Computational Methods for Business Analytics (BT3102), NUS, Aug-Dec 2020

• He is a very patient professor who answers everyone's questions and ensures that students don't feel afraid to note their confusion over topics. This makes it easy to raise questions and aids in our learning of this module. He is also a very thorough professor, as his examples have encouraged me to think more about the concepts learnt.
• One of the better profs i have seen
• He is very knowledgeable and knows how to convey his thoughts to his students.
• Very planned module, clearly explained and very relevant material covered in class.
• given in tutorial survey
• He is a very meticulous professor that cares a lot about the students and their understanding. although the workload and content may be heavy, he does it in such a way that students can maximise their learning potential
• Personally felt that he has a very well designed flow in his module such that although the content is very difficult majority of students are able to follow during his lectures and tutorial.
• He is definitely the best if not one of the best prof in business analytics
• Really good lecturer
• Good professor, clear of what he is teaching, takes the effort to engage with students.
• One of the best BT profs!
• he is very patient and he gives very prompt replies to our queries. He is also very knowledgeable and help us understand the content much better
• Prof Stanley is very professional and effective in teaching.
• He goes to great lengths to make the lesson effective for us. He knows what is effective in making us learn well like giving us weekly quizzes so that the information gets ingrained in us.
• One of the best lecturers I have had in terms of teaching
• Dedication to teaching and constantly taking into account students' feedback and what works/what doesn't. See strengths written in previous section.
• clear
• for his teaching style. one of the profs in nus who can really teach honestly
• Prof Stanley is good at teaching, he makes concepts clear and drill students so that students truly understand the concepts.
• Very patient in explaining difficult concepts till we understood. Very open to questions which encouraged my learning. Very knowledgable of the subject making difficult concepts easier to understand Very open to feedback and provides 24/7 supports in an online forum
• Very responsible and good professor!
• Very detailed in his explanations. Shows his concern for students.
• Understand the course materials well and is able to explain concepts.
• He is very knowledgable and is able to explain concepts in different ways to enhance understanding.
• Detailed explanation, takes the time to ensure we stay on track with the lesson progress
• Stanley is very knowledgeable about the topics he teaches.
• I appreciate the fact that Prof Stanley put in a lot of thoughts when planning this module. For example, after midterms, he explained the purpose of the quizzes is to ensure we revise and catch up with the content which I think is very helpful, and how the homeworks are split into 2 parts to ensure students don't have to rush for submission.
• Explains clearly most of the time
• Patient and knowledgable
• He is very knowledgeable about the topic he is teaching.
• able to get abstract ideas across effectively, provide sufficient examples to understand abstract concepts
• He makes sure that every student understands the concepts before moving on by ensuring that they have cleared their doubts.
• Patient and clear lecturer
• Very effective at teaching difficult content
• very clear delivery of content, ensures a solid grounding in the subject
• Rather interesting teacher
• He is very clear with his content and tries to engage the class.
• clear in explanations.
• Probably the most knowledgeable prof I have had so far, answers all questions promptly and accurately.
• Very clear explanations of tough concepts. Timely feedback and good administration of the module.
• Cares for his students, answers questions clearly, readily accepts feedback, makes content as easy as possible to understand
• Knowledgeable about module content, tries to engage with students and encourage asking questions during class, enabled a useful platform called piazza for students to interact and ask questions to him or the TAs for clarification. Helpful to get everyone on the same page.
• Prof Stanley Kok strength is that it is obvious he knows what he is teaching and is clear about the topics although they are concepts that are difficult to understand. He explains clearly and systematically which helps us to understand better.
• he is very patient and he gives very prompt replies to our queries. He is also very knowledgeable and help us understand the content much better
• He is very patient when explaining concepts that we cannot grasp easily the first time.
• Prof Stanley has super solid domain knowledge he could answer all of our answers in class. His explanation in class is also very clear and easy to follow.
• He is knowledgeable in his field.
• The course was very well structured in my opinion! It was also nice that Bayesian networks were a common thread that tied different concepts together. Assignments were also very engaging and relevant.
• Easy to understand the lectures
• i think that his teaching had not been affected by the transition from offline to online medium, he makes sure that students understand the concept and allows for questioning and interaction during lecture, which is more than i can say for all the other mods i've taken this sem
• He is very methodical in his explanation. Everything is step by step. He is always open to questions.
• Very clear in explanation, would really do everything to ensure that we understand the course materials and see the connection in what we learnt. He also has deep understanding of this domain such that he is able to answer our other doubts well.
• Challenges his students to think critically.
• Encourages questions throughout the lecture
• Delivers content effectively
• Keeps student interested throughout his lesson
• He's a very patient with his students, and also very knowledgeable in the subject matter too.
