MAST10007: Linear Algebra

They changed it this sem. 10% Matlab exam, 8 x 1% online mini tests, 2 x 1% take home assignements (Calc 2 style, i.e HARDER) 80% exam

I enjoyed this subject. Maybe more than Calc 2, my exam score will determine it.

Allen Russel was pretty bad, I had him too like the above reviewer, although I'm only 2nd semester so not sure what having a good tutor means, I just know what kind of style I prefer. Also not sure if it's my ageism though (he was older). I disliked his teaching method at the start of the tute, wasted time and took up too much time in the tute to do questions. (To be fair he was trying to get student participation) Helping out while we were working, he was knowledgeable, but didn't really offer a lot of insight. I much preferred my last semester's calc 2 tutes which we went straight into worksheets and had more time to converse with the tutor.

The subject is cool and holistic My favourite part was seeing the application of vectors in wacky vector spaces such as polynomials. But I dislike the ordering of the content. Transformations should come before eigenvalues in my opinion. I feel transformations was the worst topic taught as there was so much notation but so little examples of how it is used I was so lost when doing practice exams about what I should be using even looking through the lecture slides. This semester's exam was simpler, but it could have been much worse. (Note this could just be my incompetence)

This subject has many, many lemmas about theorems and rules that you will need to remember. Since it is not AM1, there is not a heavy emphasis on proofs but they do pop up on the exam, and most of the time (I think) it will be ones that the curriculum has already explained. Revising over each lemma and theorem of the lecture slides is critical, in my opinion to being able to solve every question in the exam.

Yes

Allyson Costa, cool guy, slow but I enjoyed his enthusiasm. He did his lectures on Onenote with the slides which was cool, allowed him to teach in a more dynamic way.

Yes, many available and online, will need to have good detectives to find answers.

4 Out of 5

Nope, I bought the lecture slides pack though cause I enjoy learning that way.

3 hours of lectures, 1 hour of tute followed by 1 hour of lab time with Matlab

2018 Sem 2

H1

8% Online assignments, 2% Written assignments, 10% MATLAB test, 80% exam

if you didnt get above 38 in spesh, or haven't even done spesh and are planning to do actuarial this subject is one of the maths subjects which are compulsory for entrance into actuarial (ir ur not doing am1 and am2). also, if you are planning to do actuarial, i'd suggest doing calc2/lin alg - unless you truly hate yourself or are VERY interested in mathematics would i suggest am1/am2. anyways, firstly, the bane of this subject and most other maths subjects are these ridiculous 80% exams. if you don't have to take a maths subject for your major, do not take any maths subjects, as I've taken both arts and commerce breadths (taken their core subjects ie reason for arts and finance for comm), and I can fairly safely say science cores are some of the hardest of all cores in the first year (granted, mostly in my experience). dont listen to commerce people when they say their course is hard unless they're doing maths heavy subjects (ie actuarial - these guys are read deal). other than that these people have no idea what they're talking about.

professor crowley is mad. great lecturer who from background is mainly into maths/physics, and u can definitely see he has a passion for maths and wants to share it with others. this is great from a lecturer, especially when initially starting topic 4 of the lecture slides (general vector spaces) do you start to have second thoughts on doing the subject.

weeks 1-3: not too hard; matrix row operations mostly, consistent/inconsistent systems - walk in the park - do as much of the orange problem booklet as you can in this time - uni will only get harder. introduction to 3 dimensional space somewhere around this time, cross product, and geometric applications (learn geometric applications really well, these come up in the exam 10/10 times).
weeks 4-8: general vector spaces, inner product spaces. only advice here is to try not to get overwhelmed. theses are new concepts, and they will take time for you to get used to. keep doing the orange booklet, watch youtube videos if they help. eventually if u keep revising and looking over this section, it will all make sense.
weeks 4-8 contain some of the most important concepts you'll have to learn to be able to pass in this subject. as i said, at first it might seem overwhelming, but keep revising and it'll all make sense.
week 9-10: eigenvectors, eigenvalues : fairly simple don't worry too much - practice diagonalisation (comes up in exams often)
weeks 11-12: linear transformations: this section uses concepts from weeks 4-8, not too hard but close exam time so a bit tricky. you dont want to fall behind so by the end of week 12 finish all questions u can do in the orange booklet.
swotvac: cram, revise, you know do your thing.

