Year 2

Semester 1

MATH0018: Databases/performance analysis
Lecturers: Dr Martin Oliver, Dr Peter Wallis
Martin Oliver is also my personal tutor and lectured on databases before the reading week. Rather confusingly, he apparently made the first part of the coursework public then changed the due date! It first said "Wednesday 14 November". However, 14 November 1998 was a Saturday, and the last time it was a Wednesday was in 1990, when I had just started secondary school. After the reading week Peter Wallis lectured on performance analysis, and reminisced of when he was programming the University of London Computer - the only computer for a University with thousands of students - and when memory was 6d (2.5p or 0.175 Euros) per bit - and that was a lot of money in those days apparently.
Exam result: 50%
MATH0019: Foundations
Lecturer: Dr Dan Richardson
I thought when I had finished with MATH0015 I had reached the end of typing phrases like (BACK IN (>5 MINS) MORE SLIDES) NEEDED))) and being given a "helpful" error message such as argument number mismatch. However, Scheme was brought up again. Dan Richardson recommended the package called DrScheme. That name conjures up images of someone examining you with a stethoscope and telling you you've got an argument number mismatch!
Exam result: 81%
MATH0020: Computability and decidability
Lecturer: Dr Peter Wallis
Peter Wallis unfortunately got fed up of me "interrupting" his lectures to correct his "silly" mistakes on Thursday 29 October and if it had countinued he would have asked me to stop coming to his lectures. He even made me sit at the end of a row once so that if I did "interrupt" he could ask me to leave. He would have probably also hit me with his walking stick if he was allowed to. And most upsetting of all, when another student subsequently pointed out a missing word he just wrote it in and said thank you. If I had pointed out the same missing word he would have probably asked me to leave, so why me? I set up a new Stevo Empire page: The Peter Wallis Hall of Shame so that the mistakes were not allowed to stand and also "Why I am a legend" was turned black. People on my course said they'd stop coming to his lectures if he didn't start being nice to me. However, this was resolved fairly quickly and the PWHS was deleted on Sunday 15 November. On Tuesday 24 November he finally admitted that I do come in useful, just in time! That Thursday there was a joint rehearsal for the Orchestra and Choir. He sings in the choir, and I play 'cello in the orchestra. He also complained about background "mumbling" and I put on the lecture course evaluation under "Please mention below anything the lecturer could do to help you get more out of the course": Spend more lecture time teaching and less complaining about background "mumbling". Another student, who I will not name, put "This lecturer is particularly poor, we do not like him and the best thing he can do is retire". Thankfully he has taken heed to these words of advice, and those who started in 1999 will not have to suffer him at all!
Exam result: 75% despite Peter Wallis
MATH0021: Computer graphics
Lecturer: Dr Martin Oliver
Martin Oliver's webpage was the 100th most visited page in Bath in October 1998, maybe because I kept checking to see if the graphics page had been made available to us yet. It was eventually made available (in November) but has now been made private again. I also remember we sat in 3E3.9 for about 15 minutes on the first Thursday at 1715 then gave up, then saw a discreet notice on the temporary Year 2 Notice Board, saying "No class today." It ended the same way it started - he didn't turn up to the last lecture and we gave up and Simon Bleathman wrote on the board: MAO, we have come and gone from your MATH0021 lecture, 12:15. Merry Christmas. Enjoy marking our coursework!
Exam result: 37% - nobody knows what happened...
MATH0022: Formal program development
Lecturer: Dr Peter Wallis
He even threatened to terminate a lecture and begin the next lecture where he would have finished that lecture, and still examine the material he never taught, if background "mumbling" continued. And he is solely to blame for my inability to get a Christmas Fries to Go ticket: his lecture overran, there was a queue stretching into the Venue, I got within 5 or 10 people from the front and I heard them say "Last two tickets, only 2 left ... that's it, sold out. Fetish tickets anyone?" However, in the end we did become friends.
To illustrate my point that Peter Wallis was a poor lecturer, here is the last paragraph of section 1255 (questionnaire results) of the minutes of the SSLC meeting:

Four other unitsa had received less than satisfactory marks. It was noted that the same lecturerb taught these units and he had been absent through illness. It was also noted that two of these coursesc were the same but taught to different years, and finding the right balance might have been difficult. This problem would not re-occur, as this unit would only be taught to second years in the future.

