MAST90045: Systems Modelling and Simulation

3 assignments (each worth 15%) and a 3 hour exam (worth 55%)

Firstly I must say that having a lecture who has Jones and the title Dr is pretty awesome (Do we have Indiana Jones fans?).

This subject is a professional tools subject (compulsory for those doing a MSc(mathematics). This subject revolves around you learning how to program in R and use it for simulations.

The assignments by far are the best part of the subject. This year the three assignments were on:

- Modelling Dam levels: This assignment was to model the level of a dam with given data on rainfall (made up data of course) over 100 days.

- Spider Webs: This one was my favourite. Here you used an evolutionary algorithm to model how efficient spider webs become as the number of generations increase. It's cool because at the start you are required to write a program that draws a web given information on what it looks like.

-Modelling household water usage: This was the hardest and most frustrating one. This assignment required you to model a households water savings when it installs a grey water and rainwater tank. The rainwater data you're given is based off data acquired over 100 years in Melbourne, although the water consumption by the family isn't that accurate. Then you have to work out the best tank setup given how much a tank costs vs how much it will save.

The assignments aren't too difficult to get between 90-100% in if you put a fair amount of effort in. The exam on the other hand is purely theoretical and has nothing to do with the assignments. If you look at the exams, they start off relatively easy and get more difficult as the years go on, this year was no exception. This years exam allowed cheat sheets to be brought in (which helps a 'little') and if you got 75% or above, your mark would scale up to 100%.
My advice is to make sure you get ~90% for each assignment, so you can still pass even if you did poorly in the exam.

Yes

Dr. Owen Jones

Yes, you're given exams for 2009, 2010 and 2011

5/5

The lecturer wrote the textbook and thus put a link for the electronic copy on the LMS.

2 x 1 hour lectures, 1 computer lab

2012

H2B [71]