M366: Finished (well hopefully)

Yesterday afternoon I took what I' am hoping was my last exam for my degree.  To say that it was a joyous experience would be an extreme exaggeration as I found it concentrated to much on the minor aspects of the course, i.e. those areas that you think want crop up in the exam or if they do it would be the odd one or two questions.  Plus they changed the way formulae were presented making them look partially different to how they were in the course text.  Exams are a stressful experience and with the time constraints I for one did not need the challenge of having to decipher a formula before using it.

I now just have to wait until December to see if I scrapped enough marks together for a pass and not have to worry about doing a re-sit in April 2010.

M366: Revision starts today

Having attended the M366 strand at the M500 Revision Weekend and submitted my last TMA (Tuesday evening) I can now concentrate on revising for the exam on the 14.Oct.

To aid in my revision I have created a plan:

Day	Date		Block	Unit	Description
1	Fri	18.Sep	1	1	Learning outcomes
2	Sat	19.Sep	2	1	Learning outcomes
3	Sun	20.Sep	2	2	Learning outcomes
4	Mon	21.Sep	2	3	Learning outcomes
5	Tue	22.Sep	2	4	Learning outcomes
6	Wed	23.Sep	3	1	Learning outcomes
7	Thur	24.Sep	3	2	Learning outcomes
8	Fri	25.Sep	3	3	Learning outcomes
9	Sat	26.Sep	Tutorial		10:30 – 15:00 Croydon
10	Sun	27.Sep	Turotial		10:30 – 15:00 UoW
11	Mon	28.Sep	3	4	Learning outcomes
12	Tue	29.Sep	4	1	Learning outcomes
13	Wed	30.Sep	4	2	Learning outcomes
14	Thur	01.Oct	4	3	Learning outcomes
15	Fri	02.Oct	4	4	Learning outcomes
16	Sat	03.Oct	5	1	Learning outcomes
17	Sun	04.Oct	5	2	Learning outcomes
18	Mon	05.Oct	5	3	Learning outcomes
19	Tue	06.Oct	6	1	Learning outcomes
20	Wed	07.Oct	2	All	Recap
21	Thur	08.Oct	3	All	Recap
22	Fri	09.Oct	4	All	Recap
23	Sat	10.Oct	1	All	Recap
24	Sun	11.Oct	6	All	Recap
25	Mon	12.Oct	5	All	Recap
26	Tue	13.Oct	Study	exam	papers
27	Wed	14.Oct	Exam		14:30 – 17:30

and constructed a revision pack:

1.	Learning outcomes;
2.	M500 slides;
3.	TMA's & marked answers;
4.	08 exam & specimen papers;
5.	Glossary;
6.	Maths guide;
7.	Course text index.

Using the course text and my revision pack I plan to answer, on a postcard, each of the Learning Outcomes for course.  I will then carry the postcards around with me all the time and use them (i.e. whilst commuting to work) to aid in an attempt in retaining all the necessary information.

Painless Upgrade

In the past upgrading the firmware on my iPod Touch has been a painful experience (unless I have been doing something wrong), in that the upgrade has reset my Touch and removed all my music and videos.  As I don’t retain copies of my CD’s in iTunes this has meant that after the upgrade I have had to go through the lengthy process of re-importing my CD collection.  Thus for along time I have been on the hunt for a program that will allow me to copy my media files back onto my PC so that it makes the re-importing a lot quicker and less tedious.

Although there are a number of commercial programs available, I have been using a program called iPhoneBrowser (http://code.google.com/p/iphonebrowser/).  This program looks a bit like Windows Explorer, allowing me to see the whole of the folder structure of the Touch and backing up selected files to a PC.

Even though it is a powerful program it has a couple of draw backs.

1. You have to be familiar with Unix / Linux folder structures making the hunting down of where you music is stored frustrating;
2. The music (and videos) files do not have user friendly names (i.e. IHAX.m4a) and there is no knowing what track is what until you import them in to iTunes.

So my hunt has continued, until the beginning of the week when I discovered SharePod (http://www.getsharepod.com/about/), a free standalone application that when copying your media files gives them recognisable filenames.

After several tests of copying music from the Touch to a PC using SharePod I decided to take the plunge and upgrade the firmware to the latest version (3.0/7A341).  The first step was to backup all my media on the Touch.  SharePod was very impressive, copying 1,300 audio tracks to the PC in half an hour.  The next step was to perform the upgrade itself.  This went very smoothly and after the upgrade I discovered that this time the Touch had not been wiped clean with all my media still there.  Initially I was a bit annoyed at having gone to all the trouble of backing up my Touch but then when I thought about it if I hadn’t I would not have discovered the brilliant SharePod.

