Software Engineering

CS2103 - Software Engineering (CFM)

CS2103 – Software Engineering
4MC / Examinable / 35% Project

This module is very concept-dependent; however I feel that they are easy to grasp. The final exam is also very similar to the tutorial questions – even the tutorial questions/practice questions are the past year questions. Also the project component is rather heavy, find good teammates to do it.

Lecture – Lecturer is very nice, but accent is rather hard to hear. Luckily the lecture notes are pretty detailed – I did not get the textbook even though the examination was openbook
Tutorial – My tutor was really nice, he gave us a lot of answers. Tutorial should not be too hard, make sure you get the correct answers (from the tutor) to not miss out important details.
Project – Very important portion, I had godlike teammates yet again, so I did pretty well. Make sure the workload is split pretty equally as they do give different members different grades based on their contributions (should one of your teammates decide to report, haha).

The exam is manageable, I would say.

My grade: A+ (yay!)
My rating: Medium

http://xianyou.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/nus-module-review-ay1011-semester-1/

ContentYou learn about UML and the flow of Software Engineering process. The project itself is not easy, but if you meet a good TA, you are fine. And of course good project teammates, that time we did in a group of 4 ppl.

Teaching staff:Taught by Bimlesh Wadhwa and Damith Chatura Rajapakse. I find that Bimlesh talks in a way thatsounds quite unclear, esp when ending a sentence, i find difficult in listening to her lectures at times. Damith, a lecturer famous (or infamous) for his lame jokes, will get tired of it when you sign up for another module by him (eg. CS3215). My TA was Mihail Asavoae, a very helpful and understanding person. Less

Assessment and workloadMidterm: 15%; Project: 30% (3 report submission + 1 demo); Final exam: 55%. Make sure you don't just focus on the project, and forgot about study hard for your midterm/final. Final is very important, even if you get A for the project, if you don't do well for the final, it is easy for you to drop a few grades down.

Personal experienceIn this module, you learn a lot about Software Engineering, quite important for you if you are taking CS3215.

http://module-review.com/?module=cs2103-software-engineering

Artificial Intelligence

CS3243 - Intro to AI

Fun module in which you have a few projects to do.

Teaches search problems and basic AI methods like naive bayesian etc

Start on the projects early. My project was 2 parts, firstly to program a LEGO robot to navigate a maze and secondly to make it recognize numbers on the maze itself. Some groups did not manage to complete in time so this is where you can try to score better.

Do your assignments regularly and you should be ready for the final exam.

http://wahthanks.com/school.php

One of the most interesting modules I took in NUS. Teaches you how to create AI. 2 20% projects are tedious but definitely worth the effort. Just make me want to advance into AI field.

http://www.singjie.com/nus-modules/

CS3244 - Machine Learning

Content
Learnt quite a lot in this module. Although the prescribed textbook is old, but it teaches the fundamentals quite well.

Teaching staff:Prof. Tan Chew Lim is a good lecturer. Usually the class size is small (around 20), so it's pretty conducive to ask questions.

Assessment and workload2 Project reports (mainly playing with WEKA), which isn't too difficult. CA was mainly MCQ (might change though). Finals were manageable.

Personal experienceExpect to put in some effort, especially since there isn't webcast. But in general, this is quite a manageable and fun module.

http://module-review.com/?module=cs3244-machine-learning

Visual Computing

CS3241 -  Computer Graphics

[CS3241] Computer Graphics (4 MC)
Instructor: Dr. Cheng Holun
Assessment: 45% Final Exam, 25% Mid-Term Exam, 20% Assignment, 10% Tutorial Attendance and Participation
Difficulty: 6/10
Grade Obtained: A

Initially, I felt a bit scared taking this module because I didn't really have much knowledge on graphics. But hey, this module really rocked, not forgetting the super dedicated lecturer who made each concept pretty easy to understand! Also, I got to enjoy video clips during lectures, and the lecturer would always prompt us to identify, make critical comments and appreciate the graphical techniques used in those clips. I guess the only difficult thing about the module was the need for independent learning, especially in doing the programming assignments.

