I have gone for about 9 escape rooms from different companies now. There are several categories that puzzles fall into. There can and is usually overlap between categories.
A.1) Search
The simplest and sometimes the most boring types of puzzles are those that need you to find -something- that is taped to a wall, under a box, behind a cabinet or something like that. I won't even call these puzzles.
Some examples would be hidden keys, hidden clues, etc.
While these are the most necessary puzzles to have (since escape rooms ARE about finding clues), I don't like it when they form the crux of a particular stage (e.g. need to find an obscure hidden object to unlock next lock).
Rather, having easy-to-locate but difficult to figure out HOW to use it type Search puzzles are probably the best and most fulfilling (since you feel like you're using your brains primarily to solve, not your ability to play hide and seek with hidden objects)
Tips for New Puzzle Solvers: Have 1 (or 2) dedicated 'Seekers' who have keen eyes to search everywhere for any useful clues once you begin or when moving to a new zone. It's not just a matter of looking, you may have to interact with the environment (e.g. touch or pull or push something to reveal something hidden, etc).
A.2) Search and Combine
These are an extension of Search type puzzles, where you have to find more than 1 object and use them together to get past something.
To use a fictional example so as not to spoil any of the existing puzzles (You will figure out what this means when you see it), a Search and Combine can be something like I found Object A, and I find Object B, I need to use them together to get more clues. Xcape has quite a few of such puzzles, and The Escape Artist has utilized some of such puzzles in their Prinsep Street branch.
B) Riddle
Riddles are straightforward (but not necessarily easy) - they are simply an IQ-like puzzle on a piece of paper (or papers) that requires you to solve something on them. They can be in the form of logic puzzles, math-like puzzles, or literal riddles. These are arguably The Escape Artist's specialty - they have more riddles than other escape companies and their riddles are good and challenging. Their original branch (Bukit Timah) with only singular rooms utilized mostly Riddle puzzles.
These are usually fun, but having too many is also detrimental as if puzzle-goers are stuck at a particular riddle it can be frustrating (more so than being stuck at the next category of puzzles).
Tips for New Puzzle Solvers: Keep track of every clue you see that you have not used. You may have to come back to it in a subsequent area. If there is no obvious method to solve the Riddle, it's probably a Multi-staged Riddle and you need to utilize a clue from somewhere else.
C) Multi-staged Riddle
This category is slightly different from the previous one. Normal Riddle puzzles can be solved by just looking at deducing from the piece of paper that the puzzle is on. Multistaged Riddle puzzles require you to find clues from elsewhere (can be same area, or maybe previous areas) to solve it.
These are arguably one of the more fun categories, as it feels more challenging when it really isn't, and is just about knowing you have to use a particular object (should not be too randomly connected) to solve the main puzzle.
Later puzzles in a room are usually multistaged puzzles as they require you to go back to something you've seen earlier to get clues to solve them.
Tips for New Puzzle Solvers: Keep track of every clue you see that you have not used. You may have to come back to it in a subsequent area.
D) Props-based Puzzles
This involves special locks (not all locks are number or key locks! :)) or special puzzle boxes or other props that you have to figure out how to use. I won't elaborate so as not to spoil the surprise and fun of figuring out how to open a particular lock. There are some very creative locks out there :)
These are very fun to have, but of course, should not be repeated across rooms as the novelty wears off immediately.
Tips for New Puzzle Solvers: Veteran puzzle solvers will have no problem recognizing particular locks, but first time solvers just need to figure out how a particular lock works.
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Should I write an Honors Thesis? (PL4401)
Should I write an honors thesis, PL4401? How do I do it? Is it difficult?
These are questions many undergraduates find themselves asking, and are also questions I've been asked numerous times. Thus I hope this entry will help people to make a more informed decision. If you have any queries feel free to email me at atqhteo [at] gmail [dot] com.
--
Let me start with a disclaimer. I am a Psychology major at NUS, so what I say may not be 100% accurate for other majors/schools. In addition, this post was written in 2014, so if you're reading this much later, some policies may have changed.
Most people, when they decide they want to write a thesis or are thinking about it, there are 2 broad reasons why they want to do so.
If you fall into the first category, I suppose you wouldn't even be reading this blog post. So most people are in the 2nd category, and are deliberating whether it is really better to write a thesis than to take 3 modules.
I will present what I believe to be the most common questions + main things you need to consider.
Which Professor should I approach? How do I approach him? When should I do so?
Which Professor? Ideally, you want to find a professor whose research interest is in line with what you want to do. You can find out what each professor does here. If you have no clear preference for a topic, try to pick someone you like (e.g. from a previous module, seems nice and good) as it's a year-long working relationship.
