AY2019/20 Semester 2 Module Reviews

 18/11/20

 

(18/11/20)

Only reason I am turning back to this is because it seems long overdue. And this current semester is ending soon, and it reflects badly on me (to myself) if I am still not done with this after like, half a year. But let’s not deny the fact that the main reason for this is because I am procrastinating actual studying.

(25/05/20)

Hey hey, ho ho, my procrastination has got to go. This is the second essay thing I have started on when I am supposed to be working on my 5 goddamn projects. Urghhhhh.

 

The end of this semester concludes my first year at NUS. It has been…a lot. A lot of studying, a lot of trying too hard, a lot of trying to be a snake and ending up getting snaked. A lot of having my social anxiety be confronted to the max.

I took 24 MCs this semester, which was bad because it is a lot of work, but also good because bless Corona which happened, taking everything online, and giving us more S/Us to use which I may need.

This semester lasted from January 2020 to May 2020.

CS2040S Data Structures and Algorithms

Summary: graphs and trees and sorting visualisations are fun don’t judge

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: A / A-

Actual Grade: A

Workload: almost weekly extremely tough problem sets

Assessments: 35% Problem Sets, the rest is unknown because the prof doesn’t believe in caring about grades. Load of bs.

Probably the only module I’ve taken this semester where I have any kind of confidence in doing well in. Like CS1231 in that a lot of people think that it is a difficult module and struggle with it. Which was good, until apparently it was revealed that there’s no bell curve.

This is a core module for computer science which covers basic data structures and algorithms. It is largely theoretical in that there is usually not much coding and most questions in exams also only require us to describe how to apply the algorithm.

It started with some data structures and various abstracts such as stacks and queues. And then went into searching and sorting. A large part of it was with trees and various modifications to trees for different applications. There was also a large section about graphs and finding shortest path trees and minimum spanning trees and modifying trees.

There were 9 Problem Sets, which are coding assignments. And these are near undoable without a good group of friends to leech answers off. Wait what. I mean, a good group of friends to discuss with.

 

CS2030 Programming Methodology II

Summary: panicked 1-hour coding tests on Examplify

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: B / B+ / A-

Actual Grade: A-

Workload: weekly Lab assignments that range from doable to undoable, and 3 individual projects that take weeks each to complete

Assessments: Labs, Projects, Finals, Practical Assessments

I personally don’t enjoy the style of Java coding used in this module. Because it is too methodological. And fixed. And too modular. Too much OOP. Too many classes and I get confused.

But this turns out to be the basis of software engineering. And if I struggle with this, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with being a software engineer. Or even working an any software project at all. You know, I much prefer writing short one-page codes. Even though realistically that gets nowhere.

Practical exams were bad. The only saving grace is that other people seem to find it to be worse than I did. Also discussing over skype for exams is bad. It was distracting AF. Mainly Hans (for the first practical exam and the finals) and JL (for both practical exams and the finals). Could I have done better if I did not cheat communicate? I don’t think so. Well we had different questions anyway. And though we set out to discuss our strategies I quickly learnt that that was unsustainable. Like, DUDE. I am not going to help you solve your question if I can’t even figure out how to do my own question? The call is there for…idk, moral support. I need lots of that.

The project did leave me with quite a sense of accomplishment though. Not gonna lie. We made some random number simulator thing. Oh, it’s called a Discrete Event Simulator. I forgot about it because it is like November 18^th of 2020 now. An accomplishment because I made the simulator thing from scratch. Ok, it was with some guidance. But it was a complete thingy. And it works. And the code looks neat and good. Compared to some people’s code… ha-ha.

 

MA1521 Calculus for Computing

Summary: calculus with mysterious vectors and finals that are impossible

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: B+ / B / B-

Actual Grade: A+

Workload: not much, 2 online assignments only

Assessments: 2 Assignments, Finals

It started off as vanilla JC math. And descended into the madness that is double integration and multiple variable differentiation and whatever the fuck that is. I can’t understand it. Arguably it was easier to understand than Linear Algebra. But the finals were impossible to do. Took 10+ brains. But luckily for Hans and his friends who carried me to the end.

Imo this is quite important for the future parts of computing. But too bad, I don’t understand it. This makes me realise that I have forgotten basic math from JC. And it doesn’t feel good.

 

GET1029/GEK1067 Life, the Universe, and Everything

Summary: free will doesn’t exist and Dostoyevsky’s books are great

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: B+ / A-

Actual Grade: A

Workload: as expected FASS, weekly 8 question quizzes

Assessments: Quizzes, Finals, Tutorial Attendance and Participation

Profs: the idealist Michael Pelczar

I probably enjoyed this the most out of all my modules this semester. Even though I also put in the second least amount of effort to this.

The readings were generally short enough to be welcoming, but interesting enough to be eye-opening as well. This was the first module to go completely online when COVID hit, and I attributed this to the fact that this was a FASS module and, well. Y’know.

This was a week by week introduction to many of the different parts of philosophy. I wouldn’t say that this is the best way to learn philosophy, compared to the current 2k philosophy modules that I am taking now. Imo it takes more than 1 week to understand what a philosopher is saying. But I guess it is good that we got to cover a lot of ground during the semester.

