ECON10005: Quantitative Methods 1

1. 2 x Mid-semester tests (7.5% each)
2. 2 x Assignments (7.5% each)
3. Tutorial attendance (10%)
4. Final exam (60%) - hurdle

There are already a number of reviews for QM1, but I thought I’d offer the perspective of a mathematically inept arts major who did it as breadth:

QM1 has a nasty reputation and it’s notorious for being one the hardest subjects you’ll ever do. It allegedly has a 30~40% fail rate, and is compulsory for BCom students.

Despite that, QM wasn’t as bad as what people make it out to be. It started off dull, but got better and better, even (dare I say) fun. A lot of concepts, particularly for excel, were also applicable to real life.

QM's difficulty is exaggerated as it's straightforward as long as you do the work. Having only done methods in VCE (which was my worst subject),it was overwhelming at first. But the learning modules gives you plenty of practice and it was easy to catch up.

Key topics in QM1 include: probability, data analysis, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and linear regression.

Yes, with screen capture

John Shannon, Wasana Karunarathne

A lot of past exams in the library, plenty more posted on LMS.

3.5 Out of 5

Principles of Business Statistics by any author is adequate.

• Lectures: 2 x 1 hr per week
• Tutorials: 1 x 1 hr per week

2019 Semester 1

H1 (94)

3 Assignments throughout the semester due in weeks 5, 8 and 11. Each worth 10%.
End of semester exam worth 70%

Give your overall opinion of the subject, lecturers, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

The fabled QM1! I believe when I completed it, it was Jonathon's first time running the subject. As such we received no past exams and everyone was pretty clueless when it came to exam time.

Anyway, I didn't technically enjoy the subject (I don't believe anyone does...) but I really enjoyed the last few weeks of the course where it all came together and I, among other students, had sudden realisations of what everything meant. Jonathon speaks in a sophisticated tone from the get-go, it might take a while to get used to but you can tell he prepares for the lectures and generally knows his stuff (you'd hope so haha). It began looking at presenting data; bar charts in particular, with a focus on not misrepresenting data. The first few weeks I can describe as Further Maths in year 12 - pretty short and sweet data presentation with a look at some regression analysis that doesn't prove too hard. I have to say though, Jonathon did a pretty good job grabbing my attention in those weeks (however it did fade, woops) but I believe he is really a quality lecturer.

The course begins to delve into confidence limits and our interpretation of what they mean. It is soooo crucial to understand how they work and what they do! By now you would've had 1 assignment with a focus on data and maybe a tad bit of proofs but for our cohort, it wasn't overly difficult. For these assignments you're allowed to be in a group of 4 from your tutorial, be careful who you choose! For the first assignment our group split it up evenly and overall we just stuffed up a lot, from then on out I made a pact to do the assignments by myself and then compare with the groups work. Not only is it incredibly helpful for your understanding but it definitely improved our scores.

By the end of the semester, you should understand how to perform hypothesis tests and their significance. It all really comes together in a nice little package and despite maybe some backlash from our other students, Jonathon did well in running the subject.

The exam was incredibly well made and sort of suited how people approached the subject. QM1 is mandatory for all commerce students, with very few other students doing it because of its reputation. TBH I had a small amount of fun

Yes, with screen capture.

Jonathon Thong

No. We were given sample exam questions in week 11 however.

4 Out of 5

Business Statistics (shit I'll update this with the proper version and stuff). Can highly recommend! Without it I believe I would have struggled.

Two weekly 1hour lectures and one weekly 1hour tutorial.

2015 Semester 1

H1

3 x 10% Assignments; 70% Exam

This subject can be hard to grasp conceptually, but once things starting to click, the subject becomes fairly straightforward. Make sure you engage in tutorial discussion (the "pink" sheet questions are deliberately written to promote discussion) as it is a really valuable opportunity to reinforce or clarify your understanding, often slight nuances are important to realise. Even if you're generally shy and keep to yourself, you want to be willing to engage in discussion and don't be afraid of being wrong, rest assured a lot of people in the tute also have no idea of what's going on either.

