Module Review for AY16/17 SEM1

Overview of Modules

AY16/17
EG2401 Engineering Professionalism
IE3110 Simulation
IE4221 Transportation Demand Modeling and Economics
IE4243 Decision Analysis

**This review is based only on my personal opinions and experience.**

IE3110 is the last common ISE module to take. Following which all the remaining modules are technical electives.

EG2401 Engineering Professionalism
Here is a very good and rather recent review for this module. Very detailed coverage of each of the four parts of the module.

For the most part, the module was very light in workload. There is only 5 tutorials to attend including one for the project presentation. Some work has to be done before each tutorial and a report has to be submitted as part of the project. 

IE3110 Simulation

"This course introduces students to the basic concepts of discrete-event simulation systems and applying to problems that have no closed-form solutions. The course will cover modeling techniques, random number generators, discrete-event simulation approaches, simulated data analysis, simulation variance reduction techniques and state-of-the-art simulation software.

This course will enable students to analyze and develop simulation models of given problems."

This module covers most of the the content in the prescribed textbook "Discrete Event System Simulation" by Jerry Banks, up to chapter 11.

The first part of the module covers an introduction to simulation and some general concepts. With all the prerequisite modules, this part should be rather manageable. The second half of the module is more mathematical, focusing on the analysis involved in different steps of the simulation using statistical methods. Most of the statistics involved should be familiar, but there are some new content as well.

There are practices given in the form of tutorials and graded assignments and a project component. They are quite time intensive and requires heavy usage of excel. The software taught is Automod. There is some coding involved, but nothing too difficult. The software is not very simple to use as it is not fully programmable and there are many UI to familiarize to run a simulation model. Documentation is extremely poor and programs are tough to debug. Definitely a bad experience with the software.

Besides the workload for the graded components, the content itself is not too difficult because of the many statistical modules which have been taken previously or concurrently, notably IE2110 and IE3101. However, expect a harder curve for the grading as this module is worth 5MC.

IE4221 Transportation Demand Modeling and Economics

"This module introduces the basic economics concepts and principles as useful tools in the engineering context to formulate and analyze the decision-making of stakeholders (e.g. travelers, public sectors, shippers and operators). Special characteristics of transportation problems, such as the derived demand, mobile supply, cost structure, pricing mechanism and government intervention and regulation will be emphasized and some classic transportation models, such as user equilibrium model and discrete choice model, will be introduced."

There are three main parts to the module.

The first part of the module goes over economic theories and concepts such as demand and supply, market equilibrium and utility theory. The examples given are mostly from the transportation industry given the scope of the module. It should be straightforward if you have some economics background. The mathematical models covered should also be straightforward if you have some statistical knowledge.

The second part focuses on the cost structure of firms and pricing mechanism. The concepts mostly involve optimization and some mathematical derivations to obtain optimal cost and pricing. The third part involves on studying the combined effect of firms, buyers and government intervention and regulation on the transportation economics. Much of the analysis will be done using the supply and demand curve, this part is more analytical and less mathematical.

There is a project component on the module. It is basically a self directed research onto any transportation topic. Similar to any other ISE project. I didn't felt that there was any strong learning point on the project, and it felt rather burdening as the team numbers for this class is small and some of team members are quite competitive. 

Module Review for AY15/16 SEM2

Overview of Modules

AY15/16
IE2100 Probability Models with Applications
IE2130 Quality Engineering I
IE2150 Human Factors Engineering
CS2103 Software Engineering

**This review is based only on my personal opinions and experience.**

Took 3 ISE modules this semester, almost finished the entire set of common ISE modules. Also took CS2103 as a technical Elective. None of the ISE modules this semester are webcasted.


IE2100 Probability Models with Applications

Another very standard mathematical module. Main topics involve DTMC, Poisson processes, birth-death processes and queues. 

The topics are very analytical, but a lot of math is skipped in particular when deriving the models and some of the methods used for calculation. The topics tested are rather light and most of the difficult materials are not tested, making this module very manageable. 


IE2130 Quality Engineering I 

This module teaches the tools employed by quality engineers. The main topics are Quality Management, Control Charts, Process Capability Analysis and Acceptance Sampling.

The module does not demand very good statistics background as the statistical methods covered are quite basic and easy to understand. It is a rather interesting topic, and the module does not go to in-depth theoretically/conceptually and is more focused on applications.

IE2150 Human Factors Engineering

HFE is a collection of a huge number of topics. The module exposes to select topics involving human cognition and mental model, displays and controls, anthropology and human error. Research and observational study methods and practices were introduced at the beginning of the module. The topics chosen were sufficiently wide, you will most likely find a few topics of interest.

This module is one of the very few non-mathematical and analytical modules we have in ISE. I found it to be one of the more interesting modules. We also had to do a project to go through the design methodology. The approach for the project is rather focused on user experience. You can pretty much choose any topic to work on and then go and observe and interview users if you go out for it. I had a really fun group and topic which made the project interesting. 

Assessments are well distributed across the semester making no component especially heavy or light. Exams are writing based where you just need to either remember key concepts and principles and regurgitate them. Not a fun exam at all but at least you barely need to touch the calculator throughout the module. 

CS2103 Software Engineering

Reasons for taking this as my technical elective: 
At this stage, you are likely to have cleared all prerequisites for this module, making it easy to take this module in stage 2. This module used to be core for ISE, Software engineering is perhaps very commonly encountered in developing tech companies, and it is good to learn some software engineering practices as an ISE students since we are likely to work with software as well.

This module's information could be found online with a simple search, as the instructor posts a comprehensive teaching outline for the entire semester as the weeks goes by. In short, the module touched on introductory aspects of software design, implementation and testing practices. These knowledge are very useful in giving a glance to how software is developed. Interested students can pick up from here and work towards becoming a good software engineering. Many of my friends who have done the module have gone on to take up an internship in a software engineering role.

The module is taught primarily through a project component and lecture details. Both are useful and coming from ISE, I am glad to be exposed to the topic in such a structured manner with good selection of topics on my own. The module promotes self-learning and how much you learn is really dependent on time and effort put in. 

Software engineering is quite different from the algorithmic programming done in CS1020 and CS1010. It is also good general knowledge to understand the workflow and methods of how software is being developed.

Overview of Semester

Starting from the next semester, will be beginning to take ISE electives. There doesn't seem to be much choices though.

Workload is not particularly heavy in this semester, personally enjoyed the CS module and highly recommend it.