Footnotes (not in original minutes): a: MATH0018, MATH0020, MATH0022 and MATH0077; b: Peter Wallis; c: MATH0022 and MATH0077
I also note that Peter Wallis was the only lecturer who was down for giving four units in semester 1.
Exam result: 55%

General comment: A rather theoretical semester: I marked off all the tutorials and labs as they were on other courses. I asked the Maths office to confirm this and they said that's right. Also a bit too much Peter Wallis. Thankfully we don't have him again. I just hope for the sake of those who started in 1999 that following his retirement, his courses have been re-allocated to three different lecturers!

Semester 2

MATH0026: Projects and their management
Lecturers: Dr Julian Padget, Professor Phil Willis, Dr Dan Richardson
For the first 4 weeks Julian Padget lectured on how to make a good project. The following week was officially Julian Padget again, but he got Dave Hudson from IPL (a company in Bath) to give these lectures. Clicking on the unit title above takes you to the main course homepage, which is a subpage of Julian Padget's page. For lecture notes for Phil Willis' part of the course, click here. Phil Willis lectured for the next 3 weeks on professional issues. His lectures were run like tutorials, encouraging student input, very much the antidote to the chap with very similar initials and a fairly similar surname who I'd rather not mention! (Here's a way of remembering which is which: Phil Willis is PJW and the "other bloke" was PJ hell W!) Clicking on Phil Willis' name above takes you to his homepage on the maths server. He also has a homepage on the BUCS server, which you can get to by clicking here. More groupwork here - the groups were allocated in a much better way than MATH0030 (see below) - Julian Padget passed a piece of paper around (in fact it came from my pad) and asked everyone to write their name and email on it, then allocated groups apparrently at random. This time I was in a group with Geoff Cutler, Chris Coxe, Jason Goh and Graham Spenceley. However, Dan Richardson apparrently put us in other groups for the presentations. He was officially down for lecturing in the 4 weeks after Easter, but he lectured the first lecture, then told me I would have to go to the TV studio the next day instead of the lecture and do a presentation! I had probably been told about that already, but misunderstood and thought it would be a presentation about the project, after it was done. How could I prepare when I wasn't even told what to talk about, or even helpfully told "Talk about anything". In the end I talked about Christianity. Mike Nash gave a really short presentation (40 seconds) on his work, then pretended to fall asleep to show how boring it was! 2 weeks later, the room presentation. Talk about something different I was told, so I talked about the 'cello.
MATH0027: Object-oriented mechanisms
Lecturer: Dr Julian Padget
I feel a bit thrown in at the deep end with C++ - he could have at least started us off on Hello World: #include <iostream> int main(void){ cout << "Hello World!" << endl; } In fact, there was even a formal complaint about this course, with many points. There seems to be a strong correlation between courses taught by Julian Padget and courses for which there has been a complaint!
MATH0028: Algorithms
Lecturer: Dr Nicolai Vorobjov
The lectures were really boring - sometimes I wondered what he was talking about! However, he did give out printed lecture notes, so that we had all the material even if we fell asleep! I put on the lecture course evaluation: Please note anything below the lecturer could do to help you get more out of the course: Explain what he's talking about. What does the lecturer, in your opinion, not do very well? Keep students awake! The exam, however, was easier than I thought it would be!



MATH0029: Compilers
Lecturer: Professor John Fitch
Not to be confused with the final year course called Compiling, also taught by John Fitch.
MATH0030: History, heresy and heretics
Lecturer: Professor James Davenport
More history than heresy and heretics, because before semesterisation it was a 10-week course on History followed by a 5-week course on Heresy and heretics, and they were merged. However, it seems as if it will be split again into MATH0030 History and MATH0133 Heresy and heretics, which would be less misleading. More groupwork here and he just said organise the groups yourselves and notify him by email by noon on Friday 26th February. And we all know what happens when that happens! I somehow get left out. The groups were meant to be groups of three, but if there were good reasons he would take groups of two and four. I noticed that there were two groups of four and suggested to James Davenport that one person from each of those groups goes with me, but there were good reasons why they were groups of four. Fortunately there was someone in similar circumstances to me, namely Will Gregory, and we formed a group of two. Here is the email I sent James Davenport to notify him of this group and his reply. In fact, there were more groups of two than groups of three, and poor Geoff Cutler had to do his project on his own as he was even later getting sorted out.
General comment: More of the same! I marked off all the tutorials as they were for other courses, I asked the Maths office to confirm this, and they did! I feel there was also too much coursework too late in the semester. How was I meant to revise?