during this time, you'll have weekly assignments, 8 of which are online, 2 are handwritten. handwritten assignments are a good resource for studying for exams, although, some of the proofs can be quite tricky. while i'm on the matter of proofs, you'll encounter many proofs during lectures and even in the orange booklet. these aren't necessary to learn for the exam, but if you understand these you're ahead of 80% of the cohort, and it'll prove useful for 1-2 questions on the exam (you'll be able to get an h1 without learning proofs if u can do everything else near perfect).

also, go to your tutes. if you're struggling in this subject these are the greatest resources. ASK YOUR TUTOR QUESTIONS. you're PAYING them in your subject fees to HELP you. who cares if you ask a stupid question, get it through your brain, make everything make sense, and if you're at melbourne uni it will eventually. (also extra help at mathsassist when u need).

here's the thing though with tutors, 99% can be great, but there is always 1%. in this instance, if you ever encounter Allen Russell for one of your tutes, RESCHEDULE this class IMMEDIATELY. you will hate your tutes in this case; half the time i went to another tute alongside this tute to get my attendance marked (it was too late for me to reschedule; ur not actually meant to do this but if ur a keen learner nws). allen's tutes can sometimes be helpful; some of the explaining he does at the start is, but other than that everything is terrible; answering questions, marking written assignments, marking the matlab test - ridiculous. avoid at all costs to get +10% to your grade (of course, im overstating this- personal bad experience here). but anyways avoid him. (also the reason why this is a 2/5 instead of a 3.5/5)

matlab sessions are fairly ok; bit of a waste of time to go to them after week 4. if ur only doing lin alg, you dont get matlab program. if you do esd 2, u get matlab and can practice commands during the programming and mechanics section. if u do esd 2 u have an advantage, if not, good luck. (u can use computer labs for matlab to practice closer to the test in week 12 when they're free).
i've spewed everything i can think of about this subject in this post, hope u find it helpful. feel free to dm me if u have any other questions. good luck with lin alg.

Yes, with screen capture / only one half of lecture slides are recorded (like most maths subjects ie calc 1 and calc 2)

Diarmuid Crowley (very good lecturer)

Yes, 1 per sem from 2014 - recent. No answers.(Doesn't matter too much, you can always double check your answers for good practice)

2 Out of 5

Lecture slides are sufficient. Do not buy any textbook they offer you. (same goes for mostly all maths subjects in years 1-2)

3 x 1 hour lectures per week (3 hours)
1 x hour tutorial per week / 1 x hour practical per week right after tute (2 hour stream)
5 hours per week

2018 Sem 2

pending (most likely between 70 and 85)

10 weekly assignments (1% each lol how shit), THREE HOUR end of semester exam (80% lol how shit)

TL;DR

I thoroughly enjoyed maths for most of the years of my existence. I spent half of my primary school life doing maths problems for the lols and I did spesh as a therapeutic de-stressor last year when English was being an A-grade A-hole (I do not kid - I was THAT person), but I can't say that I enjoyed Linear Algebra all that much. The first few weeks I found it interesting, but as was akin to the rest of my entire schooling career, every subject decided to simultaneously crank the heat up a notch. From about week 4/5 onwards the content got pretty airy fairy and abstract (while other subjects were also getting busier), and I found it hard to keep up.

I dislike things I am not good at (if that much wasn't already obvious). Not understanding things renders me snippy and irritable, but I'll give this subject a fair mark of 3 because it was interesting and doable at the start, and probably would've still been doable if I was proactive enough to seek out help. I find this subject was pretty damn well organised, and there was plenty of help provided. There are many, many consultations where you can just walk in and consult a tutor about whatever you don't get. There's even a discussion board online where you post questions and tutors/lecturers answer them for you (I didn't even find out about this until two days before my exam... DAMN). They also give you all the lecture slides like the week before you even begin the course, and print them all out and bind them. Or alternatively, if you are lazy like me, just go to the co-op and buy it for like $10.

The tutes were also pretty helpful. They came with nice worked solutions (unlike the exercise booklet, in which half the solutions stated "proof required") so I usually learnt through the tute sheets. I'm not sure what most tutors are like, but I quite liked my tutor (who was also my lecturer). He had a very calm and soothing vibe about him with the air of somebody who's genuinely here to help you.
(He also very helpfully replied to my emails within a few hours, provided I emailed at a reasonable time, which was very lovely of him and seemingly a rarity around university faculty. You go Craig Hodgson, four for you Craig Hodgson.)

The MATLAB test was pretty standard stuff. There was this one thing I couldn't get the program to solve properly, so out of sheer desperate I did the 3 (out of a full 22) mark question by hand. Hence I've decided MATLAB is useless and not a great program.