How? To approach the professor, send him an email expressing your interest in having him supervise your honors thesis, and try to give a few ideas which you have (your final idea should be further refined after discussion so don't worry if the initial idea is too broad, etc).
What happens next is he'll probably arrange a meetup with you to have a chat to decide if he/she wants to take you as his student, or perhaps he'll ask you to submit a 1 page writeup of what you want to do. It varies by professor!
When? As early as possible! Every cohort seems to get more kiasu than the previous one. I personally approached mine once in Y2S2, and once at the end of Y3S1 (when he accepted me). No harm approaching early, if it's too early the prof will tell you himself.
It's best you start early because the more popular (because they are good) profs will be snapped up really quickly.
Which is more heavy, writing a thesis or doing 3 modules?
Let's do a precise comparison.
Time. Let's first look at time which you can precisely pinpoint.
For 3 modules, 3 hour lectures over 13 weeks would equate to 117 hours.
For your thesis, you typically run one experiment (it really depends on subject matter - for instance, Health Psychology topics may involve going to hospitals to interview patients or something), and assuming about 180 participants, and the worst case scenario of 1 ppt at a time, that's about 90 hours (I ran about 10 participants at a time, so it was about 9 hours?)
Of course there are other time involvements such as in the assignments of modules, or the writing of the thesis, meeting with supervisors, but these are hard to give estimates to.
Readings. How much reading do you have to do?
For 3 modules, average level 4000 module has 2-6 readings per week. Let's take it as 4 average. So that's 12 readings x 13 weeks = 156 readings
For thesis, the bulk of your reading is done initially during idea generation I think, as you need to read each article thoroughly to get a good feel of where the field is at and what to do for your thesis. I read maybe 50 articles for this stage?
Later on as you write and bolster up your content, the reading can be a more 'surface' kind of reading where you browse abstracts and skim through the main discussion points, so it's not like a modules' readings where you have to read thoroughly. It's hard to give a ballpark figure, but my final thesis draft had 88 citations - this figure of course does not include articles which I have browsed but didn't use.
Which is heavier? You decide based on what I've said! (I personally feel that I did much less reading than I would have if I took 3 modules)
I still don't know. They seem equally heavy. What else affects whether I should I do a thesis?
A thesis is dependent on 2 further factors: the individual's working style, and the professor supervising.
Professor. I've had so many friends who got screwed over by their supervisors. There are a number of things you need to know about your professor (or try to find out) before embarking on a thesis under his/her supervision.
- Email turnaround rate: Some professors like have ridiculously fast turnarounds of 2 minutes - 30 minutes, even in the middle of the night. Others take 24 hours (still pretty good). The really bad ones can take anywhere from 3 days to a week to reply and email, and even when they do it's pretty vague.
Email turnaround is really important especially when you are panicking over one major problem and you need some professor-input, or when you're trying to arrange meetings, etc
- Working style: Is your professor hands on (i.e. willing to help you with queries you have) or hands off (i.e. prefers you to find out everything yourself and only helps you if really really necessary, and even then gives vague 'find out yourself' answers)? Ideally, he should be somewhere in between. You don't really want someone to spoonfeed you everything, yet you need someone who is willing to help when you need it.
- Extent of help: Some professors are willing to tutor you on how to utilize Medialab (Yes, I know a prof who actually did this), some will just thrust you a statistics textbook and ask you to figure it out yourself when you don't know the difference between logistic regression and hierarchical regression and which test statistic to report. If you have a particular weakness (e.g. stats), sound off early and see how your prof reacts - does he say he will help you if you really need help, or does he leave you to your own devices?
- Meetings: How often will you get to consult your professor? This is important in the initial stages when developing your thesis ideas, and especially important in the post-data collection stage when you are trying to make sense of your (most likely) weird results. Is your supervisor going on a conference anytime, and when? Will he be away on certain weeks? Try to find out these things early so you can plan your work.
- Drafts turnaround: How many drafts will your professor read? How long will it take for him to get back to you with comments? This is probably one of the most important things you need to establish AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. The more drafts you have, the more likely you will get a better grade! (assuming you improve with each draft)
Your working style. As you can see from the above, a lot of your work is dependent on your prof's efficiency as well. Are you ok with having such an uncertain timeline?
When you take modules, everything is very structured in terms of when to read what, when is each assignment due, etc. When you write a thesis, it's up to you to plan your time and how fast you want to do things. If you are a huge procrastinator, modules may be the way to go for you.
