I posted answer keys for Homework #7 and for Exam #3 over
the weekend. I have also finished grading Exam #3 and I tried to hand back as
many exams as I could during class today. If you didn't receive your exam, stop by
Kathy Kennedy's office (Rm. 303) to pick it up. I am still reading homework assignments (and
lab reports) so more paper will come your way on Wednesday.The median score on Exam #3 was 69 out of 100. Two comments about scores:
- Many
students generally found this exam to be harder than the previous two.
The good news is that this is as hard as it gets. Yes, we will be
adding new information day by day, but the kinds of tasks that you can
expect to run into have been pretty well mapped out: fill-in-the-blanks
(note: these are not meant to be time-consuming; plan your studies so
that you can ‘fly’ through the ‘fill-in-the-blank’ questions),
mechanisms, synthetic plans, and spectrum analysis. The latter three
all call for more involved thinking. You haven’t seen synthetic plans
or spectrum analysis on an exam yet, but both appeared on HW #7 and
both will appear on the final exam. - 6 points were added to
the ‘raw’ scores on each exam. Your exam score is the one that is
circled ‘N/100’. I try to make the median score on each exam fall
around 70 points. Usually this happens naturally, but sometimes I end
up awarding partial credit in a way that leads to a lower-than-expected
median. In that case, I may opt to raise all scores and that is what
happened here.
If you have questions about how your exam was scored, how to prepare for the final exam, or anything else, please come see me.