When it comes to the assignments they say you can work in groups of up to 4 people (must be in the same tute). Because I had a particularly bad experience with group assignments last semester in another subject I was really hesitant in joining a group so I did all 3 assignments myself and it's quite a lot of work. However, it forces you to really know your stuff as you don't have the option of simply letting other group members do questions you don't understand. Getting near full marks if not full marks is very achievable, even if you're doing the assignments by yourself. If you do join a group, make sure you do the entire assignment yourself, or at least make a decent attempt at completing it, as it means that you can check answers to see if everyone in the group got the same result - it also ensures you're on track and keeping on top of the content in the course.
You have plenty of past exams to practice with and they will be a good indication of what your exam will be like. However, I don't think consequential marks are given (particularly in hypothesis testing - if you get the hypothesis wrong then you don't get any marks because "you're not testing what the question's asking you to test") so make sure in those multi-step questions that you don't make mistakes early on.

Yes, with screen capture

Christopher Skeels & Mike Pottenger

Yes, we got about 6 with solutions

4.5 Out of 5

Forgot the name: see the other reviews. It's quite handy, I would recommend having it

1 x 1 hour tutorial; 2 x 1 hour lectures

2013, Semester 2

H1

three group assignments worth 30% in total, 70% semi-hurdle exam (you have to get above 50% on the exam to get above a P, hard to explain but not really a hurdle

Coming from a very very weak maths background (too much maplestory in my teen years) and a methods score that is quite embarassing, initially I was petrified of QM at the beginning of the semester. Having just scraped the pre-req entry, I thought I was doomed to fail QM, after all, I thought it was another semester of math which I was terrible at in high school. Hearing that QM has a 30% fail rate (not sure if this is actually accurate or not) just added fuel to the fire.

So I slept in for lectures, wagged tutes until swotvac and I realised, 'hey if I fail this i'm gonna waste another semester doing something I hate'. However, it was during swotvac, though the hours and hours of catching up on missed lecture recordings that I discovered what a gem this subject actually was.

QM is how a first-subject should be done. The lectures and lecture notes synthetise together in a fashion that is not only refreshing, but also engaging. Ultimately, it creates an excellent foundation for further study in economics and other commerce paths.

Lectures included interesting case studies such as the price elasticity of demand in the heroin market, which I found were quite effective in not only arousing interest for a lecture theatre, but ironing in a difficult concept such as a regression analysis that is difficult to comprehend at first.

Mike Pottenger offers a fresh approach to previously dry material that really gets you to think and most of all, appreciate what you're working with.

Skeels is less engaging and such, but nevertheless is respectably effective in delivery of crucial concepts. If you put in the time to not oogle and fiddle the chick next to you in a lecture, his lectures are clear and concise, and really hit hard to solidify a concept come exam time.

Creating confidence intervals and regression analysis may sound challenging and foreign at first, but are covered well throughout the pace of the semester. I found that there was just the right mix of difficulty and quantity of subject matter, QM wasn't a subject where you were thrown an infinite amount of simple plug-in formulas to repeat, it was a subject that demanded appreciation and devoted analysis.

I can't really make a comment on tutorials because I only ever probably went to 3, but what was great was that every single question that was written on both the pink and blue sheets had a very comprehensive, and well-thought through solution written to supplement your own study.

Assignments were generally okay (however I got 'carried' by my group on all three of them, thanks guys), and were exceptional in offering an 'extension' to previous concepts and such, come exam time.

The exam is fair, it is written so that most of the drop-kicks like me are allowed to pass, and hard enough for the brighter ones to compete for a H1.

