Tests Update

I don't usually post test results, but since Sally did I thought I'd go along.

I got my prob/stats test back tonight, and I got a 94%. I thought I had missed up to two questions - one that I just didn't know how to do, and one that I knew how to do except that I got "infinity" as the answer (for an expected value) and that seemed wrong, so I worked on it some more and finally gave up. But infinity was the correct answer, and he gave me credit for it even though I never quite said it was the answer. (I wrote something like "I don't know how to solve this since ln(infinity) -> (infinity)".) The other one I did miss.

Also tonight, I took my test in Discrete. It was probability plus the binomial theorem, and I had all of the material down cold. But the prof put six multi-part questions on the test, many along the lines of, "Explain why xyz," so there was a lot of writing and drawing and solving. And there is one technique that I always, always have problems with (related to generating functions) so that I couldn't solve part of one problem within the time allotted, even though I knew the answer (and wrote it down).

However, only one person had finished on time (and he had finished way early, so perhaps bombed it), so our prof speculated that he had made the test too long and promised to grade the best 5 problems, so I went ahead and left. I didn't, however, have time to full check the rest of my work, and the one question I did check had an obvious error. (No, Tam, 2^4 is not 8. That's 2 times 4.) So I am not as confident as I'd like that my other problems will be all right.

It was kind of an amazing test - it seemed to me that he put together the hardest possible test over the given material. I will probably have an A (if the universe is just), but it was difficult.