MATH1131: Math 1A

10% Online Tutorials (Maple TA)
10% Assignment
30% Lab Tests (x2)
50% Final Exam

HSC Mathematics Extension 1

Author's Note: In my opinion a Band 5 in Mathematics Advanced will be enough for you to pass this course, but knowledge of Extension 1 and especially Extension 2 will make your life much much easier

I thought that this was a difficult but fair course. The staff were very understanding of the fact that this was one of the first university courses that many of us were taking and the delivery of the course and assessments online was well refined after a year of online learning. I think that they've removed supplementary for the final due to UNSW's new "Fit to Sit" policy, although the staff were generous with extensions for online quizzes and offered a supplementary for the first lab test because Maple kept crashing due to the influx of users.

As someone who dropped from Extension 1 to Advanced, the content was manageable although I felt I had to put in a lot more hours than my peers who did Extension 1 or 2 just to get through the weekly exercises. Although there is still a fair bit of support for the course through the Maths Drop in Centre and Consultation Hours, it felt a lot less accessible for me online and so I mainly sought help outside of the course through group chats.

In terms of lectures, France's algebra lectures were absolutely amazing - they introduced difficult content in an understandable manner and she obviously put in a lot of effort to make things fun and interactive despite lectures being in a virtual format. Unfortunately, I had a lot of difficulty following Lee's calculus lectures and I often opted to read directly from the course notes or the Maple TA quizzes.
For anyone taking this course in the future, I would recommend you try to hit the ground running and try to work a week ahead in the Maple TA quizzes - lectures cover content a week ahead and so it'll allow you to start assessments and quizzes the week they're released and allow you a breathing room in case something comes up. Content is quite crammed and goes from 0 to 100 quite quickly, so pay attention even to seemingly easy content as it'll build. Despite the difficulty of the course, I chose to give it a 4/5 because of how well it was organised and the the design of the course such that content is easy to learn but hard to master, which is also reflected in the layout of assessments which allow you to nearly pass before taking the final.

6

3.5/5

Yes - Lectures delivered entirely online through Blackboard Collaborate

There were 2 lecture streams, I was in stream 2:
Course Authority: A/Prof Jonathan Kress
Algebra: Prof Frances Kuo
Calculus: Dr Lee Zhao

Course notes, lecture slides and past papers.

4/5

S.L. Salas, E. Hille and G.J. Etgen, Calculus – One and Several Variables, any recent edition, Wiley (Not required)

21T1

Weekly quizzes - 20%
Lab Test - 2 x 10%
Assignment - 10%
Final Exam - 50%

HSC Mathematics Extension 1 but if you got 85/100 in HSC Mathematics you should be fine.

As someone who dropped from 3U to 2U, I struggled a lot. It also doesn't help when your tutor straight up tells you in the first tutorial that I'm gonna struggle because I only did 2U (totally great for my self esteem). This meant that I had to do a lot of preparation during the holidays and brush up my 3U stuff. And because I'm a slow learner, it did get very overwhelming to try and keep up. I personally liked algebra over calculus. Part of it was because Daniel Mansfield is a very engaging lecturer and explains concepts really well, but also because there isn't a lot of theorems to remember (although I did struggle with complex numbers). On top of that, I liked how Mansfield explained each step in his working out. Calculus, although the content is very familiar, was difficult because most of the working out required you to refer to theorems and a lot of the familiar concepts were taught in a more formal way with new notations, which made it even more confusing. It didn't help that Brothier literally read from the slides and went through the topics really fast. He also tends to put the working out on the slides in big chunks and would kinda talk through it, but he doesn't go step-by-step, which made it even more confusing.

However, the course notes were very helpful. It was my go-to source for studying because they have the important theorems and definitions but then they'd go through 2 or 3 examples and do a step-by-step working out. What I found annoying is that they don't have solutions for the recent past papers, only solutions for the ones in the exam pack. As for the actual final exam, I struggled a lot. When I look back on the paper, there are some questions that are doable but I'd still find it difficult. One thing to note, if you final mark is between 45-49 (and I think if your tutorial attendance is minimum 80%) they'll let you take a supplementary exam. The supplementary exam is done on Maple TA and the questions are a lot nicer than the final exam.
In general, it was very challenging but the math department does give a lot of support (i.e. Mansfield's math livestreams, the math drop in centre, course notes etc.).

6

4.5/5

Yes

Algebra: Daniel Mansfield
Calculus: Arnaud Brothier

Course notes, lecture slides and past papers.

3/5

S.L. Salas, E. Hille and G.J. Etgen, Calculus – One and Several Variables, any recent edition, Wiley but not compulsory (I never really used it).

T1 2019

Class tests: Done twice in the semester; each class test is 45 minutes long on the timetabled class "Tut 1/2". They consist of both, Linear Algebra (25 minutes) and Calculus (20 minutes).
Maple lab test: Done once in the semester; you will just need your ID card.
Weekly online tutorials: Done each week through Maple TA. There is the theory component and then the Maple component at the end of each tutorial.

A combined mark of 100 across both, Mathematics and Mathematics (Extension 1)

Overall, most of the content can be done with 3U knowledge. MATH1131 started off quite nicely, introducing concepts that has been taught at high school level. However, it becomes apparent that new content can be quite difficult to grasp for many students (ie. formal definition of a limit, fundamental theorem of Calculus), and so extra support may be needed (which is provided through tutorials and the drop in centre).

Content-wise, nothing was too hard to understand conceptually, but applying these ideas to the questions can be quite difficult. And this was evident in the finals, which was seemingly more difficult than the previous years (at least for me). Definitely was a step up from high school, but if you have a good grasp and foundation at high school level, you should be okay with this course.
This is also a prerequisite for most engineering courses, and is a prerequisite for MATH1231.

Lectures: Two 2 hour lectures per week; each lecture is split an hour each between Linear Algebra and Calculus.
Tutorials: One 1 hour tutorial per week, starting from the second week of semester.

3/5

Yes.

Calculus: Dr. Christopher Angstmann
Linear Algebra: Dr. Daniel Mansfield.

The course packs are available in the book shop; I believe they're $40, which consists of the Linear Algebra and Calculus notes, as well as a past paper booklet. Alternatively, they can also be found digitally on Moodle for download.

3.5/5

N/A

2018, semester 1

76 (DN)