Luckily for most people (including me), the department writes pretty gentle exams, given the sort of torture they could set if they wanted to see students writhe in pain. There's plenty of ridiculously abstract topics they could write on that the course covers for about 1 lecture slide out of 300+ (like something about invariant somethings… clearly I have no clue) but they choose to go with problems that are easily doable within a three hour timeframe. Thank you Craig (and whoever the other lecturers are) for being so gentle and kind on my poor soul.
All in all this was a reasonable subject. I didn't enjoy it a great deal, and I dealt with a lot of swotvac stress ("Omg no, I forgot THIS as well?!?!") but the subject is very well organised and if it weren't for personal circumstances I still believe I would've enjoyed it more.

Yep

Craig Hodgson (I think there was also another two lecturers… Can't remember their names)

Yep. Three with with solutions uploaded to LMS. There were probably more from the library site, but I didn't bother.

3/5

Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 11th edn, Wiley, 2013 - Never bought it, never touched it, never got the pdf. I have no clue what it looks like AT ALL.

3 x 1 hour lectures + 1 x 2 hour practical (i.e. tute + MATLAB class)

Semester 1, 2015

H1

Weekly assignments (10% in total), End of Semester Test (10%), Exam (80%).

Let me start off by saying that I am no Mathspert. In fact, after this maths subject, I wish to never add two numbers together again and marry my calculator.

Moving on… Linear Algebra! Most likely you are coming into this subject with fresh wounds from Calculus 2. The things taught in this subject are quite different from Calculus, introducing new concepts for you to wrap your head around. I have heard the term “abstract” being thrown around a lot. Linear Algebra requires you at times to visualise things in 3 dimenstions. It will take time to get your head around these ideas. From my own experience, trying to understand these ideas at first may be frustrating, but once it clicks, everything should seem pretty straight forward. But the one thing that never clicked for me were proofs (luckily they weren't prominent in the weekly assessments). I found it funny that at the back of the work book, the only solution to these questions was a short sentence saying “proof required”. Not shit! JUST TELL ME THE ANSWER!!! Do try to attempt them as best you can and go over them with the tutors. Some of these questions were work examples in the text book. Does this mean you have to buy it? No. Just borrow it and look at the relevant section. Proofs will be on the exam.

It will take work to keep up to date, and without constant work your next lecture or tutorial session may sound like complete gibberish (just a word of warning, the lectures can be pretty dull). I encourage that anyone who plans to take this subject to do all the questions set by the lecturer as soon as possible (typically around 6-10 questions are given each lecture). Preferably finish them on the same day they are given. You don’t want to be that student who is on question 10, 6 weeks into semester. I'm not going to lie, for me, some of these were tough. It took quite some time for me to "get" what to do therefore consultation hours will be a valuable resource when you find yourself dwelling on something too long. Be smart, unlike myself, and save time by going to them (make sure you show them what you have done so far to make the most of those times, don’t just go in and say, “I’m stuck”). There were hours throughout the week, and for my semester there were 3 different tutors who were be happy to guide me through my work. Just make sure you plan out what you will ask.

The weekly tutorial is just like that in Calculus. You are given a question sheet and work in a group of 2-3 to solve problems on a white board while the tutor goes around checking if you did it right. By now, you should know that tutorials are important and helpful, so go to them! You are also handed worked solution for the questions, and these can be used as an indicator to show if you are doing your questions in the right way. This is also your chance to make friends and a study groups.

Each week you will have an assignment of around 3 questions testing you on what you have learnt the week before. If you have done the work book questions, these assignment questions shouldn’t be harder than those. Unlike Calculus, only one out of the three questions is marked to encourage you to check your own work. They do post up a set of worked solutions, so look at them. I guess I was overconfident and believed that everything I did was right. Little did I know, 1 day before the exam, all my answers to linear transformations were wrong! Check them, reflect on them and ask your tutor if you need further clarification. Redoing them is also good practise I believe they are a good reflection of the level of difficulty you will be faced with in the exam. Also, it should be obvious, but you can check your answers with a calculator for certain questions…

Following tutorials is a 1 hour computer lab. I didn’t particularly enjoy these, but I do see how they can be beneficial. They are there to help you visualise and understand the concepts. For those who are more visually inclined, it can indeed be a very useful. Essentially in each session you go through questions from the lab book which can include things like matrix manipulation in the computer, forming 3-D graphs, etc. The instructions a pretty straight forward and they shouldn’t be all too difficult. Don’t panic if you don’t get through all of them, the most important thing is going through your tutorial and workbook questions.