To share my personal experience, I much prefer to work independently and plan my own time and work with my own deadlines (usually set very early). Thus, I made swift progress on my thesis and had my first draft out by end of the first semester. Now, 2 weeks before thesis deadline, I have already bounced 3 drafts off my supervisor, and I'm more or less done with it, while some other friends are still busy on their 2nd draft and nowhere near completion. Yes, I am very kiasu.
As for my own prof (Dr Eddie Tong), let me share based on the 5 factors above.
Email turnaround rate: He's pretty fast, usually within a day.
Working style: He's a mix. He leaves me to do my thing, but when I ask him for help he provides good help (provided they are good questions. He's particular about asking good questions)
Extent of help: He saved my ass with some statistics magic, by utilizing a different analysis procedure that obtained significant results. He also taught me how to run a logistic regression (provided syntax and all) and ran me through the theoretical underpinnings of it. Very grateful for this.
Meetings: No regular times, but in general when I ask for a meeting I would get it, it's just a matter of when during the week.
Drafts turnaround: Each draft took maybe a week at most to read - a really quick turnaround. We also agreed to about 3-4 drafts, as I asked him about this really early. Note that the drafting process can be quite brutal - I literally rewrote my entire 10+ pages of my introduction after my first draft.
Yes, I had the privilege of a pretty cooperative and helpful prof, which helped in making everything more efficient and allowing me to complete the thesis earlier. I think our working style kinda complemented each other - I was very kiasu and wanted to chiong everything fast, and he's very dedicated and will cater his time accordingly to help me churn out the work.
--
To sum it up, you should do a thesis if
1) You manage to secure a professor whose areas of interest and working style align with yours
2) You are a good independent worker who can manage your time well
3) You would rather plan your own time than follow a plan
4) You would rather focus your reading on one main area and plan your own reading
These are questions many undergraduates find themselves asking, and are also questions I've been asked numerous times. Thus I hope this entry will help people to make a more informed decision. If you have any queries feel free to email me at atqhteo [at] gmail [dot] com.
--
Let me start with a disclaimer. I am a Psychology major at NUS, so what I say may not be 100% accurate for other majors/schools. In addition, this post was written in 2014, so if you're reading this much later, some policies may have changed.
Most people, when they decide they want to write a thesis or are thinking about it, there are 2 broad reasons why they want to do so.
1) They want to pursue postgraduate studies, or have a keen interest on research / scientific inquiry about a particular topic(s), or you are aiming for First Class.
2) They prefer writing a thesis over taking 3 modules
If you fall into the first category, I suppose you wouldn't even be reading this blog post. So most people are in the 2nd category, and are deliberating whether it is really better to write a thesis than to take 3 modules.
I will present what I believe to be the most common questions + main things you need to consider.
Which Professor should I approach? How do I approach him? When should I do so?
Which Professor? Ideally, you want to find a professor whose research interest is in line with what you want to do. You can find out what each professor does here. If you have no clear preference for a topic, try to pick someone you like (e.g. from a previous module, seems nice and good) as it's a year-long working relationship.
How? To approach the professor, send him an email expressing your interest in having him supervise your honors thesis, and try to give a few ideas which you have (your final idea should be further refined after discussion so don't worry if the initial idea is too broad, etc).
What happens next is he'll probably arrange a meetup with you to have a chat to decide if he/she wants to take you as his student, or perhaps he'll ask you to submit a 1 page writeup of what you want to do. It varies by professor!
When? As early as possible! Every cohort seems to get more kiasu than the previous one. I personally approached mine once in Y2S2, and once at the end of Y3S1 (when he accepted me). No harm approaching early, if it's too early the prof will tell you himself.
It's best you start early because the more popular (because they are good) profs will be snapped up really quickly.
Which is more heavy, writing a thesis or doing 3 modules?
Let's do a precise comparison.
Time. Let's first look at time which you can precisely pinpoint.
For 3 modules, 3 hour lectures over 13 weeks would equate to 117 hours.
For your thesis, you typically run one experiment (it really depends on subject matter - for instance, Health Psychology topics may involve going to hospitals to interview patients or something), and assuming about 180 participants, and the worst case scenario of 1 ppt at a time, that's about 90 hours (I ran about 10 participants at a time, so it was about 9 hours?)
Of course there are other time involvements such as in the assignments of modules, or the writing of the thesis, meeting with supervisors, but these are hard to give estimates to.
Readings. How much reading do you have to do?
For 3 modules, average level 4000 module has 2-6 readings per week. Let's take it as 4 average. So that's 12 readings x 13 weeks = 156 readings
For thesis, the bulk of your reading is done initially during idea generation I think, as you need to read each article thoroughly to get a good feel of where the field is at and what to do for your thesis. I read maybe 50 articles for this stage?