Final exam was really do-able, as long as you know your stuff. The tricky part was the true/false questions which took 20% of the total score for the final exam. Every wrong answer would result in a -1 mark!

http://cliff-vs-cliffy.livejournal.com/


CS3241 - Computer Graphics - 4MC
This module is about creating computer graphics and animation. I did learn a lot about how animation, camera, and 3D stuffs are made during this module. A very fun module especially with the great lecturer Dr. Michael S. Brown. There are 2 'mini-exams' worth 20% each. 4 or 5 programming assignments worth 45% in total. And finally a small in class quiz worth 15%. I cannot say the programming was hard, in fact Dr. Brown gave us a few hint. The trick was in making the bells and whistles.

http://vote4adit.blogspot.com/2011/11/nus-module-year-4-sem-1.html

CS3241 – Computer Graphics – A

This was a module I really enjoyed this semester as well. The module teaches you basic computer graphics and coding using OpenGL. The lecturer is amazingly good and very passionate about teaching this module. He shows many short Pixar clips and other videos to show how computer graphics is in the real world. The module has lectures, tutorials and labs (tuts and labs are graded). The tutorials and labs were quite simple probably because many year 2 students were taking the module. The lab also has this component for creativity (arnd 20%) for which I consistently got 0… The midterm was also very simple having just basic mathematics and less of actual “graphics”. The second part of the lectures was more interesting as we moved on to lighting and texture mappings. Though some of the mathematics was a bit more complex, it was still easy compared to any other math module like MA1505… The labs are fun to do (not for me…) as they have the creativity part and the lecturer usually shows what the entire class has done during the lecture. The final exam was quite easy (mcqs, true or false and a few long answer questions). If you are well prepared for the exam, you can finish the paper in around 1.5 hrs and leave early

http://shyamsundar2007.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/year-3-sem-2/

CS3241 (again!) April 5, 2011

Filed under: Computing,Life updates,NUS — jocundly @ 5:25 am

Was at the lab and happen to see donna samuel (yes a very unique name indeed) teaching a bunch of students CS3241. For some reason it brings backs fun memory of openGL coding, and i managed to cope from her the CS3241 collage.

I do wonder why i did not bother saving my batch’s collage, but here’s how the collage would look like.

/Satisfied 

http://ridikulus.wordpress.com/category/computing/

Others

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~kkyin/CS5343/

http://nusschoolofcomputing.blogspot.com/2008/12/modulo-nus-timetable-planner.html

CS4243 - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Credits: 4

Grade: A-

Comment: For almost every lecture the professor introduced around 2-3 long maths formulae/algorithms with many algebraic notations. For the project topic my team chooses 3D Reconstruction. My team did relatively fine - We reconstructed a 3D box, by manually selecting 2D points on photographs of a tissue-box. Ah well, you can see that even a level 4000 module's work quality isn't exactly amazing. The final exam was surprisingly manageable, perhaps thanks to the study guidelines he gave us in the final lecture. 

http://mundaneloser.blogspot.com/2011/01/year-3-semester-1-ay-201011.html

Understanding Quick Sort

Watching at the gif from wikipedia didn't help.

dafuq is this?

Fortunately I found an awesome youtube video that explains how Quick Sort works!
 

Printing in NUS SoC (Mac OSX 10.5)

Printing for MAC OS (Leopard - MAC ver 10.5)

1. Click on the apple icon (fig 1) and select System Preference > Print & Fax.
   
   fig 1
2. You will see fig 2.
   
   fig 2
3. Click on the "+" sign.  The Add Printer dialog box (Fig 3) will appear.
   
   fig 3
4. Press and hold the CTRL key and click on the menu bar as shown on fig 3.
5. A drop-down menu-box will appear.  Click on the "Customize Toolbar...".  The toolbar customisation dialog as shown in Fig 4 will appear.
   
   fig 4
6. Drag the Advance icon onto the menu bar (see arrow on fig 4).  Then click Done.
7. The Advance icon is now accessible from the menu bar.  (see fig 5).
   
   fig 5
8. Click on Advanced to see the advanced settings dialog box(Fig 6).
   
