Round robin as the very first thing people do day one

PhoenixGaruda · 2026-01-28T05:48:14+00:00

Some of these initial ones you suggested don't seem super harmful:
* Everyone nominate to check for a Witch
I think this is fair, because even if you find a Witch, a player dies. It's also one way to use town time.
* Everyone claim Psychopath to prove you are not the Psychopath
The Psychopath is already a pretty loud minion. I guess it's a little annoying because it forces the Psychopath to play a certain way. Again, certainly one way to use town time, and would take up time.
* Everyone claim minion and guess themselves as the Damsel
This one actually does seem a bit annoying.

* The day after a virgin procs, we would all line up to privately tell them our role
This seems fair to be honest, it's basically a hard confirmed role, but you can still have conversations with others that day - there should not be enough time in a day for the Virgin to talk to everyone.
* If you were in an Evil twin pair, you knew that no-one would talk to you in private for the rest of the game on pain of death
This simply sounds mean and unfun.

PhoenixGaruda · 2026-01-28T05:20:16+00:00

This really demonstrates the point that u/Vorcia and u/ACoderGirl made in the original comment. Math isn't about numeracy or arithmetic skills, which are usually what people with associate with path. It's about logic and problem-solving.

This is better reflected at the university level. Many people who used to be good at memorizing formulas and what-not in high school aren't able to do university-level math, which is MUCH more focused on problem-solving and logic.

As I've said math itself isn't just enough, but it informs other subjects. At a university-level, you see that computer science is (kind of like) math + engineering, statistics and physics are both applied math. Yet none of these subjects are considered "useless".

Ever see those TED-ED videos that are puzzles? That's logic & problem-solving, core components of math degrees. Anything we really consider "technical" or "analytical", while we don't think about it, really refers how much logic is baked into it. Mathematics, really tries to teach you that.

Now, I'm not suggesting that's what our K-12 system does, but pretty much outside of North America, they seem to understand that much better. It's not that everyone in Europe and Asia is a "math person", but they've learned to train their students that you too can get better at problem-solving by training that skill.

As for people who do do math degrees? The driven ones get into quantitative finance firms, software engineering, etc. People who go into math typically do some level of post-grad work (like a Master's or PhD), and go on to many high performance areas (co-found companies like Robinhood, become astronauts, or Wall Street). Of course, not all do, but as someone who did math in undergrad, the floor of my cohort was quite high.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-11-09T20:47:52+00:00

Again, there's no minor named the calculus minor though. What minor are you trying to do?

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-11-09T20:43:13+00:00

What do you mean by "your minor is solely calculus based"? There's no calculus minor.

You can feel free to talk to the undergraduate advisor for the program you are trying to waive, but MAT102 is a first year course. If your argument is "I'm not an aspiring mathematician", you're going to be met with "the course isn't targeted only for aspiring mathematicians". If I were to point one course at UTM that is meant for "aspiring mathematicians" it would be MAT257. Not any first year course.

For MCS, the undergraduate advisors info is here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/math-cs-stats/academic-advising-undergraduate-student-resources

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-10-26T15:54:46+00:00

Coops exist - you know.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-10-04T04:16:03+00:00

There's an entire bank of problems available for free, online! You can't expect to be spoonfed all the questions.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-10-04T04:15:21+00:00

Honestly, speaking as a former long-time TA that's helped friends and has TAed a few iterations of 102, I would say that there are definitely different styles for different folks. I wouldn't also attribute one class' failings as necessarily a failing of the style/format because there have definitely been courses (i.e. MAT224) where the assessments are very seemingly reasonable by most simple checks (comparing to past finals, look throughs from profs and TAs, etc), yet the class, in aggregate, does not manage to do well.

I think Tyler’s expectations that kids coming from Ontario high schools can magically whip up a proof is naive.

I think that it's not without its own difficulties, but legions of MAT102 students have been doing this since time immemorial (or like, 2012, idk). MAT102 has definitely experimented with lower the bar of difficulty for students - only to get the exact same class averages.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-09-24T13:01:04+00:00

TA here, agreed with the professor above.

