SSLC Report

The Good, The Bad and The Suggestions

I have received and read the SSLC comments - thanks Marc for collecting them! There were a mix of positive and negative comments and some very helpful suggestions. I'll go over some of the suggestions/negative comments below. I shall merely bask in the glow of the positive ones!

• Speaking style
  • "Yao-ban could speak a bit louder"

    I'll try to do that in the future. I could also use the mike if you require.

  • "Tone of voice is monotone"

    I'll keep this in mind, although I suspect that this is just my natural speaking voice!

  • "He stands behind the computer and doesn't move"

    I know this is a negative, but I actually see this as a positive! The material does not really necessitate jumping around so the movement required is (a) to point at the projection and (b) to gesticulate to emphasise a point. I think I cover (a) with the mouse pointer, although you may prefer me to use a physical pointer - I'll ask the class; for (b), I think that people can see me when I gesture behind the computer, but I'll check that as well.

  • "The lecturer speaks too fast"

    I agree, this sometimes happens with me. I'll try and keep things intelligible.

  • "There should be some demonstration, white board usage"

    I assume that by "demonstration" you mean demonstration of the calculations? I consciously avoid using the white board as much as I can as it is (a) slow and (b) prone to errors. Also there is a lot of matrix manipulation in the course, and it is just boring to go through matrix calculations on the board! I do encourage you to try and replicate the examples yourself if you are having trouble seeing where they are coming from.

  • "Whiteboard markers are really light"

    Easily solved! I'll try different ones.

• Lecture slides
  • "Include all examples in lecture slides ie. continuing house price example"

    I'm a little bit confused at this one as the house price example is in the lecture slides! If you're thinking R examples, I do like to keep them separate so that they each keep an individual `thread'. This is especially because the R examples use one continuous example so it's probably best to have them all in one place.

  • "Written comments on R commands"

    I'll try and put more of this in the R examples. I also encourage you to use the R help files so that you can get it to do precisely what you want it to (as opposed to simply doing what I've done on the slides!)

  • "Lecture slides are fast"

    Sorry about that! I understand that as I am familiar(er) with the material, I will naturally take things faster than you might like. All lecturers have to curb this natural tendency, so I'll try to explain things a bit more.

  • "Examples are not adequate, hard to understand when read"

    I'm afraid that you might have to be a little more explicit with "not adequate". Do you mean not enough of them, or they aren't clear enough? What about them do you find hard to understand?

  • "Would be nice to have the lecture slides numbered"

    I agree completely, I'll try and get that in.

• Projects
  • "Project examples would be useful in future"

    I totally agree. Therefore I am making all of last years' projects available to anyone who wants to come and see them. However, I am not going to loan them out for longer than a day (that is an excellent way to lose them for me!) so you will either have to photocopy them or read them quickly.

  • "The project is a bit vague"

    I do agree. The project is intended to be open-ended so that you use your ingenuity to select a topic. This also makes for a very wide range of topics, which in turn gives rise to interesting presentations! The vagueness is why we have the project outline - to make sure that the groups are thinking in the right direction.

• Other
  • "More questions/R examples for practice"

    I'll see what I can do. If you can get a hold of the Myers and Milton book, there are oodles of questions there.

  • "More sample exams with solutions"

    There are plenty of exams in the "Previous exams" section. Otherwise the practice classes and assignments should give you a pretty good idea of what the exam will be like. I will not be writing a sample exam just for your practice - way too much work for me!

  • "One tutor among 30 students helping them all individually is useless"

    I can certainly see where you are coming from, but there is really nothing I can do about this. I was told that this isn't a particularly big class in fact!

  • "The course needs to be more applied"

    This is a tricky one. I'd say that there are (at least) two different viewpoints on this one - my viewpoint is that you also need to know the theory behind what you are doing. Otherwise you may end up mechanically applying formulae without realising what is going on, which would not be good! There is not enough room in the course for both an extreme theoretical perspective and an extreme practical perspective, so I have attempted to include as much theory as I can while also being practical. I'd also say that there are things in the course (particularly involving R) which you can quite easily apply in practice.

  • "I think Yao-ban would look dashing in a collared shirt. I don't wanna know about Mark's poohs"

    Umm...okay.

  • "Mark takes small poos unlike Randy Marsh"

    I guess that explains the one above...sort of?