   fig 6
9. Enter the fields in the advanced settings dialog box accordingly.
   Example --> URL:  smb://nts27.comp.nus.edu.sg/pstsc-dx (For student) or smb://nts09.comp.nus.edu.sg/pstsc-dx (For staff)
   Name: pstsc-dx
10. Select the appropriate driver.  Select printer software -> Lexmark T642
11. Then click Add.  Installable options dialog box (fig 7) will appear.
    
    fig 7
12. Select the appropriate settings for installable options and Click Continue.  Note: if options differ from what is shown, choose the closest approximation.
13. You will see the newly added printer in your Print & Fax window (fig 8).
    
    fig 8
14. You are ready to print.
15. When printing, you will be prompted to enter your NUSNETid and password.
    Example --> Name: NUSSTU\
    Password: *********
    
    fig 9
16. You are done!

Printing in NUS SoC (Window 7)

1. Right click > My Computer> Map network drive...
2. Map a Drive letter to \\nts27\pc
   
3. Key in your NUSNET account and password.
   
   
4. Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > View devices and printers
   
    
5. Choose Add a printer
   
    
6. Click Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer
   
    
7. Click The printer that I want isn’t listed
   
    
8. Choose Select a shared printer by name
9. Key in \\nts27\ eg: \\nts27\psts
   
    
10. Click Install driver
    
    
11. Click Finish
    
    
12. You have successfully added a network printer.

Convert between Gray and Binary Code

Awesome visual guide.

http://www.wisc-online.com/Objects/ViewObject.aspx?ID=IAU8307

Vim Cheatsheet

http://worldtimzone.com/res/vi.html

Quantum FAQ

(1) What is the meaning of psi and psi*?
psi and psi* by themselves have no meaning. Only psi*psi has meaning, which is the probability.

(2) What is the difference between psi and ket (or psi* and bra)?
ket describe a state of a particle. psi is the wavefunction of that state. For example a ket |s> describes a particular state. is the wavefunction of that ket in terms of position.

(3) What do we mean when we sandwich something between a bra and a ket?
For example, we have . This means the expectation value or average value of A. A can be energy, position, momentum, etc.

(4) What are colour charges?
In electricity, we have positive charges and negative charges (2 quantities to describe the electronic charges).

For quarks, we have red charges, blue charges and green charges (3 quantities to describe colour charge.) It happens that the number of quantities to describe colour charge is 3.

(5) What is the difference between leptons and quarks?
Quarks are affected by all 4 fundamental forces(strong, weak, electromagnetic, gravity).

Leptons are affected by only 3 fundamental forces(weak, electromagnetic, gravity).

(6) How spin and anti-particles comes about when we marry QM with SR?
One equation that unifies QM and SR is the Dirac equation. There are 4 solutions to the Dirac equation (particle spin up, particle spin down, anti-particle spin up, anti-particle spin down).

(7) What are hadrons?
Hadrons are particles held together by strong force.
Hadrons can be baryons(3 quarks), anti-baryons(3 anti-quarks) and mesons(1 quark and 1 anti-quark).

(8) Matters are made up of fermions. Why helium is a boson?
The bounded system containing even number of fermions can be considered as bosons. E.g Helium contain 2 proton and 2 neutrons. Since the number of fermions is even, we can treat helium as boson.

(9) Why the sea of electron is considered the vacuum? i.e.we cannot "see" it.
The negative energies are all filled up by electrons.  Seeing it means that we can see the negative energies. However, negative energies are not  natural occurring. We have to artificially create it. This means that we need to promote the electron occupying in the negative energy state in order to “see” the negative energy.
 
(10) Why QED is easier than QCD?
 QED are easier than QCD. The reason is that the photons (messengers) come only as 1 type of particle. However, in QCD, the gluons (messengers) come with 3 colours. This makes the calculations more complex.

(11) Where are vertices in the Feymann diagrams? What are they?
The vertices are at the intersection points. The vertices represent specific interactions. Actually, at every vertex, there is an integration to perform.

(12) What is the meaning of "off mass shell"?
 Off mass shell means that virtual particles are involved. During those situations, the energy dispersion relation E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4 is not true any more.

