Squar3root
realest nigga
MMAN1300 - good so far
MMAN2130 - pretty good
MATH2019 - straight forward
ELEC1112 - death rip wam
MMAN2130 - pretty good
MATH2019 - straight forward
ELEC1112 - death rip wam
ooooft nightweaver thanks again - your reviews are always so helpful and good luck in getting your results ^_^ACTL3141
Ease: 7/10. Not too bad, really the only conceptually difficult thing was figuring out exposures (which I still don't get).
Content: 9/10. Content was linked very cohesively and I understood the relevance of each part of the course. Was somewhat interesting.
Lecturer: 9/10. Sherris is a great lecturer. Witty, yet teaches really well. Albeit, too slow at times.
Tutor: 6/10. Mengyi is okay. Goes through an overall summary of the past week, then just lets us "discuss" questions. Don't really get anything out of the tutes.
Overall: 8/10. Interesting course, finals weren't too difficult (though I have no idea how I went.. there was a lot of writing for a mathematical course).
ACTL3151
Ease: 8/10. Content isn't hard, until the very last module on pension mathematics where I still don't totally get what's going on.
Content: 9/10. Extension of ACTL2111 on the life insurance side of things. Pretty fun mathematically, as you've got to figure out how to manipulate expressions then crunch crunch crunch.
Lecturer: Can't really comment.
Tutor: 5/10. Pretty boring, didn't learn much.
Overall: 8/10. Not a hard course, so long as you have mastered the basics of life insurance, you'd be good. Got wrecked in the finals though, which were made a lot harder than previous years.
FINS1612
Ease: 5/10. Content isn't hard. The quizzes were. My god. Did crap in the first quiz, and even crapper in the second quiz. Quizzes are so hard. So much for picking this as a WAM booster. Luckily the finals were very straightforward (though that would probably mean there would be no scaling, not that there's scaling anyway? not sure)
Content: 6/10. So. Much. Content. Handy knowledge I guess, and that's about it.
Lecturer: Can't comment.
Tutor: 8/10 Kevin Liu. Pretty good. Engaging, keeps things interesting and has interesting personal anecdotes on finance related things.
Overall: 6/10. Stay away if you think this course will be a good WAM booster. Don't make the same mistake I did :'(
MATH3901
Ease: 7/10. Coming from doing the actuarial equivalent, this was definitely more challenging. The style of questions are a lot harder.
Content: 8/10. Content is quite interesting, and the lecture slides are very detailed.
Lecturer: No comment. All I can say is that he is a harsh marker.
Tutor: No comment.
Overall: 7/10. So glad I did this right after I took ACTL2102. I didn't really study for the course at all throughout the semester, and only studied the parts that I haven't learnt before, so I spent the least time on this course. However, it really demands a strong statistical foundation. Finals were quite hard imo, however they just use homework questions and lecture slide examples (which I didn't really look at..)
Course Conveners hate him, follow this 1 simple trick to add 10inches to your WAMOne semester is done and dusted, so I might get some reviews done! I'll do one subject per post.
MATH1151
Ease: 6/10. Not too bad tbh, as long as you paid attention in lectures and kept up to date with tutorial questions and made sure to ask your questions to your tutor - however, only a small portion of the cohort ended up actually doing that haha.
if it was Alexander Usac... can confirm he is a good tutorTutors: 8.5/10 for Alexander (Calculus) - Definitely knew his stuff, was a very intuitive thinker, found his quick review of the week's topic at the beginning of the tutorial valuable, and personally liked his accent. Would probably prefer him to be less adamant on class participation to get the class moving along, because sometimes it reduced how many questions we ended up covering in class, and also his strictness sometimes seemed a tad overboard.
yep it was him Definitely a tutor I would recommendif it was Alexander Usac... can confirm he is a good tutor
FINS1613
Content: 7/10. Bland but moderate difficulty, lecture slides were really nice along with substantial amount of practice questions given and it helped a lot. Finals was meh but everything else was fine.
Lecturers: 9/10 for Robert Tumarkin - went through the material very well and comprehensively went through calculations and other questions. His american accent kept me engaged as well as his dry jokes like the Bieber Dog!.
2/10 for Emma Zhang - Don't even bother attending her lectures, voice projection was tasteless and she was utter useless.
3/10 for Donald Winchester - His slides were sadly copied and pasted from the textbook and was not interesting whatsoever. Only good thing I could say about him was I found him better than Zhang.
Overall lectures for this subject weren't that helpful except for Tumarkin.
Tutor: 5/10 Claire, Waste of time, even her slides were useless. No regrets abandoning her for Peter Anderson's class, Peter FTW. I let her pass since she didn't give me a low tutorial mark
Overall: 7/10. I did not mind it but it had no flavour. It's guaranteed a credit even without the scaling but no complaints.
ECON1101
Content: 7/10. Content was straight forward but my god some of the tutorial tests spanked it, I would give thumbs up for new changes they implemented for this subject tbh since the tutorial questions and tests helped a lot for the final exam *cough* multiple choice.
Lecturer: 20/10 for Alberto Motta - It's going to be hard find a better lecturer than Alberto, his character and engagement was sublime.
Tutor: 5/10 Vanessa, Waste of my time attending her tutorials unfortunately, but she tried.