• I'm impressed by his dedication to his students and the seriousness with which he took his teaching. He takes into account the students' prior (or lack thereof lol) knowledge and breaks down tough mathematical concepts into intuitive ideas. He's also always available and speedy with his responses on our online discussion platform, or through class. I appreciate the many breaks he gives the students as well, among other considerations he's taken in response to the online semester's restrictions, and enjoy the way he manages to fit in so much content within 2.5 hours so clearly.
• clear
• he is clear and encourages his students to ask if they don't understand
• Prof Stanley's lessons are clear, and he is a patient and straightforward prof.
• He has the ability to teach: convey complex algorithms in simpler sub problems. He also has the ability to retain students' attention through thought provoking questions.
• Very patient in explaining difficult concepts till we understood. Very open to questions which encouraged my learning.
• Very knowledgable of the subject making difficult concepts easier to understand
• Very open to feedback and provides 24/7 supports in an online forum
• Get TAs that are more approachable and helpful
• Maybe cover less topics and spend more time going through the concepts in detail instead
• Less work
• Some students are using online pdf viewer, unable to type math symbols or graph/pictures etc. Just a suggestion to change all the required written notes to be just texts instead.
• He could explain more in dept with more examples for certain topics, or go through the concepts with data so as to not make it too hard to visualize. For instance, for forward backward algorithm, there seems to be much lesser examples as compared to others (like viertibi)
• Project work is hard to split by groupmates because each part is a continuation. So will be good to have more time to finish. (extending it to Monday of recess week)
• Need more context when explaining concepts and why they are relevant to the learning concept. Sometimes its hard to understand
• NIL
• less heavy workload
• deadlines for assignments can be more spread out so that there is enough time to complete everything
• -
• -
• For 3k module it might have been slightly tougher than expected
• I think DP, HMM and MDP should be taught before recess week rather than after recess week
• Rather strict and has created a quite a stressful environment for all
• Would be nice to try to finish each slide deck within a week's lesson to avoid overlapping with the next week's content
• wish the content of the module was easier, hahaha.
• I think it would be better if recordings were given from the very start and not just till after recess week. Perhaps he could take attendance if he feels that people might not attend lecture if it is recorded.
• Recorded lectures greatly help in us reviewing and revisiting the concepts
• -
• I really think Prof Stanley should've started recording lectures from the start of the semester. I really needed to revisit his explanation in class during revision :(
• nil
• N/A
• N/A
• Maybe not too much content or homework or quiz or project.
• The workload of the module is too high, should not be a 4MC module.
• Encourages students to ask questions on piazza, the questions answered by him are comprehensive and informative, however when the TAs answer the questions, most of the time they are just one liners and they dont read the question fully.
• NA
• Maybe cap the class at 2 hours- 2h15 min? The breaks helped a lot, but I always found myself unable to process anything from 2pm-2.30pm. Other than that, the module's really great. I'm not a great student and I'm not sure I'll be doing well given my assignment's grades so far compared to the mean/median D: but it's still my favorite mod.
• less workload
• pls lessen the workload. it makes it hard to keep up.
• To reduce the workload
• The homework really helped me to understand the content. However, it is still really heavy, perhaps removing the easier questions and retaining only the harder ones might help?
• Nil
• Prof is very good at guiding us through examples and practice questions.
• Interesting way of teaching the module and combining the lecture and tutorial
• please allow for proper tutorial sessions (where tutorial is gone through) instead of using tutorial time for lectures :(
• Very systematic and detailed in his explanations
• Efficient use of piazza to answer all queries quickly
• TAs are not approachable and helpful
• be more approachable perhaps!
• The TAs were ineffective, cannot communicate well and non present
• i think that the project could benefit from a more comprehensive peer eval for the project(like the peer feedback exercise for another bt mod bt4211)
• he's done everything humanely possible to make it as painless a process as is, so none that I can think of.
• its too hard and the workload is too high. every time i finish an assignment, another assignment pops up almost immediately after. also, you guys might wanna check the dataset given for the project if yall wanna use it for the next sem. i understand that it is probably information scrapped directly from twt but having the n-word in this day and age might be a recipe for disaster.
• NA
• Workload
• The homework assignments and project were very tough. The workload from the project was very heavy. It would be nice if there wasn't any homework once the project started.
• More concepts need more time to be digested
• Hard to grasp on the first try
• -
• Stressful weekly tests (Although I think they are necessary)
• More guidance for the coding required for homework and project work could help
• it is very demanding. The homework and the project are exceptionally high-intensity, disproportionate to their weightage in the grading of the module.
• Slightly too difficult
• The workload
• Not really that useful, very hard academically and the homework was very hard and not progressive.
• Project work is a bit too intense in terms of difficulty. Would prefer if it can be reduced slightly.
• I personally did not like the coding segments, especially for HWs and project since the packages/codes already exist to run the algorithms.
• I personally think the concepts are hard to grasp and the homework/project have concepts that we may not learn in class..
• workload is abit heavy
• The lack of guidance regarding the projects where we were just given a task to do with no previous reference about how to code the project.
• The homework and project questions are REALLY difficult.
