NUS AY 14/15 Sem 1 Module Review

First posted on: 24 January 2016

EC2104: Quantitative Methods for Economic Analysis

Lecture (2h) every week; Tutorial (1h) every week

Assessment: Midterms (MCQ). Finals (MCQ).

Lecturer: Roy Chen

Due to bad planning, I took this module very late, and it is advisable to clear this during Year 1 because they changed the level 3000 pre-requisites to include EC2104. Roy Chen has a similar teaching methodology as Zhang Yang where he provides numerous examples to help the class understand how to apply the various concepts covered in lecture. His explanations are pretty clear too. I’m not sure whether he will still be lecturing this module, but I know that there are other lecturers who will take this module in different semesters. But if you happen to find that he is teaching this module, I’ll recommend you to take it under him. It is possible to score well for this module with sufficient practice from past year papers and good understanding of concepts.

EC3303: Econometrics I

Lecture (2h) every week (webcasted); Tutorial (1.5h) even/odd week

Assessment: Two group assignments (which included STATA). Midterms. Finals.

Lecturer: Denis Tkachenko

This is one of the hardest compulsory modules to be cleared. Although the course content covered isn’t a lot (first half of the textbook), the teaching pace can be considered relatively slower as compared to other economics modules. There are theorems to understand and quite a number of proving to do in this module. The learning curve is really steep initially, but over time, I think it gets slightly better. The STATA questions of the assignments were quite hard. The second assignment was really challenging and my group spent around 2-3 days going to the computer lab to attempt to understand and solve the questions. Exams were quite hard for me.

Ec2374: Economy of Modern China I

Lecture (2h) every week (webcasted); Tutorial (1h) every week

Assessment: Two individual assignments. One tutorial presentation on a newspaper article. No midterms. Open-book Finals (essay).

Lecturer: Song Chang Cheng

This is a relatively light module (qualitative) in terms of assessment, but the lecture content is quite heavy. Although it is the economy of modern China, the first half of the lecture went through the history of China’s economy to understand the current existing policies and problems such as the hukou system and governance system in rural and urban areas. The later lecture covered the financial system of China – housing market, stock market etc which I felt were quite interesting and relevant knowledge that I would not have understood without the historical context of the country. The readings mostly came from the textbook.

The individual assignments – the first one was slightly challenging as we had to obtain data on China’s economy to plot the different components of the economy (investments etc). The data didn’t really add up to a 100% and the numbers varied across me and my friends. The second assignment was short answer questions and essay, so it was manageable. Finals were quite difficult. However, if you put in the effort to study the lecture material and understand the content, I believe it is possible to get a good grade.

*Another lecturer is now taking this module. Based on my friends’ experiences taking it in 15/16 Sem 1, the module is now much tougher and more time-consuming. There were more readings and tutorials were debates.

GEM2900 – Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: Individual assignments and online quizzes

Lecturers: David Chew & Nott, David John

I’m not sure whether this module will continue to be offered in future, looking at how it hasn’t been offered for AY2015/2016. The content covered is more towards the statistical components that was taught in JC, especially for things like binomial/poisson/normal distribution (minus the GC calculator part). The probability part covers more, there are more rules to learn and is more challenging (at least for me). There were some assignments that had to be completed and submitted on ivle, and I think there were also random quizzes to fill out as well. Finals constituted a significant component (60-70%), which was pretty scary honestly, and I wasn’t really able to complete the paper. There is definitely greater competition as Math majors can take this module to clear their GEM and the content would most probably be relatively easy for them to understand. I S/U-ed this module in the end, but I recommend taking it during a semester with a heavy workload.