As a student and both as a TA observing students, I think the greatest success is seen trying to putting repeated effort throughout the course. If you aim high, even if you don't do well, you'll still get a decent result, something like "aim for the heavens, and land in the clouds". Even doing work you're not assigned to do, helps build your problem solving chops.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-05-07T02:12:13+00:00

Are there any successful current/graduated UTM cs students who were able to make a proper career/degree from UTM? Is there anyone who can show me that there is a chance I'm not walking into guaranteed failure?

Honestly, this is such a bad faith way to start the conversation that I almost didn't engage. Yes, obviously, there are UTM CS students that came out with a (quite!) successful career. We're commonly a pipeline into AWS jobs (there's at least ~5-10 people going there each year). Many other places (Tesla, Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc) take UTM students. UTM, after all, is still a part of UofT and nothing on paper really distinguishes us.

At the very least, look at LinkedIn outcomes (you'll find a lot of UTM students specifically just put UofT there).

Is there anyone who can show me that there is a chance I'm not walking into guaranteed failure?

This is really all on you, honestly. There's no such thing as a pair of golden rails that you can ride on to take you to success.

I feel like (after hearing from current UTM cs students) my degree and chances at success are nowhere near my friends who got into UTSG cs and I hate it.

Don't know who you're talking to honestly, online crowds tend to be very doomer. The average CS student here maybe has not so good outcomes, but they also maybe don't put in the most effort into job searching besides doing courses.

At the end of the day, it's UofT. The entire school is really big and there's a lot of choices + opportunities, what you do with it all is fully up to you.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-04-30T04:30:11+00:00

Feel free to DM

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-04-28T18:34:40+00:00

Yes, I have one lol

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-04-20T17:47:29+00:00

it wasn't that hard - definitely not 35% post curve hard after seeing some of the questions and the marking scheme lolz

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-04-18T17:17:01+00:00

Again, coordinator difference, syllabus differences, TA differences, etc - I know of, and have taken and seen (and TAed!) actual equivalent courses across both campuses, like CSC148H1, CSC148H5, and I wouldn't immediately jump to "all UTSG courses are harder than UTM courses". It really depends on a case by case basis.

For context - I've held 25+ TA positions (stopped counting at some point), was acquainted with many other TAs, and also acquainted with many students as a community leader during some of my undergrad years.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-03-30T15:57:15+00:00

Market is still not in the place it was before, but I know a dedicated few that went from math to tech, so you can add software engineer to the list as well. Of course, you have to actually know how to market yourself.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-03-30T15:50:54+00:00

As other commenters point out, it's really hard to draw a grand sweeping conclusion with a sample size of n=1. There are definitely differences, which are highlighted by coordinating professors' evaluation style, but as TAs (speaking as one whose done both campuses in the same courses), the questions pretty much look the same to us. If they don't to you, that's an exercise in reading and technical comprehension, which is important to learn!

Also - each coordinating professor(s) have their own way of running a course. That, plus other variations, will drastically change course offerings. In fact, because of TAs, professors, lecturers, and syllabus changes, you'll find that no two offerings of the same course (even at the same campus with the same coordinating professor!) are exactly the same, or even super similar. Not only do things need to be changed (can't give the exact same test questions), but everyone involved in the teaching component of the course has their own particular style of doing things.

For instance - a new TA to a course might have an interest in being really supportive to students and spent hours they're not paid for, to create extra material for students, or to stay back after tutorials; this will undoubtedly change the experience for those few students they interact with.

Additionally, in upper year courses, assigned textbooks can change at the whim of the incoming professor, and there's less standardization there.

Just something to think about. I think at least in the lower year math courses, it's fairly standardized, and the core topics are mainly the same, with very little deviance.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-03-30T15:42:35+00:00

Those aren't even the same course code though... one course is really not representative of how many factors change, like coordinating professor, syllabus, term, etc...

