Midterm & Exam

Midterm:

• Chapters 1-5
• 3 Hours Long (you shouldn't need all this time)
• Will contain multiple choice and short-answer questions
• Permitted Aids:
  • 1 scientific calculator (no graphing calculators!)
  • 1 single-sided A4 sized sheet of paper with whatever you want on it - your cheat sheet

What should I focus on for the midterm?

1. Anything and everything that's in chapters 1-5 and/or in the lectures (statistics is cumulative, so make sure you know how everything fits together)
   1. In the past, students really struggle with questions about interpolation (yes there will be questions about interpolation), so practice a few of those.
   2. Students also struggled with questions that require you to rearrange formulas to find missing pieces of information. We did one of these types of questions as an iClicker question on Thursday 25th January. See if you can find it!

Some strategies for test-writing:

• In General:
  • Take a moment to read the whole test through, this will give you a sense of how much every question is worth & roughly how you should divide your time.
  • Reading the whole test through might also trigger some terms/information that will help you answer multiple choice questions
  • Organize your cheat sheet logically, this will help you find stuff when you're stressing out on the test. I would suggest using a table with the following headers: Term, definition, population formula, sample formula. (But that's just me, use whatever organization makes most sense to you!)
  • Don't microprint - I've seen people show up to exams with magnifying glasses. This did not help them.
• For Multiple Choice:
  • Cross out the answers you know to be definitely wrong, this improves the chances that whatever you select will have a higher chance of being the correct answer. POE (process of elimination) it!
  • Try not to second guess yourself. Very often with multiple choice answers if you change your answer after the fact, you tend to change it to an incorrect response.
• For Short Answer Questions:
  • Find the short answer questions that are worth the most. Do these first.
  • Show ALL your work. We can't give you partial marks for an incorrect response with no partial work.
  • List everything you KNOW at the top of your answer. Does the question give you a mean? Write that down. Once you reduce a seemingly complex question to a smaller set of known variables it becomes easier to figure out what is missing & how to approach the question

Final Exam:

• All assigned content - exam is cumulative
• 3 Hours Long (you will need all of this time)
• Will contain multiple choice and short-answer questions
• Permitted Aids:
  • 1 scientific calculator (no graphing calculators!)
  • 1 double-sided A4 sized sheet of paper with whatever you want on it - your cheat sheet