Aside:  Anyone interested in jailbreaking their iPod Touch (or iPhone) should take a look at this instructional video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_QovWugN8

M366: TMA03 Result

Last night I got the result back for TMA03, 93%.  Still on course for a Distinction if only I can find a way of nailing the exam.  One of the problems with M366 is that it covers so much information and I am struggling to remember any of it.  Hopefully the M500 weekend and revision tutorials will help.  If anyone has got any revision tips and tricks they are most welcome.

M500 Revision Weekend

I have just booked a place at the M500 Revision Weekend.

The M500 Society began in 1973 as a self-help group for Open University maths students in Southampton.  Now there are members throughout Britain and in many other countries across the world.

Every year they hold a revision weekend at the Aston University, Birmingham.  The Weekend, 11th - 13th September 2009, is designed to help with exam revision, is open to all OU students and this year includes M366.

There are five teaching sessions for each course, which are Friday 19.30 - 21.30, Saturday 9.30 - 12.30 and 14.00 -17.30, and Sunday 9.30 - 12.30 and 14.00 - 17.00. Total teaching time, excluding the tea breaks, is about 13.5 hours.

If you are doing more than one course, you are free to go to any of your courses for any session. Most tutors will produce a timetable to help you decide which course to go to for any particular session.

I have previously attended these weekends for both M301 and M359, and found them to be invaluable in assisting with my revision.

For further information goto http://www.m500.org.uk/sept.htm

TMA03 finally submitted

Finally got around to submitting TMA03 this afternoon, and as some tutors have commented, it took a mighty long time to complete.  This is primarily due to the number of neural networks (and variations) we had to create and the number of training sessions needed for each one.

Now on to Block 5.  No peace for the wicked.

Online Tutorials

M366 is the first course I have done where there are a number of online tutorials using a system called Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/).  This does present a problem though in that the tutor taking the online tutorial can have the tendency to post messages about the tutorial only to their tutor group, as is the case I experienced on Tuesday 23.Jun.09.

Although I reside in region 13 I tend to participate in region 1 tutorials as I work in London and it is often easier for me to attend these tutorials rather than my official ones.  One of the region 1 tutors’ has been very helpful in supplying me with dates and times of the online tutorials so that I could participate.  So on Tuesday I logged on at 8pm only to discover that there was no one else around.  I hung on till 8:30 but with no one else coming online I assumed that perhaps the tutorial had been cancelled.  Yesterday I discovered that in fact the tutor (a different tutor to the one previously mentioned) who took the tutorial had actually started it at 7pm and only her students were aware of this.  I have e-mailed this tutor in the hope that she will keep me informed of the start times of future online tutorials she is taking.

M366: TMA02 Result

Yesterday I got the result back for my TMA02, and am very chuffed as I got 90%.  Like TMA01 this TMA had a number of questions that were word limited, plus some of the questions were not to clear on what was required.  Overall I did not screw up any single question but lost the odd mark here or there for missing out a particular point.

Now onto Block 4 and TMA03, which is all about Neural Networks.  The opinion of one tutor is to leave plenty of time for the TMA as it is very time consuming.

M366: TMA02 Submitted

Last night I managed to finally finish TMA02 and submit it 4 hours before the deadline.  Initially this TMA looked as though it was going to be easy, but appearances can be deceptive as it got harder and harder the further I progressed into it.  Still it’s done and dusted, and I am going to chill out for a couple of days before starting block 4.

The one thing the TMA has shown and greatly concerns me is how quickly I am forgetting things that I have studied in the course text.  For example I had to totally re-read the section on Ant Colony Optimization as I could not remember any of the details.  This means that revision is going to be a real slog.  The way I feel about this course at present I will be happy just to get a pass come exam time.

Congratulations Bradley !!!

Congratulations to Bradley Smith for winning his first 125GP race on Sunday at Jerez.  He is now 1 point behind the championship leader Andrea Iannone.

http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2009/Smith+takes+first+victory+at+the+Spanish+GP

http://www.bradley-smith.co.uk/

M366: TMA01 Result

I have just got the result back for my TMA01, and am rather pleased as I managed to get 93%.  This was not the easiest of TMA’s especially where questions specified a word limit.  I have always had trouble with trying to provide short concise answers.

For TMA02 I am endeavouring to answer each question after finishing the relevant unit.  This way I hope to be able to give myself more time and improve how I answer word limited questions.