The end of semester test in week 12! This I found was well placed since by studying for this you are also prepping for the exam. Except! It requires the use of MATLAB; a computer program that is basically a beefed up graphics calculator. But don't let that deter you. The programming component is not all too complicated for a new user, and should be a refresher for you ESD2 survivors (if you remembered anything from that messily taught module). I believe that the extent of the programming you needed were in the first 2-3 weeks of the computer labs, involving the making of matrices, adding, multiplying, reducing, graphing etc. I was given a sample test (with no solutions) which gives you a pretty clear idea of their expectations in terms of programming. They will list the topics that may be on the test which you can study for by doing your workbook and tutorial questions.

Finally the exam. Since you have been diligently blazing through the workbook question each week and managed to finish all 200 something questions, the exam shouldn’t be all too terrible. It seems as though they forced you to carry a 100 kilo rock throughout semester and for the exam they reduce it to 70. I was surprised at how simple some of the questions were. I was given answers to 3 past exams, but if you ask any of the guys who did Linear Algebra in the summer you can get a few more. I think I had 5 in total which is a good amount. Along with your assignments, tutorial sheets, and work book, you have plenty to get ready.

One important piece of advice. I will put this in caps so you can remember better. POLISH YOUR ROW REDUCTION SKILLS AND MAKE SURE YOU CAN DO IT QUICKLY AND ACCURATELY IN TIMED CONDITIONS. I found that I was constantly making mistakes with my row reductions as simple as it was, and this was probably due to the fact that I was relying too much on my graphics calculator throughout semester. Approach them in a systematic and organised way. Keep track of all those negative signs, and make sure every calculation is correct before moving onto the next otherwise it is a snow ball effect of mistakes. And I wished someone told me this early on, but you should avoid fractions if possible by multiplying rows to get the same whole numbers as the leading entries. It might not make sense now, but hopefully it will later and will save you time.

There are some very useful resources online that can help you to understand the concepts of Linear Algerba. Youtube has quite a few, including:
. Khan Academy
. PatrickJMT
. MathDoctorBob
Not to mention, a lecturer for Linear Algebra put up videos on how to solve certain problems in the exercise book based on what was requested on the discussion board.

So did I enjoy this subject? Eh, not so much. I was required to do it, so I had to push through. But if you are taking this subject, just know that there are numerous resources out there that can help you with your study, and you can do well if you put an effort into understanding the concepts.

Yes, with screen capture. Both 10am and 3pm streams were recorded.

Craig Hodgson, Nathan Clisby

3 past exams with solutions. Quite a few can be found in the library.

3/5

"Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version" - H. Anton and C. Rorres 10th edition.
Don't need to buy it. Just rely on lecture notes and exercise book questions and you should be fine. Although there are a few examples in the books that go through proof questions which is worth a borrow.

3x 1 hour lecture per week, 1x 1 hour tutorial per week, 1x 1 hour workshop per week

Semester 1 2014

If you're taking the subject in Sem 1 or 2, the assignments are worth 1% each (one per week for 10 weeks).
They are sometimes quite tricky and abstract but overall not too bad and you can often use your lecture notes pretty directly to help you find the solutions.

This subject is overall pretty cool. I'm not a maths geek, I just have to suck the maths up because I want to do Engineering, but once I got the concepts, Linear Algebra is pretty interesting. I like that it's 'Abstract Maths', and that you aren't just punching in numbers into equations, you have to think about maths in a really conceptual way. Figuring out how everything you learn connects with each other is no mean feat - because it is all very much connected and integrated, but unless you have a really good understanding, it doesn't feel that way. Honestly I really disliked this subject most of the semester because it was really really hard (for me anyway) and I thought I might not even pass even with a lot of work, but they kind of put the fear of God into you through the semester, and then give you quite a gentle exam (compared to what they COULD give). Provided you understand the broad concepts you can do reasonably well, and if you REALLY get it you can quite easily nail a 90%.

Like most maths subjects, there is the big scary 3 hour exam that basically dictates your final grade. Thankfully, most of the questions on the exam are:
a) almost exactly in the same vein as the past exams for the past 4 years.
b) significantly easier than most of the assignment questions and the workbook questions.

Yes, with screen capture. By the end of the semester (I think by strong demand), all three streams were put online. One of the lecturers used the blackboard though so the Echo recording was useless.

Dr Scott Connell (coordinator): Scott is by far the best lecturer of these three, but I get the impression that the lecturers swap around a lot for MAST10007. Anyway Scott was by far the best lecturer, had a very clear way of explaining things and often used diagrams not just crazy mathematical lingo to help in understanding.