I really owe my passing of this subject this semester to the dedicated support and resource network that Skeels and Pottenger have cemented. If you go have a read on subjectreviews.com, you'll see a review that says:

"Studying for this subject seems more like a privilege than a chore, the subject matter should be adapted into a cure for cancer it's so amazing. I think if everyone in the world were to take this subject, we would finally attain world peace."
QM is that good. I just wish I studied a bit more before swotvac.....

no screen cap, audio rec

Chris Skeels and Mike Pottenger

Plentiful, from the inception of the revised subject, and even past exams before the current study design were annotated to better reflect current subject content

5 out of 5

Bus. stats, 5th ed. Read it for the first week, but didn't use it at all later. I'd advise anyone to keep this text even if you didn't use it because you'll need it in qm2, if you're continuing next yr.

two 1 hr lectures, one 1hr optional tute

2013, S1

3xgroup assignment (3x10%=%30), 2hr eoy exam (70%). If you fail to get 50% pass on the exam, your overall mark will be no higher than 50.

QM is your standard statistics subject. Prior knowledge from methods and further will help, but isn’t necessary for achieving a high score, because a lot of it is new material.

Lectures will feature mostly Mike, but occasionally Chris. Mike is a relatively young lecturer, but is really interesting and fun to listen to. He stresses that he is not a statistician, and highlights the importance of knowing statistics simply because it can be applied everywhere. He is also the online tutor, and answers questions very very promptly. Chris, on the other hand, is your standard lecturer who will drill the more mathematical topics into you, which I must admit was quite boring, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people falling asleep in the theatre, however its good that he doesn’t base everything off the lecture slides and makes you read them yourself, since some things were self-explanatory.

Content-wise, I think this subject was very well structured. My friends at Monash asked me how I was going for linear regression at the start of the semester and I had no idea what they were talking about. We did that topic at the end of the semester, where it tied in well with what we had learnt throughout. Everything was interconnected, with the normal distribution being the centre. In theory, what you learn is just using the normal distribution and modifying it to fit it into different situations. Check out the subject page for more info – technically you aren’t asked to draw a normal distribution, but doing those mini sketches really helps when you’re trying to solve questions, and theory is important. In our exam, I reckon about 30-40% was theory and explaining why and how the various statistics worked.

Don’t expect to score too well on assignments. They’re made to challenge you. Another thing to note about these assignments is that they’re done in groups of up to 4 people FROM YOUR TUTORIAL. This means that effectively you can do them by yourself, but of course spreading the work out is beneficial, and I doubt you’d be able to complete them all by yourself, since the content is relatively advanced. Some of the questions were even harder than the ones on the exam, imo.

As you might’ve noticed, there are no tutorial marks so you can practically wag them all, but wow can I just say, they help a lot (given that you have a good tutor). Listening to lectures is one thing, but actually sitting down and doing the pre-tute (blue sheet) questions and in-tute (pink) questions really solidifies the content. Even so, I know quite a few people, myself included, who got totally lost in this subject. Consults really help in this situation, and I wish I went to one earlier!

The only time I can say I fully understood the content was during SWOTVAC. My exam revision consisted of going through the pink and blue sheets, which had some really challenging questions, and doing all of the past exams, which had comprehensive solutions and really helped my understanding. In the end, there were some questions which popped up again and again, so I was confident I was ready for the exam. A tip: READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY and make sure you understand what its asking! I know I’m not the only one who got confused just by reading the question, and had to reread it more than thrice.

Throughout the semester, I thought I didn’t understand this subject at all, but it was more an issue of not seeing the links. As my tutor kept reiterating, QM always goes back to the main concepts. Don’t try to overcomplicate things. Don’t panic. You’ve definitely seen this question before, because in some ways, they all just slightly modified versions of a standard question. All in all, a subject that is easy and straightforward if you do a lot of self-study. Taking the time each week to do all the questions and actually ascertain that you understand the content will definitely get you a great score.

Yes.

Mike Pottenger, Chris Skeels.

Yes, around five.

4/5

Business Statistics Fifth Edition, by E. A. Selvanathan, S. Selvanathan and G. Keller (published by Cengage Learning Australia, 2011). Not needed, only used for one question in an assignment.

2x1hr lecture, 1x1hr tute.

2013, Semester 1

H1