Later on as you write and bolster up your content, the reading can be a more 'surface' kind of reading where you browse abstracts and skim through the main discussion points, so it's not like a modules' readings where you have to read thoroughly. It's hard to give a ballpark figure, but my final thesis draft had 88 citations - this figure of course does not include articles which I have browsed but didn't use.
Which is heavier? You decide based on what I've said! (I personally feel that I did much less reading than I would have if I took 3 modules)
I still don't know. They seem equally heavy. What else affects whether I should I do a thesis?
A thesis is dependent on 2 further factors: the individual's working style, and the professor supervising.
Professor. I've had so many friends who got screwed over by their supervisors. There are a number of things you need to know about your professor (or try to find out) before embarking on a thesis under his/her supervision.
- Email turnaround rate: Some professors like have ridiculously fast turnarounds of 2 minutes - 30 minutes, even in the middle of the night. Others take 24 hours (still pretty good). The really bad ones can take anywhere from 3 days to a week to reply and email, and even when they do it's pretty vague.
Email turnaround is really important especially when you are panicking over one major problem and you need some professor-input, or when you're trying to arrange meetings, etc
- Working style: Is your professor hands on (i.e. willing to help you with queries you have) or hands off (i.e. prefers you to find out everything yourself and only helps you if really really necessary, and even then gives vague 'find out yourself' answers)? Ideally, he should be somewhere in between. You don't really want someone to spoonfeed you everything, yet you need someone who is willing to help when you need it.
- Extent of help: Some professors are willing to tutor you on how to utilize Medialab (Yes, I know a prof who actually did this), some will just thrust you a statistics textbook and ask you to figure it out yourself when you don't know the difference between logistic regression and hierarchical regression and which test statistic to report. If you have a particular weakness (e.g. stats), sound off early and see how your prof reacts - does he say he will help you if you really need help, or does he leave you to your own devices?
- Meetings: How often will you get to consult your professor? This is important in the initial stages when developing your thesis ideas, and especially important in the post-data collection stage when you are trying to make sense of your (most likely) weird results. Is your supervisor going on a conference anytime, and when? Will he be away on certain weeks? Try to find out these things early so you can plan your work.
- Drafts turnaround: How many drafts will your professor read? How long will it take for him to get back to you with comments? This is probably one of the most important things you need to establish AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. The more drafts you have, the more likely you will get a better grade! (assuming you improve with each draft)
Your working style. As you can see from the above, a lot of your work is dependent on your prof's efficiency as well. Are you ok with having such an uncertain timeline?
When you take modules, everything is very structured in terms of when to read what, when is each assignment due, etc. When you write a thesis, it's up to you to plan your time and how fast you want to do things. If you are a huge procrastinator, modules may be the way to go for you.
To share my personal experience, I much prefer to work independently and plan my own time and work with my own deadlines (usually set very early). Thus, I made swift progress on my thesis and had my first draft out by end of the first semester. Now, 2 weeks before thesis deadline, I have already bounced 3 drafts off my supervisor, and I'm more or less done with it, while some other friends are still busy on their 2nd draft and nowhere near completion. Yes, I am very kiasu.
As for my own prof (Dr Eddie Tong), let me share based on the 5 factors above.
Email turnaround rate: He's pretty fast, usually within a day.
Working style: He's a mix. He leaves me to do my thing, but when I ask him for help he provides good help (provided they are good questions. He's particular about asking good questions)
Extent of help: He saved my ass with some statistics magic, by utilizing a different analysis procedure that obtained significant results. He also taught me how to run a logistic regression (provided syntax and all) and ran me through the theoretical underpinnings of it. Very grateful for this.
Meetings: No regular times, but in general when I ask for a meeting I would get it, it's just a matter of when during the week.
Drafts turnaround: Each draft took maybe a week at most to read - a really quick turnaround. We also agreed to about 3-4 drafts, as I asked him about this really early. Note that the drafting process can be quite brutal - I literally rewrote my entire 10+ pages of my introduction after my first draft.
Yes, I had the privilege of a pretty cooperative and helpful prof, which helped in making everything more efficient and allowing me to complete the thesis earlier. I think our working style kinda complemented each other - I was very kiasu and wanted to chiong everything fast, and he's very dedicated and will cater his time accordingly to help me churn out the work.
--
To sum it up, you should do a thesis if
1) You manage to secure a professor whose areas of interest and working style align with yours
2) You are a good independent worker who can manage your time well
3) You would rather plan your own time than follow a plan
4) You would rather focus your reading on one main area and plan your own reading
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Guidance and the Voice of God - Part One
In this series of blog posts, I'll be summarizing what I took away from the book "Guidance and the Voice of God", two chapters at a time. (3 chapters in this post because the first chapter is really short)
Being a summary, the points will naturally be underelaborated, so please do pick up the book to read it for more biblical references and further elaboration! I can lend it to you too once I'm done with it!
