Course Review NTU SPMS - MAEC

This blog post is inspired by my senior Jefferson Choi (Copyrights from him) 

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Credits to his blog post (Click the URL below) 
http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2013/12/course-review-ntu-spms-mas.html 

As he said previously in the blog, I hope to serve as a memory for the future as well as to give some views to my MAEC juniors as a form of reference =)

Before you decide to choose the course, think twice if you want to take MAEC as compared to the MAS course because 

1) MAS course has different specialisations and you can specialise in the track that you are interested in the future. This is good for people who do not know what they want to do in the future. Like some of my friends, they may fall in love to computing when they start to do computing 1 and 2. Or you may simply just like to do pure mathematics and decide to take up the challenge!
2) Do not ever think that maths is only for teachers-to-be and that economics will complement with maths, simply because you do not want to take mathematics itself alone. Do consider tracks like business analytics which is a 'HOT' job currently and many of the graduates will end up there. 

3) Do enjoy doing many calculations and understanding concepts when you get into MAEC because that will keep you going on and prevent you from losing your passion as you go along further. Some of my friends simply lose interest in them and just want to get a degree by itself. On the other hand, some of them enjoy it and continue to work hard and most which achieve quite a good result in the end. 

4) Do not simply think that you cannot get into business and got into MAEC, hopes are gone! Don't ever think about that! Work hard and do additional stuffs on your extra curriculum time such as joining investment club, picking finance skills and etc. It will help in promoting your resume and becoming a better student compared to a typical NBS student though they will always have more advantages than us. But if you are truly passionate in business, then why not? You will just simply pick another path which may be shorter or longer? Who knows?

5) If you are thinking about MAEC and the other course, I can't advice you much on that because you have to certainly weigh between choices and options and see which one is the best for you! 

Do leave your comments or email if you need any help! 

*The MAEC cores and major electives are in this post.
*The electives which I have taken are in the post below.

Each course broken up into the following parts.
1. Marks and grade of course
2. Course mechanics
3. Easy parts
4. Difficult parts
5. Exams / Final paper
6. Overview / other comments

Cleared AU
Core (Maths): ?
Core (Econs): ?
Core (GER): ?
PE (Maths): ?
PE (Econs): ?
PE (LS): 3
PE (BM): 3
PE (STS): 3
UE: 6

MH1401 - Algorithms & Computing I (Y1S1/2AU)
Lecturer: Asst.Prof Thomas 
Tutor: Many, but not very relevant.

3 Graded Lab Assignments (15%) - 10/10
Midterm (15%) - 20/20
Project (10%) - 9.75/10
Finals (60%)
Overall Grade: A+

The 1st computing course in NTU would involve the use of MATLAB, something that is supposedly much easier than C++. A 1h lecture, and a 2h computer lab session weekly. Every week, a lab assignment would be given and 3 random assignments (5% each) would be graded. so it's sort of important to complete all assignments unless you wish to gamble the chances of which assignments would be graded. 

Project Wise: My year got the project of writing a game of Pentagon program. Since it is within the range of if-else / loops, therefore it is quite easy to write the small functions. However, the tough part is to write the AI and doing the +10/-10 algorithm. The sole disadvantage for me is that my projects are really a bunch of slackers whom I know that some of them are freaking ZAI. Don't even know why they are slacking in the first place and being so selfish about contributing to the group. Luckily, I have a few people who can trust upon to do simple stuffs while I tried to figure out tough things (not that I'm very ZAI but at least, I put in the effort and time to contemplate about some tricky issues in the coding) Hope you have good members and willing to work together to solve different parts of the coding.

It is harder to score for finals because it is a damn written paper and you have to run through all the coding in your brain instead of using a computer which is ONE THOUSAND plus much faster and you know at least if any error occurs. So... No choice, you have to run the codes in your brain and write them down on the paper! 

Though it is 2AU, make an effort to learn the algorithms and have fun coding because there will be computing 2 and 3 which in total is 6AUs so super worthwhile to do well! 