(13) How to deduce D^0?
Since D^0 is a meson it contains an anti-quark and a quark. We are told that it has charm number=+1. This means that there is charm quark. So what we need to do is to identify the other anti-quark. D^0, the zero means it has no electronic charge. Since charm quark has electronic charge 2/3, the anti-quark must have electronic charge -2/3. There are only 2 possibilities u-bar or t-bar. By convention, we choose the lightest one that is u-bar. Thus D^0=cu-bar.

(14) Why quarks cannot be separated? (Dumb bell analogy? Quark Confinement )
Lets take an example that we want to separate a X quark from a Y quark. We are forcing the X quark to the left and the Y quark to the right.

Note that we need to input a lot of energies to separate them. However, when the energies are high enough, the energies input are converted to particles!

This means that on the left, the X quark is paired up by another Y quark(created by the energy we input). The Y quark on the right is paired up by another X quark(created by the energy we input).

(15) How many “particles” are there?

Case 1: Exclude electronic and colour charges; exclude anti-particles; exclude force particles àwe have 6 leptons and 6 quarks = 12 particles.

Case 2:Exclude anti-particles; exclude force particles -- we have 3 colours for each quarks. That is 18 quarks and 6 leptons = 24 particles.

Case 3: Exclude colour charges; Exclude force particles -- The particles in case 1 plus their anti-particles = 24 particles.

Case 4: Exclude force particles -- The particles in case 2 above plus their anti-particles = 48 particles.

(16) How many force particles are there?
If we ignore all charges(electronic and colour), there are just 4. If we want to include the charges there are 13 = 1 graviton + 1 photon + 8 gluons(rgb)+(W^+)+(W^-)+Z.
Gluons have 8 independent colours states(out of the scope this module).
 
(17) Are bosons forces particles?
All force particles are bosons but not all bosons are force particles. Eg, helium-4 is a boson but not a force particle.

(18) What is the purpose of R3 in lasing?
If we promote atoms to the excited state, they will decay to the ground state spontaneously and randomly. We cannot create laser using 2 states systems.

In order for a laser to work, we need an intermediate state R3(meta-stable). The excited atoms will be stored in this state. When the many atoms stored in this state starts to decay to the ground state at the same time, the laser will be created.

The strength of the laser depends on how many atoms the meta-stable state can store.

The inclusion of this meta-stable state allows us to re-derive the planck's law. This is the link of laser with quantum physics.

 (19) Why helium spin is zero?
Helium contains 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Protons and neutrons are fermions, spin=1/2. The total spin of Helium can be 1/2+1/2+1/2+1/2=2 to 1/2-1/2+1/2-1/2=0. i.e spin of helium can be 2, 1, 0. Thus helium being spin zero is only 1 of the 3 possible cases.
Since helium contains even number of fermions, it is a boson.

(20) Does Higgs mechanism applies only to massive bosons(W+,W-,Z)?
No, higgs mechanism gives mass to all fundamental particles.

(21) Is order of quarks in baryons/anti-baryons/mesons important?
No, the order is not important. Eg ddu=dud=udd.

(22) How do we name the supersymmetric particles?
All force particles will have their supersymmetric partner with name ending with "ino". eg Photino, Gluino, Winos
All quarks and leptons will have their supersymmetric partner with name starting with "S". eg Selectron, Smuon, Sup, etc   

G15zeroeight

Sample story: http://joshuatj.com/2011/05/24/the-atoms-atom/

http://www.physics.nus.edu.sg/einstein/

ME:

http://www.nerdum.com/gaming/the-physics-of-mass-effect-2/
http://mranthonydr.blogspot.com/2011/02/physics-of-mass-effect.html
http://www.gamertell.com/technologytell/article/mass-effect-makes-physics-cool/

NUS Stuff

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~wangy13/
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~albertmt/Download/Education/
http://www.box.net/shared/g7sujvpgda

Sunfire on Mac

1. ssh ytz24@sunfire.comp.nus.edu.sg (try sunfire-r.comp.nus.edu.sg if you are outside NUS network)
2. type yes
3. key in password

Module Review - Great guide for Singapore Uni module

 

http://module-review.com/