Exam Information for Math 123

As it says on the course syllabus, there are two midterms and a final in MAT123, which count for 25%, 25%, and 35% of your grade, respectively. No Make-up exams will be given. If you miss an exam due to a documented medical or family reason, that score will be replaced by the grade on the balance of the course. If you miss more than one exam for such reasons, you should probably withdraw from the course.

First Midterm: 8:45 pm on Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Bring a photo ID. No calculators will be allowed. Bring a pen to the exam: while you may do the midterm in pencil (or crayon), you can only contest grading of problems done in non-erasable ink. Sorry.

The midterm covers the material in Chapters 1 and 4 of the text. The first part of the midterm will consist of 8 very straightforward "mastery" problems. You must pass this section in order to get a grade of C or higher on the test, no matter how well you do on the remainder of the midterm.

Doing all of the homework problems prior to the exam is a very good idea. Doing additional problems from the text can be helpful.

In order to help you review and prepare, David Kahn has kindly posted some chapters from his Attacking Trigonometry Problems book:

Don't forget that several short videos on the basic concepts, as well as the class lectures, are available from the video page. These can be very helpful for review.

Below are some sample problems you should be able to do. The format is, of course, quite different from the actual exam, but these should give you an idea of the type of questions to expect.

Results: Below is a graph of the score distribution on the exam.

low score: 1 mean: 26.8 median: 31 high score: 58 possible score: 60

range letter grade 44-60 A-, A 28-43 B-, B, B+ 10-27 C, C+ 8-10 C- 4-7 D, D+ 0-3 F

Students who got less than 10 on the midterm did not have their part 2 grades counted. A student who retakes part 1 and earns at least 10 points on the retake will then have the score on part 2 included.
You can check your grade on the Blackboard Grade Center.
If you got less than 10 on part 1, you should retake part 1. Details on how to do that will be announced here shortly. If you are lost in this course, you should seriously consider moving down to MAP103, which can be done with this form.

There were three different versions of the exam. Here is the Harpo version (and the solutions), the Chico version (and its solutions), or perhaps you prefer the Zeppo version (solutions). They are pretty similar, no matter which brother. If you see any typos, let me know.

Second Midterm: 8:45 pm on Thursday, October 29, 2015

The second midterm will cover the material we have covered since the first exam, specifically chapters 2 and 3 of the textbook. Material from chapter 1 (for example, on graphs, composition, and inverse functions) will be assumed. There will be no explicit trigonometry questions, but don't worry, it will come back again soon.

Format:
As before, the exam will have two parts, with the first part consisting of short questions covering basic concepts, and the second part containing longer problems. You must do reasonably well on the first part for the second part to count.

Here are some sample problems you should be able to do, of varying levels of difficulty. Make sure you can do the homework problems (both paper homework and webassign) as well.

Results: Below is a graph of the score distribution on the exam. As you can see, quite a few people did well, but a lot of people also need some work!

low score: 1 mean: 35.7 median: 40 high score: 56 (11 people) possible score: 56

range letter grade 45-56 A-, A 30-44 B-, B, B+ 10-29 C, C+ 8-10 C- 4-7 D, D+ 0-3 F

Students who got less than 10 on the midterm did not have their part 2 grades counted. If you are one of those people, you can sign up to retake part 1 during the week of Nov. 9. Your score on part 1 will be the better of the two scores, and if you get at least 10 on the retake, you will then have your part 2 score counted.
You can check your grade on the Blackboard Grade Center.
If you got less than 10 on part 1, you should retake part 1. Details on how to do that will be announced here shortly. If you are lost in this course, you should seriously consider moving down to MAP103, which can be done with this form.

There were three different versions of the exam. Here is the Larry version (and the solutions), the Moe version (and its solutions), or perhaps you prefer the Curly version (solutions). All three stooges are pretty similar. If you see any typos, let me know.

Final Exam: 2:15pm on Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The final will be cumulative, covering everything that we have done in the class.

As with the midterms, the final will be given in two parts. If you passed part 1 of both midterms, you already have full credit for this part of the final, and can focus on part 2. If you failed to pass part 1 on either midterm, you will have to do part 1 on the final. If you forgot if you passed it already, check on blackboard.

Part 1 of the final will be similar to part 1 of the midterms, covering this same material. Little partial credit will be given. There will not be a make-up (because this is already a make-up.)
Part 2 will consist of longer, more in-depth questions, which may require understanding of several aspects of the course to do completely.

Practice Problems:
Here are some sample problems you should be able to do, of varying levels of difficulty. Make sure you can do the homework problems (both paper homework and webassign) as well as all the problems on the previous midterms (and, if you need to do part 1, also the part 1 retakes on webassign.)

Review Sessions:
Several of the classes were devoted to review, and have been videotaped. You can see them on the class videos page, but here they are for easy reference:

Results: For people who did not quite pass part 1, their grade on the final was either F, D or C-; people who passed part 1 have grades on the final of C or higher. Of the people who took part 1, the median was 16, which means more people passed it than not. But a lot of people were still in the "not" category.
Below is a graph of the score distribution on the final, including people who took part 1 and those who didn't need to.

low score: 1 mean: 58.1 median: 67 high score: 97 (1) possible score: 97

range letter grade 80-97 A-, A 40-79 B-, B, B+ 15-39 C, C+ 10-14 C- 6-10 D, D+ 0-5 F

You can check your grade in the Grade Center on blackboard.

Homework (both paper and WebAssign) and participation

Here is the distribution of grades from homework (combined webassign and paper), and including the participation grades from recitation. The homework score is a pretty good predictor of overall course grade. Below is a chart of homeworks score vs. overall grade in course.

Overall grades in the course

Here's how the grades broke down. I was disappointed at the 17% who got a grade lower than C, and although 25% A/A- is typical for this course, I would have liked to give more As and fewer grades of A-. But that's how it went.