MH1402 - Algorithms & Computing II (Y1S2/2AU)
Lecturer: Asst.Prof Wu Hong Jun
Tutor: Many, but not very relevant

Midterm 1 (15%) - 30/30
Midterm 2 (15%) - 27.5/30 
Finals (70%)
Overall Grade: A+

A 2h lab session and a 1h lecture weekly. 2 midterms. Finals is open book :) 

Compared to MATLAB, it will be a huge leap and having a good computing foundation will make your life so much easier. Practice is key to success! You may encounter difficulties when you reach the part on class and IO input/output but that is an essential part of computing so make sure you learn them well if you are planning to take computing related courses in the future as UE or etc. or you are planning to specialise in business analytics for MAS peeps. Understanding is important when you are doing the coding! 

The exam is open-book. Knowing how to do all the lab questions (by yourself) is actually sufficient practice to do the exam. Since it's open book, so syntax is not really a problem, and all you need is to plan how to write a program properly. I feel that 2 hours is more than enough timing if you practice enough by knowing all the syntax and many of my friends didn't have to refer to the notes for code probably because my year finals is much more manageable! 

MH2401 - Algorithms & Computing III (Y2S1/2AU)Grader: Dr Fedor 

Proficiency Test (10%): 
Team Quiz (10%):
Individual Project 1 (20%):
Group Project 1 (30%): 
Group Project 2 (30%):  
Overall Grade: A+

Sorry I couldn't remember the format of the marks allocation but it goes like this: 

A 3 hour lab session weekly. Proficiency test to grade on your MATLAB skills as previous semester is on C++ so you will definitely forget stuffs and a team quiz. 5% is allocated to doing the quiz yourself while another 5% is allocated to doing the same quiz with your team members. 1 individual project to differentiate the better ones with the average ones. 2 major projects need to be completed with high weightage. No attendance taken. No midterm, no finals. 

Basically, you can skip the tutorial if you find them useless and do the lab assignments on your own. They are quite useful when doing the projects 1 and 2 as they are related in many sense. For example, in project 2, we need to execute Particle Swarm Optimisation and it is covered in one of the lab sessions. You can seek helps from the tutors if you don't know how to code and they will assist you if need be. However, most of the times, you have to rely on yourself and your team members to overcome the problems! 

Having a good knowledge of MATLAB coding will be super advantageous and how you are split into teams depend on your individual proficiency test and your past results for computing 1 and 2. Dr Fedor will use a complicated algorithm to split up them in such a random way that all the skills are even out in a sense. However, you will see many groups complaining about their team members and having difficulty to manage the people within the group. Instead of blaming on your luck, I guess you have to learn how to manage people in a sense. 

The course emphasis on organisation of the assignment report (using latex to code) and how efficient and good your codes are rather than getting the right answers as there is simply no right answer. Before recess week, the time is catered to completing the individual project and afterall, many emphasis is placed on team bonding and doing the project together. The amount time placed on doing the project depends on your team members. I have friends that don't even spend 2 hours every week and getting A for this course while others spent like more than 4-5 hours every week doing the project. (Of course, if you get a good team member, he/she will tank the entire project =/ so spare some thoughts for the poor fellow! ) 

The projects are not very difficult to code, but understanding the question can be a challenge. The question is phrased in a super complicated way that there is no exact one answer for each part so when the solution comes out, you will be shocked to see so many answers. Hahahas. A super good strategy is to work together with your friends and TA which you can learn really alot and get all the criteria correct. Never stick to yourself and try to solo the entire project because it is way to hard and you will suffer for the rest of the modules. If you are the leader of the group, delegate jobs to your team members according to their strengths and always keep in touch with them because it will make your life so much easier. Overall, all my group members got an A and above because of our hard work :) and I'm thankful for that!  

MH1100 - Calculus I (Y1S1/4AU)
Lecturer: Assoc. Prof Conan 

Midterm 1 (20%): 19/20
Midterm 2 (20%): 20/20
Finals (60%)
Overall Grade: A+

The grading is very clear - 2 Midterm exams and final exam. A 2h lecture, a 1h lecture and a 1h tutorial per week/ attendance taken for my tutorial group but it is not counted into the results.

