Exam Information for Math 125

Spring 2018

As it says on the course syllabus, there are two midterms and a final in MAT125, 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 Monday, February 19, 2018

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 material in Chapter 2 of the text (through 2.6), with knowledge of chapter 1 and Appendix A, B, and C assumed as background.
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 allowed us to use some chapters from his AP Calculus book:

You can watch the video of a review session from a previous semester. While this was a different semester , the material covered is pretty much the same.
There are also review sessions being held at the following times:

You should be able to do the problems on the exams from previous semesters that you see below. (A few of these have material from later sections that we haven't covered yet.) Note that our exam will have different problems, in possibly different formats, from any of these old exams. "Different" doesn't mean the same with just a number changed. Still, they should give you an idea of the range and difficulty to expect.
Solutions will show up here later in the week. Try doing them first.

Just in case that isn't enough to keep you busy, here are a bunch of practice problems that David Kahn wrote up (and here are their solutions).

Results: Below is a graph of the grade distribution on the exam. The height of the bar is the number of students who got that letter grade on the exam.

low score: 4 mean: 52.7 median: 51 high score: 104 possible score: 109
range letter grade
75-109 A-, A
48-74 B-, B, B+
30-47 C, C+
22-30 C-
12-22 D, D+
0-11 F

If you got less than 30 on the exam and haven't already taken MAT123, you should seriously consider moving down to MAT123, which can be done with this form.

There were three different versions of the exam, named Drogon (and the solutions), Rhaegal (and its solutions), and Viserion (solutions). They are pretty similar. If you see any typos, let me know.

Second Midterm: 8:45 pm on Thursday, March 29, 2018

The second midterm will cover the material we have covered since the first exam, focusing primarily on the various methods of calculating derivatives, and some of the applications.

As before, David Kahn has kindly posted some chapters from his book to help you prepare:

In addition, here are about 50 problems to allow you to practice your skills calculating derivatives (and here are the solutions).

You can watch the video of a review session from spring 2015. This doesn't include material on related rates or max/min of functions, but will be helpful anyway.

Here are some old exams (or sample problems) from previous semesters to help you prepare. Some of these occured a bit earlier in the semester than ours did, so some of the later material may be missing. In other cases, some of the earlier material may be missing, and some later material may be added.

It is really in your best interest to attempt to do the entire exam before looking at the solutions.

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

low score: 4 mean: 42.7 median: 44 high score: 76 (3) possible score: 76
range letter grade
60-76 A-, A
43-59 B-, B, B+
32-42 C, C+
25-31 C-
16-24 D, D+
0-15 F

As before, there were three versions of the exam. Collectors will want all three: Drums (solutions), Space (solutions), or Dark Star (solutions).

Final Exam: during the week of April 23, and 8 am on Wednesday, May 9, 2018

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

The final will be given in two parts, as described below.

Just about half (48%) of the class passed Part 1 on the first try during the week of April 23; another 20% or so got at least 5 points, which means with a little work they should have no trouble passing on the second try. However, about a third of the class got less than 5 points out of 12, and really need to focus on the basic material in order to pass the class.
Note that you can now see the questions and answers for Part 1 in WebAssign.

As before, David Kahn put more chapters from his book to help you get ready. Other chapters listed above are also relevant, of course. Certain aspects of each are relevant for either Part I or Part II of the final.

Here are some finals (or sample finals) from previous years to help you study. These are listed in two sections: the first group is study material for the mastery test (part~1), and the second consists of either part~2 of a final using this format, or is an older exam that didn't make such a distinction.

Part 1

Part 2 (and mixed)

Reviews:
Here are some recorded review sessions that may help you prepare for the final. While they were in a previous year, the material is the same. Remember that there are videos of all the material for the class on the class schedule page.

Results: In blackboard, there are two separate scores for the final:
For Part 1, the grade will read as either "Pass (C)", which means that you got at le ast 8 points on part 1 and hence got at least a C on the final, or
it will have a number like "4.5 (D)", which lists the maximum score you got on the two attempts, and the corresponding letter grade (which will not be higher than C-),
or it could say "not taken" if you didn't take either attempt.

For Part 2, the grade will be empty if you either didn't do part 2 or you didn't pass Part 1, or it will be the number of points you got on Part 2 and your overall grade on the final (remember, if you passed part 1, you start with a C).

Below is a graph of the score distribution on the final. This includes everyone, including the people who passed part 1 and chose not to do part 2. The grade table only lists the grade cutoffs for part 2.

low score: 0 high score: 62 possible score: 60
range letter grade
30-60 A-, A
10-29 B-, B, B+
0-9 C, C+

Overall grades in the course

Here's how the grades broke down, which is pretty typical for MAT125.

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Page last modified on May 13 2018, 10:56am