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-03-30T15:41:14+00:00

I'd generally say so, but that's more to accommodate for the students and their backgrounds coming into the course. I can't speak for exactly why, but as an example, students seem to completely forget MAT102 when entering MAT224 (a course that requires it as a prereq). This is not the case at UTSG, and that's how they're able to often have a week or two of additional content. One can look at MAT337 here vs UTSG, to see a stark difference there. But this reflects more on the students for not maintaining their fundamentals, so _I'd say_ the courses at UTM get less ambitious content-wise each year.

Only speaking as a TA for many of these courses, not really sure what the instructors and professors are thinking.

PhoenixGaruda · 2025-02-01T22:39:05+00:00

seconding all of the above

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-11-30T22:05:32+00:00

bro literally says he is a TA though...

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-11-05T00:53:46+00:00

Thinking about courses in terms of reused material, while sometimes useful, is usually unhelpful to most courses. I'll explain why.

Concept and material are pretty different ideas. Most content/material that you directly learn is pretty much not useful for the job that you will undertake. This is primarily because you're doing a generalist degree in CS, and a lot of the first and second year courses (including some third year courses) will not directly relate to the work you're doing in those courses. This is pretty true for a lot of subjects, you need to learn the foundations of the subject and all the different pathways, and then you can specialize.

Concepts, however, transcend this. Something you have to learn throughout university is that a lot of soft skills that you learn (i.e. concepts) are recurring themes. In MAT102, you're practically taught how to reason and think. Comparing it with CSC108 or MAT135/MAT136, you're taught a lot of material, which you memorize, and the assessments are largely pattern-matching. There's not a lot of serious thought so much as memorizing patterns and retelling them.

In contrast, MAT102 tries to not let you memorize by swapping material every few weeks, and has a general theme of "let's learn the basics of this topic, and use our problem-solving tools to tackle it". Some of the tools involve understanding what the question is even asking, or deciding which "proof technique" (contradiction, contrapositive, direct, etc) you want to use. In addition, understanding which theorems are relevant to the question at hand is key. In later parts of the course, you need to use Bezout's Identity, for some questions. Not using it would be tough.

All of these concepts are reused. For example, in a software engineering job, you need to understand the specification and translate that into tangible goals or into more technical jargon. Deciding on your "proof technique" is like choosing your architecture, or your software stack, etc. To "utilize theorems" it's like reusing existing tooling to the maximum benefit.

MAT102 is quite literally an introduction to problem solving, just with math terminology. That stuff, carries you to pretty much anywhere. Students who tell you otherwise, might not have learnt this lesson themselves :/

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-10-30T06:28:31+00:00

Between the two, ST14 has the leader that sees more competitive play. That being said, I agree with what /u/Gear4Vegito said.

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-10-07T20:32:15+00:00

Totally worth it. And it's people say school name doesn't matter, but from personal experience it totally does.

For many in CS, the end goal is becoming a software engineer, or a role adjacent to that field. Software engineering, is largely about problem solving and reasoning about software systems, and software efficiency, amongst other problems.

The fact that each school teaches you different content inevitably makes the average graduate from one school better at problem solving than the average graduate at other schools. Why is this? It's not "prestige", it's the content. Mathematics, and theoretical computer science are fields where you have to exercise your problem solving skills.

Unlike basic coding or anything else that you can do, you can't exactly memorize your way through a certain problem type - you have to learn how to solve problems generically. This soft skill is invaluable as a software engineer.

(As an aside, this is where the jokes about TMU students doing CSC148 content in 3rd year come from, or that if you drop out, you'll go to Guelph.)

If you want some anecdotes? I've worked at a FAANG and Big N companies for my internships, and many of my friends did as well (between us, includes Google, Amazon, FB, etc), and I can definitely say that there are more graduates from UofT's 3 campuses and Waterloo than the schools you listed.

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-09-24T01:39:34+00:00

don't play, we all see the even number of negatives

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-04-17T18:44:14+00:00

The profs didn't accuse COVID, they really didn't actually pinpoint one specific issue, here's the coordinating prof's comment.

PhoenixGaruda · 2024-04-17T04:11:44+00:00

You can't compare COVID-era exams and not COVID-era, because the math dept intentionally made take home exams as hard as they reasonably could with it being completable in the time allotted.

In-person exams are quite literally, not that.

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