I feel that Calculus 1 is more of a practice instead of memorising module. You have to understand the precise definition of limits to answer most of the questions and then you will be on the right side of the bell curve. The rest is similar to what we learnt in JC like graphs, functions and etc. Please go and do your tutorial questions and don't try to skip them by doing the past year exam papers because the past year papers will not help much in the finals. Questions aren't going to repeat themselves in the finals so don't take the chance and focus your energy in the tutorials. 

I don't know why my tutor wanted to take attendance as there is no participation marks and he is usually pissed at students that do not do their tutorials. He is a really old person but super knowledgeable if you are willing to sit down to consult him. However, he is stubborn as well so if he makes a mistake, he will not admit it unless he finds the mistakes. Super advisable if you can get into Ronald's class as he is super entertaining and he is willing to help weaker students in terms of understanding. His notes are so very useful for revision. 

You can take it as a UE if you like pure maths and you have to keep in mind that differentiation and integrations aren't tested much in the course. 

MH1101 - Calculus II (Y1S2/4AU)
Lecturer: Asst.Prof Lim Kay Jun

Midterm 1 (20%) : 20/20
Midterm 2 (20%): 20/20
Finals (60%)
Overall Grade: A+

2 midterms, and a final exam. No tutorial/lecture attendance. A 2h lecture, a 1h lecture, and a 1h tutorial weekly. Similar to the previous Calculus 1 course. 

This course emphasises on integration and differentiations. A lot of techniques are required from JC such as integration by parts, trigonometry identity and etc. Having a gut feeling is important in this course especially if you integrate something and you get a super weird number, please do go back and checking your workings unless the grader is being mean. 

Proving wise is not really much in this course compared to Calculus 1 even though there are some proving questions to differentiate the better students with the best students. So revise the calculation parts and application parts such as Riemann sum, arc length formula, sequences and series. 

Apart from doing tutorial, it is strongly recommended to do questions in the Stewart textbook as the grader used this textbook as a guide to set questions and you will be able to score well if you revise on the questions in the textbook. The tendency to encounter a trigo question is super high so better be familiar with all of them before entering the exam hall. 

In the final paper, I didn't manage to complete the paper so I thought I did not as well and ended up, scored an A+ (what a surprise!) or maybe not a lot of students can do the front few questions. They are a little bit tricky because I remembered you need to apply more than one rule to solve the integration questions and I got it by luck. 

If you are able to do well in this course, it will definitely help you a little bit in the next part which is Calculus 3 where it is much more intensive and a lot of concepts are required to be learnt by your own as it is super abstract. 

MH2100 - Calculus III (Y2S1/4AU)
Lecturer: Dr Gary Greaves 

Midterm 1(20%): 100/100
Midterm 2(20%): 75/100
Finals (60%)
Overall Grade: A+

A 2-hour lecture, a 1-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial weekly. 2 Midterms and a final exams. Midterm 1 was easier as compared to Midterm 2 where the average is around 50. 

Calculus 3 is a whole new level of abstract, super different from Calculus 1 and Calculus 2. You have to understand the concepts you thought by yourself and think of ways to memorise them. Some of them are very counter-intuitive. It uses knowledge from Calculus 1 and Calculus 2, so if you done well for the first two, you will be fine for this one. Just be hardworking and not be complacent. 

At the start, it is still pretty okays until the back part where you have double, triple integrals and line and surface integrals. That's when sh*t happens because you will be so lost. Maybe having a Physics background will aid you in understanding how force is calculated. 

In my case, I did well for both midterms so I could kinda of slack for finals and finals was super easy, not even up to tutorial standards. Tutorials are way harder... So just focus on tutorial questions and don't need to go look for further resources because they are hard enough and it is not possible to complete the tutorial within the schedule timings. Some of your tutors will skip certain questions and leave them for you to try out yourself. I'm super luckily to score a good grade for Calculus 3! 

I will slowly update the blog and sorry for the delay!!! :(