26/2/2019 My Schedule this Semester at AUT:

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Auckland University of Technology Masters (MSC) in Research Program is 2 years with first year being subjects and 2nd year being thesis year.

First Year is divided into 2 Semesters. First Semester Subjects 4 subjects lasting until July 2019 and and 2nd year also 4 subjects lasting until November of 2019.

According to Dr. Alna van der Merwe (Super Nice Woman) who is the Program Coordinator the program should play out something like this:

Semester 1:

• COMP 805 Data Mining and Machine Learning:
  
  How to Automate Decision Making. I have experience in Web Scraping.
  
• STAT 805 Computational Mathematics and Statistics:
  
  Every Scientist (I like to call us explorers of the unknown) must have a fine grasp on Statistics. Introduction to R. R is a programming Language for Statistical Computing commonly used by data miners for big data analysis.
  
• MATH 803 Mathematical Modelling and Simulation
  
  Investigates mathematical methods for building models suitable for problems in naturalsciences, engineering and social sciences. Mathematical software packages and computing algorithms are used to analyse and simulate mathematical models. This paper will be taught using SAS software or equivalent.
  
• ASTR 800 Advanced Topics in Astronomy
  
  Taught by the Institute. Working with an Institute Member. Perhaps I will be involved in finding out ways of identifying amd removing RFI (Radio Frequency Interfrence) or perhaps I will be building a data pipeline. Maybe study Pulsars or the Interstellar Medium?
  
  What is a Pulsar?
  
  Pulsars are a small type of Star discovered by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish, made of lots of neutrons that are packed very closely together after a star has died
  
  They spin periodically (while slowing down) in an intense magnetic field  while emitting beams of RF Energy which are detectable from Earth.
  
  Comes in many different flavours (X Ray, Gamma, Optical)
  
  

Semester 2:

• COMP 810 Data Warehousing: SQL
• COMP 811 Research Methods (Write an mini Astro Paper)
• ??? 
• ???

Question Marks are Electives of which i'm gravitating towards STAT  802 Geocomputation and COMP 815 Nature Inspired Computing.

Nature Inspired Computing will involved Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks. I'm the kind of guy who enjoys nature hikes. I have a friend who once told me that "Just because you enjoy video games, doesn't mean you will enjoy making video games"

But here's the catch. Dr. Alna Recommended that perhaps I change MATH 803 for a course on Digital Signals Processing designate ENSE 807 with Matlab

So Maybe the Semester will look like this:

• COMP 809 Data Mining and Machine Learning
• STAT 805 Computational Math and Statistics
• ASTR 800 Advanced Topics in Astronomy
• ENSE 807 Digital Signal Processing

I have until Friday 1st of March to Decide