MATH 1011 - Life Sciences Calculus
Ease: 4/10
I know that I'm going to either fail, or pass my an incredibly small margin, but regardless of that the course wasn't really all that hard. Reading through the resource book is probably enough to get anyone through the course, provided that they have a bit of a clue about HSC Mathematics. The examples exams are essentially identical to the one that's you're assessed on, so there's no lateral direction - study the manual and look at the exams and you'll do fine (and by that, I mean learn the questions in the past exams off by heart). Still, the shoddy lecture format, uninspiring content and the fact that it's a uni maths course means it's not that easy (then again, I'm no math whiz).
Lecturers: 1/10
Godawful lecturers, Godawful lecturing format, Godawful lecturing style. There's nothing that can be learned from some waffling old man by the name of
Palmer (funny as he was) at 8am in the morning writing on endless powerpoints, nor is there anything that can be learned from two Asian men (
Lai,
Zhang) who've barely mastered phonics, droning on about some garbage that I couldn't care less about. No effort was made to make things interesting, none at all. I can respect that they don't give their best lecturers to the life science students, but God, give us something. Breaking it down:
Palmer: Funny, quirky old man but he was unfortunate enough to occupy the 8am slots, which I gave up on attending after week 2.
Lai: Funny, kinda cute guy (in a totally heterosexual way) but incredibly hard to understand.
Zhang: Hopeless, unintelligible lecturer. His lectures consistent of re-writing the resource book (which the other two mostly avoided, as best they could), pacing back and forth, laughing at the most incoherently unfunny things and yelling at people for talking. I cannot fault them, as Zhang is the most mindless, hopeless and awful lecturer I've encountered at USyd.
Interest: 0.5/10
It's maths. I liked it in the HSC because it was new. This was advanced HSC work, presented in an awful format. Kudos to Palmer for making things practical and interesting in his lectures, but as I said, there was no way I could keep going to them.
Overall: 2/10
It's a maths course, it's compulsory, it's shit.