The groupwork was hell though. It is what you will expect of first year students taking a general education module, especially during online semester. They were truly uncontactable sometimes. Luckily Spy too this module with me? I don’t know how I was gonna survive this if not for him.

Weekly quizzes are fun, because they allowed me to think more deeply about the things that I was learning. The downside is that one week isn’t enough to think. Also, it kinda sucks when I get back the results and it is like, 5/8, or even 3/8.

 

GES1021/SSS1207 Natural Heritage of Singapore

Summary: uhm, crabs, and I should probably be eating turmeric right now brb gtg

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: B / B+ / A-

Actual Grade: A+

Workload: a poster project, and forum postings

Assessments: Surveys (seriously!), Forum Participation, Midterms, Finals, Project

Profs: crab story lady Ng Ngan Kee, Amy Cheong

Probably put in the least effort for this module, lol. I did the studying 1, or 2 or 3 days before the paper thing for this. And it turned out ok. That’s lucky. Most of the content was just facts. And other things were just general knowledge about Singapore and nature related policies and developments that any good citizen should have heard of, if they aren’t completely familiar with it. Most of the facts can simply be searched on the computer. I made sure to use this loophole for online exams.

There was a group project which I did with Rei and her tiny friend and this friend’s friend. Basically, me being carried again. This is a good thing, I think. They weren’t really pissed with me for not doing anything. Because they directed their anger towards that friend’s friend instead. Whom Rei’s friend wasn’t close to anyway.

I learnt a lot about crabs and the ocean, I think. And the importance of turmeric. Had some field trips which I enjoyed too. Overall, I think this is probably the best GES module there is.

 

GER1000 Quantitative Reasoning

Summary: probability is more fun than studies

MCs: 4

Expected Grade: B / B+ / B-

Actual Grade: A

Workload: weekly quizzes, and a group project which I LOATHE

Assessments: quizzes, a lot of project, finals, tutorial attendance

Profs: I sincerely do not remember nor know

The content was basically a repeat of JC statistics and probability stuff, with more of a social science, research, vibe to it.

Quizzes were alright. Group project wasn’t There were 5 people in my group. Of which two were foreigners from Computing and one was a math major with AMAZING social skills. /s. And there was another girl, who appeared decent until she was unavailable for some of the meetings.

And they wanted to do last minute work. What the actual fuck. I need to do well for this module, or I will be a fucking disgrace, ok? Unfortunately, I was unable to get into the same tutorial slot as my friends, thus we had no chance of being in the same group for the project.

The project is easy enough to be done by one person, and the only problem is that there are 5 people in the group. And I don’t want to be the loser who carries everyone, lol.

 

Overall

Previous CAP: 5.0

Current CAP: 4.95

If I SU the A- for CS2030 it will bring my CAP back up to 5.0. But it seems quite foolish to SU a A-. So, I did not.

Rankings (new feature!)

Now I will be ranking these modules from favourite to least favourite. This will be changed when I get the results back, and highly influenced by results it will be.

Ø  6. GER1000: the group project was a shite idea. Increasing its percentage was a worse idea.

Ø  5. MA1521: math but not the fun stuff like number theory and graphs. Its freaking calculus and I suck.

Ø  4. CS2030: I don’t really like how it’s so methodical and lacking in creative freedom, but useful perhaps.

Ø  3. GES1021: some nice bio stuff and nice field trips (if only I weren’t hungover), but too much focus on specific facts instead of big ideas.

Ø  2. GET1029: would’ve ranked this first, but it isn’t a core mod, so. Great content, interesting, I love the amount of thinking and philosophical discussion, and I think this may be the only reason Spy talks to me sometimes. I am sad. But good module for inquisition.

Ø  1. CS2040S: fun module, theoretical, and I love how we only have to know the theory and aren’t forced to memorise the code. Very useful as well, learnt a lot of fun things about algorithms through classes and self-learning.

 

Future

I have pretty much no plan for my future, in life, as well as in NUS.

I have no clue if I’m gonna do a minor, or a second major, or a double degree (probably too late for that anyway) or anything else. Nor what area of specialisation in my major.

For my Computer Science major, I have realised that I enjoy algorithms and the theoretical, mathy part more than the software engineering side. For now. And through current projects I am starting to realise that I might be bad at game and graphics, so that’s something I might have to give up on.

One of my goals of doing Computer Science is to be able to create a learned machine to trade stocks / forex / bitcoin. Thus, I think AI will be necessary for that. The problem is that it is an intense and competitive specialisation. So, I don’t know how I might cope with this. And the prospect of needing to master python libraries scares me.

As for minors, I have considered either biology or philosophy. Or even maths. But that might be difficult to time what with having too many core modules that I cannot do extra CS electives and stuff. I really do not know what I want to do with my life yet, and that is a problem.

 

Some modules I am considering for next semester are CS3243 AI, CS3230 Algorithms, CS2103 Software Engineering, ST2334 Statistics.

A module that I am quite interested in is CS3233 Competitive Programming. Which is a competitive and torturous module as can be seen in its name. it only admits about 20 students each semester, of which all are extremely talented guys. So that will be tough. I am trying to practice solving problems on Kattis, and I hope that will be helpful by the time I am Year 3 or Year 2 in Semester 2 because it seems to be only available in Semester 2? Kattis score is one of the requirements for entry.