I took this module to clear my extra UEs 🙂 In fact, I had already cleared all my GE pillars, so I took this module for fun! I actually heard about this module from my friend who took this module under Prof Georgiou… and I was like why does his name sound so familiar?? 🧐 turns out I had taken his GET1023 – Thinking Like An Economist module in Year 1, and I remembered enjoying it so much hehehe so I went ahead to bid for GEH1074 this semester!!
BTW, despite being a Y4 student, I had so much difficulty bidding for this mod, I failed to get into the module in Round 2 and 3, and could only get in via APPEAL :> Whoever dropped out and left that extra spot thanks so much ya haahaha.
This is a very very interesting module, in fact, one that I enjoyed the most this semester, because we got to explore how luck affects almost every area of our lives – from our name, the time and month when we are born, the place we are born in, free will and determinism, blah blah and more. In the later half of the semester, there was more emphasis on how to counter (bad) luck – etc buying insurance, migration, taxation policies, intelligent design etc.
I really recommend this module, cuz Prof Georgiou (or as we like to call him ggman) is a very engaging professor, and his content is legit very interesting. Though he still keeps his habits of randomly shouting in the lecture hall (ahhahaaha same as GET1023, to keep us all awake ig..), he frequently walks around the lecture hall, and attempts to engage us (usually by approaching the exchange students and asking them questions and getting them to share their experience LOL ).
Heres the topic that were covered every week:
- Luck and Art
- Luck and Evolution
- Luck and circumstances at birth A (Place & Time)
- Luck and circumstances at birth B (Other Chance events)
- Luck and Social Mobility
- Luck and Free Will
- Luck and Causality
- Luck and Marketplace
- Harnessing Luck A (Collective Financial Part)
- Harnessing Luck B (Individual Financial Part)
- Harnessing Luck C (The Existential Part)
- Are you lucky?
Lemme jump straight into the grading component:
- Tutorial (10%)
Self-explanatory, theres a 1-hour physical tutorial every week, starting from Week 3. Basically covers the content that he taught the previous week, and theres some weekly discussion questions that you can attempt to do before class. I actually got ggman as our tutor, so our tutorial was mainly 20 mins of internal group discussions (where we were split into groups of 3, and each group takes 1 question). Afterward, we will all type our discussion answers into a consolidated shared document. Afterward, a representative from each group will go to the front of the class to present his/her answer for the question that the group was allocated.
And because this was a module on Luck, I vividly remembered going for my first tutorial in Week 3, and we did scissors-paper-stone in our internal group to decide who will present, AND I WAS THE UNLUCKY ONE WHO LOST 3 TIMES IN A ROW, so I had to went up to present LOOOL. But it was quite chill, because it wasn’t really a formal presentation, so there wasn’t a lot of stress about this component. Just try to speak up once in a while.
2. Lecture polls (10%)
This was the same format as GET1023, basically, for ggman to track our lecture attendance, and to make sure that we go for his lecture, we have to do some weekly lecture polls that he activates via pollev, during his lecture classes. The pollev is just some discussion quizzes with no right or wrong answer, so we can just pick the option that best resonate with us.
Anyway, now that I have cleared this module, I can expose myself and share about how I exploit this loophole (lol sorry). I was initially quite onz about this module in the first half of the semester so I went for all his lectures and participated in all the lecture polls in the LT. However, nearing the end of the semester, I got super busy (and lazy) to travel to school just for a 1.5 hour lecture, so I ended up skipping his lectures (it was recorded anyway, and the content covered was quite little near the end of the semester so alls good). However, I was abit kiasu, and didn’t want to miss out the Lecture polls, so I just camped at home at the pollev page, and waited until ggman activates his quiz and then inputted my options oof.
3. LumiNUS Weekly Quizzes (15%)
Another very easy to score component. Every week, you will be assigned to some readings (~40 to 50 pages), and ggman tests some of the concepts in the readings. This is a very easy to score component, bc as long as you have read the readings, you will be able to do the quizzes. Besides, the quizzes have no time-limit, and you can basically refer to your notes as you do it.
However, since ggman uploads his readings in scanned formatting, it can be hard to ctrl+f the words and find the answer. I recommend finding a pdf version of the readings, or if you cannot find one, just scan through the readings ( i mean you have to read through anyway ), cuz all the questions are taken from the readings.
The number of questions that ggman gives per week are different, there can be as many as 9 MCQ questions, and as little as 2 MCQ questions. I guess this depends on the intensity of the readings. Nevertheless, I think I remember ggman saying that he will take only the 9 highest score out of the 10 quizzes, so you can technically skip one quiz. Like I mentioned, this is a very easy component to score, and ggman activates the grade distribution book so we can see that almost everyone score full marks for all the quizzes lol. Also, this is where I flex and say that I scored full marks for all 10 quizzez yAY 🏆
4. Midterms (30%)
Midterms comprises of 5 short answered-questions that are done on Examplify. Exam is open-book, so you don’t have to memorise all the examples in the readings + lecture notes (huzzah!!!). What I did to prepare for mid terms was to merge all my lecture notes into one pdf, and then I transferred all my readings into pdf format so that it’s also easy to find the examples.
What I learnt from ggman’s exam from GET1023 was that he expects us to quote examples from the readings, and some of the questions consist of examples from the readings rather than the lecture notes. This was the same for this module, GEH1074. If you want to score well for ggman’s exam, please make sure that you download and read all the readings + make sure that you write down enough examples bc thats where you get the marks!!
I can’t remember the exact phrasing of the questions, but i do remember that ggman actually mixes some of the topic tgt: e.g. What will free-will believers think about the idea of meritocracy? Or smth like Do hard determinists support the idea of meritocracy? (p.s. i cant remember the exact phrasing). And the answer is actually found in one of the readings, so it’s easy for one to just refer to the readings and quote the author.
The median for the mid-terms was around 22/31 marks. I only had one mid-term for this semester (excluding other class quizzes), so i basically spent my recess week just studying for GEH1074 LOL, the hard work paid off and I got close to full marks. :p
5. Finals (35%)
This was the only finals that I had for this semester, so I had close to 2 weeks to study for this one exam LOL. The format was the same as midterms, just that there were fewer questions (4 short answer questions), but they were of higher weightage (some as low as 4 marks, some as high as 20 marks). I think the overall marks was 64???? I can’t remember though.
A good thing about this module is that the content is not cumulative, so we just needed to study the content after recess week, and it was open-book so we just had to merge all the pdf, and bring everything into the exam hall. Despite there being only 4 questions, it was 2-hours of non-stop typing for me LOL because I was just spamming all the examples from the readings and lecture notes.
I think the finals was significantly harder than the mid terms.
The first question was on Piketty’s global tax on capital, its definition, some obstacles to implementation and other existing tax policies that are similar or different to Piketty’s model. I think this was rather straightforward, since this was one of the modified practise question that ggman provided, and the existing tax policies can be found in the readings.
The second question was super hard??? I didn’t understand the question at all, but it was on the topic of the fall of the cryptocurrency FTX, its bankruptcy and how Temesak Holdings (creditor) had to write down its investment?? There were three parts to this questions, and the first part was to elaborate on the predictive abilities of the creditors (like nani?? what is this), then the second and third part was just examples of existing analysts/players in the financial market and to elaborate on their successful investing abilities or smth (nani??? – i just assumed that he was asking about the example on the columnist Koppett and Bill Miller and talked about how everything was due to luck, and threw in concepts of anthropic reasoning, selection bias etc but i think im wrong LOL rip).
The third question was about factors that affect rising inequality, especially in the US and UK (other than the winner-take-all mechanism). – to which I elaborated on the finance industry (can be found in the lecture notes too :D)
I can’t seem to remember the fourth question (rip my short-term memory), so haahhahahaha i guess i shall leave this empty.
tbh I was expecting to be tested about the Sachs’ S-shaped curve, the Mediocristan vs Extremistan differences, but none of it came out. 😬 And I was stunned by the second question gg. But I spammed a lot of concepts so I guess I did relatively… okay? I hope xx
Conclusion
I think this is a really really great module, and its taught by ggman, so you can’t go wrong with this GE 😀
The only downside to this module (same for GET1023), is that theres A LOT OF READINGS every week. But nevertheless, don’t let this deter you, because i really think ggman’s classes are really interesting and i always look forward to his tutorials and content 😀
Others
Lecturer/Tutor: Prof GEORGIOU Georgios
Readings: Too many and time-consuming… 😦
Content: Interesting, but gets boring in the second half of the semester.
Recommend?: Yes, bc its taught by ggman, only downside is the readings. (p.s. got an A+ how lucky 😀 )
voez
29 November 2022
NUS MODULE REVIEWS 