Overall: 8/10. I had a great time but meh. Many consider this subject as a wam booster and I somewhat agree.
AHAHAHAHAH "a feeling" he's a strict markerACTL2111 (Financial Mathematics for Actuaries)
Ease 6/10. Definitely one of the hardest courses I have done this semester, lots of notation to cover and it really requires you to wrap your head around concepts that seem pretty confusing initially. The mid-semester exam and final aren't easy either, it's a real test of your speed, so I'd say the constantly practicing a whole lot of past papers and Institute (CT1) papers is the way to go. Having a good foundation in ACTL1101 will also help (especially from the Financial Mathematics and basic Life Contingencies side of things).
Content: 7/10. Interesting to see the mathematics behind the pricing and valuation of financial instruments, but actual tutorial problems aren't easy simple to follow. I still don't fully understand some of the concepts especially for some of the ones taught mid-way throughout the course.
Lecturer: J Ziveyi (7/10): Ziveyi is a mildly engaging lecturer, can be funny at times and does an OK job at explaining concepts. He is also a huge troll, likes to troll his cohort with his moderately difficult exam questions (that are probably harder than the CT1 exams) but he is friendly and always willing to help out. He also needs to make his annotations clearer on the lecture slides though, since he writes all over the place so it becomes hard to follow what he is trying to derive.
Tutor: J Ziveyi (7/10). Same as above.
Overall: It's a hard course, that requires a lot of work to get through. Got wrecked in the final though, hoping that scaling saves me.
MATH2111 (Higher Several Variable Calculus)
Ease 6/10. One of the hardest MATH courses I have done this SEM, it gets much more abstract this time around especially with topics like Analysis and some parts of Vector Calculus. Final exam wasn't easy either, but I hear there's quite a significant amount of upward scaling in this course. This course is probably more suited towards Pure Mathematics majors.
Content: 7/10. Interesting to see learn the extensions of single variable calculus concepts to multi-variable but it still ends up being a difficult and a fairly dry course.
Lecturer: Denis Potapov (8/10) & Bill McLean (8/10). Potapov is an engaging lecturer, and always likes to add in that extra depth when explaning concepts. His system of presenting his lectures is OK, but he seemed to re-use a lot of material from 2014 lectures (which he uploaded anyways), so attending lectures, became redundant. McLean seems like a really nice guy, but his lecture notes got too confusing too quickly at times so I wouldn't recommend using his lecture notes to learn the material.
Tutor: Hendrik Grundling (7/10). He is just OK, can answer your questions pretty well to a certain depth, but sometimes takes too long. I also get the feeling he's a strict marker too.
Overall: 6/10. Not a course I would want to do again, but I guess it was nice learning a thing a two. Got semi-wrecked in the final, again I'm hoping that scaling saves me.
MATH2601 (Higher Linear Algebra)
Ease: 7/10. So the course starts off easy for the first few chapters, then gets pretty confusing pretty quickly when you hit Diagonalisation and Jordan Forms. There's a lot of theory and proofs to cover so it takes time to actually understand what's going on, but luckily the class tests and final were much straightforward. Again, it is more suited towards Pure Mathematics kids.
Content: Interesting to see several extensions of first year Algebra, but it is much more theoretical and abstract this time around. If you didn't like MATH12X1 Algebra you will despise this course, otherwise it is not too bad.
Lecturer: Catherine Greenhill (9/10). Great lecturer, she shows enthusiasm for the course and always gives past material to help for test preparation. Sometimes her proofs are a bit overboard, but other than that she's great. She also made the class tests and final pretty straightforward too
Tutor: Jim Franklin (4/10). Smart guy, but writes all over the place making it a mess to follow what he's doing. Greenhill would've been a much better tutor to have.
Overall: 8/10. Well delivered course, despite it being difficult at times. Still, I probably wouldn't want to go near an Algebra course again.
MATH2901 (Higher Theory of Statistics)
Ease: 8/10. It's an interesting introduction to Statistics that is simple to follow as long as you keep up with the work every now and then, but it is still not that easy. The course pack notes were really good to follow and it made learning the material that much easier. The first few weeks also cover first year Probability so it makes it quite easy to transition into this course .
Content: 8/10. It's a good introduction to statistics, most parts of the are pretty interesting, and it helps you realise the importance of statistics and why it is used extensively when applied to real life situations. However, some of the proofs can get quite overboard and become hard to follow. There's also many bits and pieces that seem irrelevant, but I guess that was put in there to make the course seem more interesting.
Lecturer: Libo Li (7/10). Has one of the funniest laughs you will ever hear Does a decent job at lecturing, but you could probably learn the whole course from the course pack notes and still do pretty well. However, I think he tends to overestimate students' abilities and as a result gave out pretty hard assessments and final exam. He also likes to re-use past assignment questions for the final exam.
Tutor: W Dunsmuir (10/10). Really good tutor, goes through tutorial problems quite well and explains fundamental concepts in a way that is easy to understand.
Overall: 9/10. Final wasn't easy, but not something I found too hard, I'd say time was an issue. Hopefully with some upwards scaling I end up with a decent mark. This course is a solid introduction to Statistics, had fun taking it.