What a big and crowded city.

I want to briefly talk alittle about each of the courses, it helps with remembering what I did.

Signals and Systems I was quite a headache in the first sem... when I took this course I was wondering what on earth is this charismatic(he is kinda charismatic, which lecturer will teach maths like a zoologist having a fun session with primary school kids, kneel down to clean the blackboard!) lecturer talking about. He is a great lecturer, going through things step by step~ but the problem is if I take my mind off his talking one second- I get lost. And I spend the rest of the lecturer either daydreaming or asking Shitesh. It was quite a mission for this one, to make sure I get to know what is going on~ I went to Shitesh's place for study sessions just to catch up on what is really going on. In the end, I realise that it is just a matter of recognising the type of problems, apply the Maths and techniques to the problem.

Probability & Statistical Design is the one course that everybody scratches their heads and wondered - Why the hell do we need to take this course? At first, I was really interested and motivated to do this course because of it is probability and statistics~ something that I'm really really bad at... those questions that seems more like a quiz or like a IQ test. In the end, I realise that the P&S that I'm doing is almost completely different from the business students. No more mind twisting quiz-like problems....just formulas...equations...integrations...maths....more maths...just maths. I actually like this compared to the quiz-like questions!!

Quiz-like problems:

A bowl contains twenty cherries, exactly fifteen of which have had their stones removed.
A greedy pig eats five cherries, picked at random, without remarking on the presence or
absence of stones. Subsequently, a cherry is picked randomly from the remaining fifteen.
i) What is the probability that this cherry contains a stone ?
ii) Given that this cherry contains a stone, what is the probability that the pig consumed at
least one stone ?

Ans: i)1/4 ii)2875/3876 or 0.74

Mathematical-like problems:

Find the conditional probability density and expectation of Y given X when these random
variables have the joint probability density function

fxy(x,y)=x e^(-x(y+1)) for x,y>= 0

The lecturer is a Romanian. He speaks "funny", almost like the ones you see in some WWII movies~ haha~ he used to teach me Fundamentals of Electronics in the 1st sem and little did I know he will be teaching me Stats in the 2nd. This is one heck of a traditional lecturer, who wears suit to lecture every single day?! who still chase students out in University- and take down their names....woo.. (what da..) But regardless of what kind of weird justice he upholds, he is one of my most respected lecturers I've met.

He teaches P&S with such delication and passion that I can just feel the excitement. Sometimes, when I approaches him to ask him regarding some Tut questions, he would just go on and on promoting why P&S is such a great course... and in his eyes, I can see the passion and excitement~~ I mean this guy is extremely well educated~ There was this one time in class, he was showing a derivation of one of the formulas, he casually talks about Taylor series and the class reacted when he says this derivation might come in the tests. He then asked "Haven't you all learnt about the Taylor series?" ...well~ we did of course, but then who wants that kind of trouble? So we shook our heads and give that innocent looking face.... but my point is- the reaction he gives when we did that.

He shakes his head and gave a sigh.

Most people laughed at it, but they didn't see that why he sighed. He really did thought that we don't know the Taylor series and he is really shocked, disappointed in our educational system. This man really do care about education for the later generations, many a times he commented on our education, reprimanding students for their behavior and attitude towards their studies and in class.

If all the lecturers have such integrity, South africa would be so much better in terms of so many areas of life.

But still, I'll never forget that horrifying night of my first P&S test- the 2hr test I walked in, sat there for 1 hour with a blank answer book. I was ready to get '0' for that test. What on earth was on the question paper?! haha~ just as I was about to give up(many ppl have already packed their things by the first 30mins and leaving the venue), he spoke out "Don't give up just that easily, you never know- You might figure something out if you stayed for another half an hour." He obviously did it on purpose. To wake everyone up. So I sat and tried my best to fill as much in as I can- I passed on the dot. haha~~ it was a adjusted mark! More than 85% of the class flunked the test(including me) thus they readjusted the marks- I heard ppl getting marks just by writing the question down!