MATH3161: Optimisation

2x Class Tests (one weighted 15%, one weighted 20%)
1x Assignment 5%
Final Exam 60%

Prerequisite: 12 units of credit in Level 2 Mathematics courses including MATH2011 or MATH2111 or MATH2510, and MATH2501 or MATH2601, or both MATH2019(DN) and MATH2089, or both MATH2069(CR) and MATH2099.

Not a hard course but definitely a course where you have to keep yourself motivated because there is a LOT of raw computation to get through. There are certain things that the course assesses that are painful to work through, namely line searches and Hamiltonians, but this view is admittedly subjectiveness because of my comparative unwillingness to do continuously practice the computation required to solve questions of this sort. My only other gripe with the course was the assignment, which seemed unnecessarily verbose and long for what the outcome turned out to be, but even then this clutches at straws.

Otherwise, the course was excellent without being brilliant; I got more or less everything I wanted out of the course without it being as impressionable as some of the previous courses. This course has been and remains consistently very good, any maths student that has time to take this course should do at some point.

2x 2 hr lecture
1x 1 hr tutorial

2.5/5

Yes

Professor Jeya Jeyakumar

Yes - all course provided (Moodle or otherwise)

4/5

None

22T1

87 HD

- 15% class test
- 20% class test
- 5% assignment
- 60% final exam

12 UoC of Level 2 maths courses (i.e. 2 courses in Level 2). Must be one of the following:
- (MATH2011 or MATH2111) and (MATH2501 or MATH2601)
- MATH2019 (DN) and MATH2089
- MATH2069 (CR) and MATH2099

This course is one of several level 3 applied mathematics courses offered. Well known to be one of the

2x2hr lectures, 1hr tutorial

3/5 for 3161, 3.5/5 for 5165

Yes, as per usual in COVID times. Also tutorial recordings.

Prof. Jeya Jeyakumar

A fair bit. Lecture slides are relatively condensed compared to other courses like MATH3901. Concise and to the point. (But lack some proofs for pure math minded students.) Tutorials available with solutions. Roughly two past papers per test given, with solutions. Resources are released on a weekly basis. Jeya also makes it clear that some more past papers are available on UNSW library, albeit without solutions. This course also got a digital uplift in 2019, and there are recorded videos for some hard problems, sample class tests, and also proofs of some results assumed in the lectures. Many of the videos are definitely worth watching. And also, for supplementary material, he has some recent research into optimisation made available for the interested student.

4.5/5 (A little surprisingly. Was honestly contemplating 4/5.)

None. I never felt a textbook was necessary either. But there are some reference books on the course outline.

21 T1

98 HD

Prerequisites:

• Either these two:

Honestly not that bad of a course, but be warned: Jeya marks very harshly. The course content is easy, so you lose marks elsewhere instead. All of the assessments were quite standard, and followed previous year's assessments pretty closely, but the final was made longer because we had more time; I'm convinced of that. A lot of the problems will have long solutions with a lot of writing and calculation, but many of them can be solved using method learnt in the course step by step, and don't require much thought.

Content-wise, you learn a lot of results surrounding optimisation (as one might expect), and more specifically a lot of necessary and sufficient conditions for extreme to be local/global maxima/minima of a function, especially in the context of convex functions. You also learn some algorithmic techniques for finding local extrema, as well as their good/bad points and their various properties.
I've ended up using some of the techniques I learnt in this course in other extracurriculars, so it's certainly applicable, even if somewhat boring.

2x 2hr Lectures, 1x 1hr Tutorial

2.5/5

Yes; recorded, and transitioned to live online lectures.

Prof. Jeya Jeyakumar

Lecture slides, as well as tutorial problem and solution videos available online.

3.5/5

2020 T1

SY