• extremely extremely difficult
• Is way too many assignments and furthermore, the content cover for semester 1 and semester 2 are very different and this shouldn't be the case.
• Long pauses in the middle of lecture when nobody answers questions are a little frustrating, but given the online situation, that seems a little out of the lecturer's control.
• Too many assignments and hard to finish
• Maybe too much homework projects and quiz combined
• -
• Too difficult concepts especially given the virtual learning.
• Too many concepts for such a short period as the topics are not very easy to understand. Also, the project based is not very effective as its hard to split work among members.
• Very intense workload, some questions seem impossible to answer based on what was covered in class (simple concepts).
• Very tedious to understand the processes and practical skills
• I have a lot of difficulty in coding concepts learned in this module despite getting decent grades in the pre-requisites. I believe more modules should be the prerequisite of this module (CS2040) and maybe a new module to help bridge the gaps between prerequisite and this module especially in the coding aspect.
• Tough learning curve. Need to have decent programming skills to solve the homework.
• It's honestly really difficult, and I'm already fairly confident of my aptitude in math.
• Hope to see more guidelines and help given for project questions because it is too intensive, coupled with all other assessment components for the module. Especially when concepts and workload is so much higher than other higher level modules,
• recommended for module content to be split into 2 different modules. Also, standardise teaching content between semesters, to be fair to all students.
• too heavy workload. hard to work in groups for coding project, would prefer individual. back to back homeworks.
• deadlines are tight and some assignments are very difficult
• math and statistically heavy content.
• Workload
• Workload was getting too heavy, not a lot of guidance was received for project.
• It is there was a period where the assignments, homework and quizzes timings all clashed together which made it very difficult to manage.
• Crazy workload
• workload
• its too heavy the workload. i feel like dying coming to his class everytime
• Maybe it would be nice to have a system to give feedback about group members? Like a peer evaluation form. I know Prof said in the post midterm survey that we should probably complain less which is true hahaha but the final project group feels like it's made out of two or two and a half people instead of four. Not that the members don't really show up for our online meetings, but that they tend to take the back seat during our discussions, e.g. showing up an hour late, not talking during the meeting, lacking initiative. So we're not sure if that's really grounds for going straight to the Prof to ask if there's anything that could be done about it, or to just let it be. Perhaps the presence of a peer evaluation form would help. Or maybe a reduction in the number of group members from 4 to 3, since the six project questions are sequential, and work can't be easily split equally between members.
• Contains interesting and useful content
• Practical application of theories taught required
• I'm able to see the real-life applications of business analytics, and implement theory in code
• Quite interesting and applicable to future endeavours
• The rigour
• -
• A very in-depth exploration of the fundamental algorithms required in business analytics with a strong focus on the application of the theory to real-world scenarios.
• the content is very interesting and relevant
• This module has very clear objective and concepts
• it is very structured and i learnt alot
• Interesting concepts that I felt were relevant to my usage of business analytics in the future.
• Very interesting algorithms and real-life examples provided to allow me to gain a better appreciation of machine learning.
• He teaches well.
• The module is difficult HAHA. Tough modules make for good learning and the pace at which content is introduced was just enough to maintain a good level of challenge throughout the course. The assignments also served to connect theory and application very well, and I find this one of the most valuable aspects of the course.
• Introduce many interesting topics
• It is very systematic; everything topic ties to each other
• Interesting content, forms the foundation of greater concepts and so it is important to have good understanding of this.
• Effective in explaining the math behind certain algorithms
• The module is well prepared where the topics are related to each other
• Interesting topics and great professor.
• Interesting knowledge to carry forward post-uni
• The module slides are very clear and understandable
• Very relevant
• Intensive module to strengthen foundations in statistical methods, but may be abit too intensive.
• It challenges me to think critically and practice frequently to catch up with the content
• the piazza platform for everyone to communicate on, module helped create a basis in understanding alot of complex problems
• The prof shows how the content he covered in class is applicable in reality
• The prof teaches well
• Interesting concepts, quite a focused module, felt that I have walked away learning something.
• Learned a lot of new techniques that are very applicable/useful for data analytics. The homework and nano-quizzes really helped in re-enforcing the concepts taught in lecture.
• clear
• it forces me to code
• I liked the depth of the concepts that were taught in a way that was clear and comprehensive, as long as effort is put in to understand and follow the class. I liked the quizzes. I don't mind if it's weekly, because it reduces the weighting of each quiz and I don't normally do too swell on each one haha. I also liked the coding assignments, which helped me understand the heavy math behind the concepts, especially for the value iteration process and the viterbi/forward-backward algorithm. The other thing I liked was the Prof's and TAs' strict adherence to the deadlines and the no cheating rule. It made me feel less discouraged about not being able to do/submit some of the homework and coding assignments after struggling through them for a few days only to overhear afterwards that some coursemates had copied off previous years' work and finished them within a couple of hours. D: