Theoretical Biophysics Fall 2012

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Theoretical Biophysics Fall 2012

Summary

Total number of answers 17

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Give your opinion in the scale 1-5.

1 = very negative; 2 = negative; 3 = neutral; 4 = positive; 5 = very positive

Personal comments will be appreciated!

A. General

What is your general opinion of the course?

% # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 0% 0 4 70.6% 12 5 29.4% 5 Total 100% 17 Mean 4.3 Comments

5 have commented on this question

Grade = 4 (4 comments)

— Interesting but very easy.

— It was an interesting course with a lot of good insights and explanations of physical phenomenas.

— Informative. I learned many new concepts. As with 99% of all courses, it suﬀers from lectures being to the most part aloud-reading from the book. Which is a waste of time as I will in any case be forced to read the book to actually understand the material. It would be much more beneﬁtting if the lectures

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required any actual mental eﬀort by the students. I for one don't learn anything unless I try to do it myself. Listening to a monolog about thermodynamics does very little to shatter my faulty

preconceptions. For more thoughts about physics teaching, read: http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/shutup.html

— intresting

Grade = 5 (one comment)

— Very good course, perhaps you should mention earlier how the grading and exam will work.

B. Literature

What is your general opinion of Nelson's book?

% # 1 0% 0 2 11.8% 2 3 23.5% 4 4 47.1% 8 5 17.6% 3 Total 100% 17 Mean 3.7 Comments

— much unrelated text. (could give the same information in half the pages)

— Too much information. It's diﬃcult to prepeare with it for an exam. I used only my lecture notes.

— Didn't like the "your turn" method. Some things werent explained properly

— It starts out quite good but loses some its edge towards the edge. He is unable to present simple explanations in chapters 8-9, which is possible to do in one or two sentences many times.

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though was that it was diﬃcult to read the chapters one by one individually as they often used concepts and derivations from earlier chapters.

— Didn't use it much, but it was a good read the few times i did.

C. Lectures

What is your general opinion of the lectures with Carsten Peterson? % # 1 0% 0 2 5.88% 1 3 23.5% 4 4 41.2% 7 5 23.5% 4 ? 5.88% 1 Total 100% 17 Mean 3.9 Comments

— slow and childishly simple. I guess that they are needed for some who haven't read any biology at all, but had i known that they would not pick up speed i would not have attended any of them and i would still have ace'd the exam.

— Perhaps a to small part to have its own exam. — Informative

— Good and informative. It was easy to follow and I think I

understood the most parts, but the speed was a little bit too slow I think.

What is your general opinion of the lectures with Bo Söderberg?

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% # 1 0% 0 2 5.88% 1 3 11.8% 2 4 41.2% 7 5 41.2% 7 Total 100% 17 Mean 4.2 Comments

— Lost me after 10 minutes in most lectures, after which the lecture can mostly be described as "calculus magic shows".

— Quite fast

— Bo was the opposite to Carsten. He was super fast and showed some nice derivations and tied a lot of theory together which was very nice to see. The speed of his lectures were too fast though it was hard to follow sometimes.

— A bit fast and confusing but still very interesting of course!

— Good! Good pace, lots of information in a short time without(!) crossing the line for what one can take in.

What is your general opinion of the lectures with Henrik Jönsson? % # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 11.8% 2 4 35.3% 6 5 52.9% 9 Total 100% 17 Mean 4.4

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Comments

— Henriks lectures were good I think good level and adequate speed.

— Very interesting with good examples.

— I liked them very much. Henrik made attempts to engage the audience in the lecture but alas failed to the most part due to an audience which is neither familiar nor prepared for such

engagements. Don't take no for an answer. Make it clear that you expect a response. But likewise, make it clear that it is OK to think about the question for two minutes or such. People have to be trained to take part in this fashion. Don't allow them to coast along silently. If no one has an answer after two minutes, point and ask "What do YOU think about this?". People don't understand that the point isn't to get the right answer, the point is to start a discussion.

— Interesting and inspiring! I do however believe that no one would have lagged behind if the pace were increased a bit.

What is your general opinion of the lectures with Stefan Wallin? % # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 23.5% 4 4 29.4% 5 5 41.2% 7 ? 5.88% 1 Total 100% 17 Mean 4.2 Comments

— Felt kind of strictly taken from the book.

— Also good lectures. Some of the concepts were quite

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pace during the lectures.

— Highly comprehensible and pedagogical.

Grade not given (one comment)

— Missed most so have no opinion

D. Computer Assignments

What is your general opinion of assignment 1 (supervisor Sigurdur Jonsson)? % # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 17.6% 3 4 47.1% 8 5 35.3% 6 Total 100% 17 Mean 4.2 Comments

— The lab instruction was written in quite an tiring way. The prelab exercises were good but quite time consuming. Also it was a little bit time consuming to rewrite a lot of the theory in the report as it was just a lot of equations and derivations.

— good assignment but i felt that some preparation exercises unnecessaraly complicated calculations.

— To little supervisor time

— Quite good, gave fairly good understanding while till being rather quick to complete.

— The assignment itself was ﬁne but one thing bothered me. In exercise 5 there is a hint about using polynomial long division. First, where has this algorithm been ALL MY LIFE?! Seriously, I have never come across it before and I have no idea why since this should be in Mathematics1. Second, DO NOT SAY USE

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POLYNOMIAL LONGDIVISION. That's a bit harsh, but my point is that you shouldn't phrase it like it is now. I read that, found the algorithm, and then tried nothing except coming up with ways it could be used. The use for the algorithm was obvious once I started the brute-force solution but since you said "use the

algorithm", I didn't even try the brute-forcing it. A suggestion for a re-phrasing would be: "Hint: If you ﬁnd it diﬃcult to calculate parts of the integral, try using polynomial longdivision." The key part is NOT saying that it should be used BEFORE integrating in my opinion.

— The text had a few mistakes in it, and was not clear on the questions it was asking in the latter part.

— The computer assignments helped to give a deeper understanding of the course.

— a god one, learned alot

What is your general opinion of assignment 2 (supervisor Erica Manesso)? % # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 23.5% 4 4 47.1% 8 5 23.5% 4 ? 5.88% 1 Total 100% 17 Mean 4 Comments

— The theory was good to learn and contemplate, but the exercise itself felt rather unnecessary. Mindless(ish) ﬁddling of parameters does not yield much.

— Did not give any comments on my report, even if there isn't any mistake there should be some comments.

— The parts of the Brusselator it asked you to research were unclear. The questions should be reformulated to make a clearer path of investigation

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— The goals should be clariﬁed more precise. It was diﬃcult to estimate how detailed one should be. Si invested very much time in writing it, maybe too much.

— not as good as the ﬁrst but not bad

— Fine but it just felt like a repetition of the diﬀusion assignments that were done in Physics2. Software was a bit crap. For both assignments, running repeated simulations never stop

CPU-processes. So after a while 100% of the CPU cycles will be consumed in work even though no simulations are actually

running anymore. Frequent restarts "solve" this. Experienced this on a Linux-system.

— The prelab exercises were not as diﬃcult as in the ﬁrst

assignment. Once again it was very tiring and time consuming to write the report. I did not have enough time to proof read what I wrote so i would have appreciated a little bit shorter assignment in order to be able to keep a high quality.

— The subject was very interesting! I think Erica should leave more comments in the corrected reports.

— To little supervisor time, this project was late enough for the report to collide with exams which made it down prioritized.

— The computer assignments helped to give a deeper understanding of the course.

— Fun!

E. Seminar Presentations

What is your general opinion of the seminar presentations? % # 1 0% 0 2 17.6% 3 3 23.5% 4 4 47.1% 8 5 11.8% 2 Total 100% 17 Mean 3.5 Comments

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— i didnt get much out of it...

— It was a good way to practice some presentation skills. It would have been better if it was weighted into the grade though. As it was now it was enough to just go there and present and the quality of the presentations were quite poor i think.

— Since they were not part of the grading I feel that some presentations were lacking. Had the impressions that some groups "just wanted to get it done"

— A little too long.

— I learned a lot from my part of the presentation. But it was diﬃcult to learn something from the other parts.

— I didn't mind it, but i don't feel that i learned as much from it as i could have done by studying something else rather then

prepping for a speech.

— There was a beneﬁt in the sense that the part of the chapter I was presenting, I got to know very well. There was no beneﬁt in listening to the presentation of others in terms of learning

however. Acceptable though due to the beneﬁt to the actual speakers.

F. Oral Exams

What is your general opinion of the oral exams?

% # 1 0% 0 2 0% 0 3 23.5% 4 4 47.1% 8 5 23.5% 4 ? 5.88% 1 Total 100% 17 Mean 4 Comments

— It was very varying diﬃculty level depending on what section one had to explain and who was the responsible teacher. But it

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was good to have an oral exam for once even though it was nerve wrecking.

— Two times one hour is quite long. But the atmosphere was very laid back, that's good.

— I actually learned new things during the oral exam which was great. But it was also apparent that it depended heavily on who your examiner were. The study questions were good guides in what was expected of your but for some of them the answers could not be found in the book (by me at least). For example "what was the remarkable thing about the Einstein relation?". — It was alright for me, but i belive that a rather large chunk of ones grade depends on who you get on the exam. Stefan's part was by far the trickiest and Bosse is not easily impressed.

— Great way of examination

Grade not given (one comment)

— Oral exams freaks me out! Luckily it helps when all the

professors are nice persons. It felt a bit unfair that the grade was based on, basically, which two professors you got since some parts was obviously easier than other.

Thank you for your participation!

Contact person: Stefan Wallin, [email protected]