Chapter One
A very brief chapter, which outlines the purpose of the book: "to outline God's will for our lives, how he guides us in it, and what we are to do in response".
Chapter Two
This chapter outlines a few key characteristics of God to help us 'understand God'. There are 3 main points:
1) God is the Sovereign Creator - he's all powerful and all knowing and he created the whole world down to the smallest detail. Yes, he has created amazingly complex stuff such as... our EYES.
2) God is the Shepherd of his people - (e.g. Psalms 23) Not just a gentle leading, but just like how real shepherds 'whack their sheep to keep them in line', we may be prodded to get us moving in the right direction. God shows us the way and guides them along it.
3) God is the Planner - God's master plan of saving his people covers centuries of human history - all the events recorded in the Bible didn't just occur by chance! (the book provides a sequence of events that unfolded over time, with biblical references, but I'm lazy to copy paste)
If we can understand God, if we know what his motivations are and what his plans are, we'll be better equipped to understanding his guidance.
Chapter Three
So previously it was mentioned very broadly and briefly that God's master plan is to save his people. But how so? This chapter breaks down God's plan into 4 main points:
1) We are destined for sonship - Eph 1:10 "... to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Read verses 3-9 for more context).The goal or our lives is to be under Christ.
2) We are destined to inherit - (1 Pet 1:3-5) - we have an inheritance in heaven that will one day be ours!
3) We are destined for glory (Rom 8:28-30) - God wants to help us to be like Christ, to be 'conformed to the likeness of his Son'.
4) We are destined for good works (Ephesians 2:8-10) - We are saved for.. fun? No! It is for us to 'do good works'! (But what are these good works? DUN DUN DUN. Hopefully they'll elaborate further in the book!)
The first two chapters (I'm ignoring Chap 1) have laid some good groundwork for us - it paints a clear picture of what God is and wants, and what he has planned for us. Personally there really isn't anything new here, but I'm looking forward to see how the authors bring in specific real life implications later on (last 3 chapters).
So how do we respond, knowing all these? That's what the next 3 chapters are about! The 'right way' to respond, classic misunderstandings, and 'the wrong way' to respond. Till next time!
Being a summary, the points will naturally be underelaborated, so please do pick up the book to read it for more biblical references and further elaboration! I can lend it to you too once I'm done with it!
Chapter One
A very brief chapter, which outlines the purpose of the book: "to outline God's will for our lives, how he guides us in it, and what we are to do in response".
Chapter Two
This chapter outlines a few key characteristics of God to help us 'understand God'. There are 3 main points:
1) God is the Sovereign Creator - he's all powerful and all knowing and he created the whole world down to the smallest detail. Yes, he has created amazingly complex stuff such as... our EYES.
2) God is the Shepherd of his people - (e.g. Psalms 23) Not just a gentle leading, but just like how real shepherds 'whack their sheep to keep them in line', we may be prodded to get us moving in the right direction. God shows us the way and guides them along it.
3) God is the Planner - God's master plan of saving his people covers centuries of human history - all the events recorded in the Bible didn't just occur by chance! (the book provides a sequence of events that unfolded over time, with biblical references, but I'm lazy to copy paste)
If we can understand God, if we know what his motivations are and what his plans are, we'll be better equipped to understanding his guidance.
Chapter Three
So previously it was mentioned very broadly and briefly that God's master plan is to save his people. But how so? This chapter breaks down God's plan into 4 main points:
1) We are destined for sonship - Eph 1:10 "... to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Read verses 3-9 for more context).The goal or our lives is to be under Christ.
2) We are destined to inherit - (1 Pet 1:3-5) - we have an inheritance in heaven that will one day be ours!
3) We are destined for glory (Rom 8:28-30) - God wants to help us to be like Christ, to be 'conformed to the likeness of his Son'.
4) We are destined for good works (Ephesians 2:8-10) - We are saved for.. fun? No! It is for us to 'do good works'! (But what are these good works? DUN DUN DUN. Hopefully they'll elaborate further in the book!)
The first two chapters (I'm ignoring Chap 1) have laid some good groundwork for us - it paints a clear picture of what God is and wants, and what he has planned for us. Personally there really isn't anything new here, but I'm looking forward to see how the authors bring in specific real life implications later on (last 3 chapters).
So how do we respond, knowing all these? That's what the next 3 chapters are about! The 'right way' to respond, classic misunderstandings, and 'the wrong way' to respond. Till next time!
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