring.
The one Civil Engineer guest lecturer 10/10. Actually interesting, didn't have to read off the slides, had an awesome job that I wanted etc
Overall: -22/10. Worst subject in existence. Civil Engineering with Architecture students beware. This subject can take you off guard and make you fall ridiculously behind in maths and physics. Luckily there are no exams (apart from a super easy referencing test) but that isn't enough to redeem this soul-sucking abomination of a subject.

 

[Shadowdude]

MATH1141 (Higher Mathematics 1A)
Ease: 7/10. Easy in class tests, much harder final exam
Content: 7/10. Some of this stuff feels very redundant, like the whole definition of an integral/Riemann sums crap, and Gaussian elimination was tedious as hell, but stff like hyperbolic functions I found interesting.
Lecturers: Cowling 5/10. Basically just read off the slides the entire time, kinda boring.
Doust 8/10. Much more enthusiastic, had "Maths trivia" breaks in the middle of each lecture, got yelled at once
Overall: 6.5/10. Made me go from liking maths to having a slight hate of it, and I'm doing 1231 this sem instead of 1241.

And once you get to second year maths, you'll realise all these random redundant things that seemed like throwaway topics in first year, form the basis of what you need to know.

It's like "lol mean value theorem. when do i use that ever again?" *next year in calculus - prove nearly every result with mean value theorem*

 

[Jonneeh]

And once you get to second year maths, you'll realise all these random redundant things that seemed like throwaway topics in first year, form the basis of what you need to know.

It's like "lol mean value theorem. when do i use that ever again?" *next year in calculus - prove nearly every result with mean value theorem*

Whats the transition from Maths 1A -> Maths 1B?
Its been 2 semesters since i did Maths 1A and pretty much forgot everything.

 

[krnofdrg]

MGMT1101 Global Business Environment

8/10

Very easy subject if you put in the work load (All the tasks are quite straightforward just simple report writing and two exams). It gets quite boring and if you did HSC economics or Business Studies, it should be a breeze for a D or HD.

Lectures were very boring (I just relied on my textbook and aced the damn subject). Lecturer is a good person (Great personality and very smart).

 

[kaz1]

And once you get to second year maths, you'll realise all these random redundant things that seemed like throwaway topics in first year, form the basis of what you need to know.

It's like "lol mean value theorem. when do i use that ever again?" *next year in calculus - prove nearly every result with mean value theorem*

Engineering student will only use usefull maths like ODEs and eigenvalues, not useless shit like Riemann sums.

 

[Shadowdude]

Whats the transition from Maths 1A -> Maths 1B?
Its been 2 semesters since i did Maths 1A and pretty much forgot everything.

Personally, I can't really remember much struggle in the transition, for me at least. They cover mostly different stuff - but I know that in algebra, they build upon the matrices stuff in 1A. Calculus in 1B is just mostly new stuff, but there's a bit of stuff from HSC maths.

You should be fine.

Just keep your 1A stuff handy just in case you need to refer back to anything... but I don't think you'd need it, especially in Calculus. Algebra... maybe.

Engineering student will only use usefull maths like ODEs and eigenvalues, not useless shit like Riemann sums.

all maffs is useful

 

[17theorm]

CombustionManX mentioned something about a cheat sheet for the WebAssign quizzes for physics 1a, never heard of it, can anyone please expand????

 

[CombustionManX]

CombustionManX mentioned something about a cheat sheet for the WebAssign quizzes for physics 1a, never heard of it, can anyone please expand????

There was this person sending out these excel spreadsheets which would calculate all your answers for you. Since in the WebAssign quizzes the values that you needed (also the ones that changed from one person to the other) were highlighted in red, all you had to do was plug in the values and out pops the answer.

 

[17theorm]

There was this person sending out these excel spreadsheets which would calculate all your answers for you. Since in the WebAssign quizzes the values that you needed (also the ones that changed from one person to the other) were highlighted in red, all you had to do was plug in the values and out pops the answer.

Do you by any chance know if this person will also do this for physics 1b in semester 2, and if so how I could obtain these?

 

[CombustionManX]

Do you by any chance know if this person will also do this for physics 1b in semester 2, and if so how I could obtain these?

I don't know who he or she is. It's possible that they may be doing Phys 1B this semester, as to obtaining them I got them off friends who got them off friends who got them off friends etc. They make their way around, just keep asking around and you might stumble upon it. For now just get a group of friends together and do the WebAssigns as a group.

 

[halapenyo]

subject reviews:

ECON1101
Ease: 6/10
Content: 8/10
Overall: 7/10

ACCT1501:
Ease: 8/10
Content: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

MGMT1001:
Ease: 7/10
Content: -10000/10
overall: -4996.5/10

MATH1151:
Ease: 6/10
Content: 9/10
Lecturers: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

 

[4025808]

subject reviews:

ECON1101
Ease: 6/10
Content: 8/10
Overall: 7/10

ACCT1501:
Ease: 8/10
Content: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

MGMT:
Ease: 7/10
Content: -10000/10
overall: -4996.5/10

MATH1251:
Ease: 6/10
Content: 9/10
Lecturers: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

I think that'll drag the school of management's rating down by a mile

 

[aceofspades1]

Some subject reviews from Semester 1, 2012

ECON2206 (Introductory Econometrics)

Ease: Tough one to say because it ranges from anywhere between 2 to 7/10. If you knew how to apply all the stuff, it was easy, however, you had to understand the concepts in order to progress further.
Content: 6/10. The examples to the course are very interesting and practical, however all the mathematical bits were torture. Method of moments especially!
Lecturer: Gigi Foster. I thought she was a good lecturer and on that basis, i'd give her a 8/10, however SHE CANNOT SET AN EXAM TO SAVE HER LIFE. The semester she took over, she implemented a mid-semester exam and the average was 40% [she expected a 60% average]. 70% of the cohort failed and to the best of my understanding, refused to scale the marks. In the days leading up to the final, at least 80 people rocked up to consultation, most knowing that they were quite in trouble. The final exam she set wasn't much better. For that, she drops down to 5/10.
Overall: 5/10

LEGT2751 (Business Taxation)

Ease: 7.5/10. Content was generally pretty straight forward.
Content: 4/10. Content is quite bland but then again, it's tax isn't it.
Lecturers: John Taylor (7/10)-kudos to him for trying to make a bland course more interesting. In actual fact, I thought he wasn't too bad.
Kathrin Bain (9/10)-she's a good lecturer, spoke well, seemed helpful enough.
Overall: 7/10. To be honest, I don't think tax is as bad as people make out to be.