Dr Arun Ram: Arun is a nice guy but man he is just not on the same level as first year students. Most people ended up swapping out of his stream because he was pretty terrible at getting us to understand stuff. He was fun to be in a room with, he was happy and energetic, but just explained stuff as if we were third year students, not first year, and most people were completely lost the whole time.

Jose Ayala Hoffmann: This guy started lecturing half way through the semester and I never went to any of his lectures so I can't comment.

This is a pretty easy 10% even if you are new to programming. There's no programming involved, you just have to learn how to utilise a few MATLAB commands, which basically automate the stuff you've been doing by hand in class. The MATLAB test is held in the last week of semester in your usual lab class time.

Yes, about 6, but only two with answers. There was a sample exam for the MATLAB test but had no answers nor the associated MATLAB files - but the actual test was exactly the same as the sample test but with the numbers changed.

4.5 out of 5

3 x one hour lectures per week
1 x one hour practice class per week
1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week

6 x one hour lectures per week
2 x one hour practice classes per week
2 x one hour computer laboratory classes per week.

I found a digital version of the Anton textbook but didn't use it at all really. The lecture notes that you buy or print yourself are more than enough.

Semester 2, 2013

Don't know yet.

Summer semester: Five written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

Semester 1 and 2: Ten written assignments due at weekly intervals during semester amounting to a total of up to 25 pages (10%), one 45-minute written computer laboratory test held at the end of semester (10%), and a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (80%).

This subject is mainly covering the use of matrices in many different ways. I thought it was pretty easy, although that said, I did do well in math in high school. In summer, I got 3 lectures a day for 2 days a week, and for 6 weeks. The first several lectures were quite boring, because the lecturer taught a concept and then did heaps of examples which were slightly different from one another, where you'd expect to "get" the concept on the first example (although that said, I guess not everyone is strong in math). It got better as the semester progressed.

I personally found the labs to be the most difficult part of this subject, due to the coding involved, but very little knowledge of it (apart from quite basic commands) is required for the lab test.

I think so (never used it).

Prof Peter Forrester

Yes, >4

4 Out of 5

Prescribed text: Elementary Linear Algebra Applications Version (H. Anton and C. Rorres), 10th edn, Wiley, 2010. (not required). There were course notes which you are supposed to fill in during lectures available at the bookshop.

Contact Hours: Summer Semester: 6 x one hour lectures per week, 2 x one hour practice classes per week, 2 x one hour computer laboratory classes per week.
Semester 1 and 2: 3 x one hour lectures per week, 1 x one hour practice class per week, 1 x one hour computer laboratory class per week
Total Time Commitment: Estimated total time commitment of 120 hours

2011 Summer

H1

Ten short weekly assignments totalling 10%; A 45 minute MATLAB test worth 10% held near the end of semester; Final exam worth 80%.

This subject is different from high school maths and Calculus 1 and 2, but a whole lot more interesting. Previously, simply working through a large amount of highly methodical problems will grant you success. However, in Linear Algebra I had to literally sit down and think about some of the ideas to get my head around it -- which makes it all the more gratifying when everything clicks! This subject is all about definitions, and usually once you have a clear idea of the definition you'll know how to solve the problem. A good memory or consistent summaries helps with this.
The tutorial worksheets were really helpful as fully worked solutions were provided so you knew how to set out your work. I found the MATLAB test an easy 10% but be aware they don't give method marks for it. No programming knowledge is required for the test even though quite a few lab classes were focused on irrelevant things like coding which i never needed nor bothered to learn.
Overall, this is not an easy subject to immediately grasp, as it covers things you've never come across before. I liked how abstract and seemingly unrelated to real life the content was but if you're doing it as a requisite for engineering you may not agree.

Yes, with screen capture.

Dr. Craig Hodgson or Dr. Lawrence Reeves.

Yes, about five, however solutions were provided for only two of them. There was also a sample MATLAB test but with no solutions nor the essential m-files.

5 out of 5

Lecture slides are a must, however I think they were all put up on the LMS if you would rather print them yourself. The Anton & Rorres textbook is great to help digest some of the proofs and to consolidate the theory. Definitely borrow it from the library to read through the more difficult sections, but only buy it if you can scrape a second hand copy for $30 like I did, or if you're really keen to do extra problems from the textbook.

3 x 1 hour lectures; 1 x 1 hour tutorial; 1 x 1 hour computer lab which immediately follows the tutorial.

Semester 1, 2011.

H1