February 17th, 2004 13:14:54 *** Comments on the midterm ***

Recall, the reasoning behind us writing a difficult exam was for it being open book. Well, I only glanced at my well prepared notes, not having the time or nerve to lift my scrabbling pencil off the eraser-smudged term paper. So, I wrote a very difficult exam as any other (and I think this was the case of all).

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a "quick" thinker, I need to think a problem through carefully. Fair enough, there were 2 questions that were very easy, and half of them were doable with a little more time (it’s always just a little more time – this crazy world we live in). Just remember that Einstein himself told of how his discoveries were the results of many years of hard work.

So, will the final be more a test of our mastery of programming languages and techniques, or will it be a race of the quick wits?

***
February 17th, 2004 13:31:01 anyone finished the midterm within half of an hour?
Ooooooo,too many questions. February 17th, 2004 13:49:20 I agree about the length of the midterm. I too am not a fast thinker and found that I probably know alot more than what I demonstrated on that midterm. Oh well.....have a good reading break. February 17th, 2004 14:06:56 anyone finished the midterm within half of an hour?
Ooooooo,too many questions. February 17th, 2004 14:17:02 I too found the midterm to be far more time intensive than it should have been. I feel I have a good understanding of the course material and have done well on assignments, but felt very rushed. It seemed like it was more just going over/writing code then understanding the underlying principles. February 17th, 2004 14:29:30 Honestly, I spent the 1st 30 minutes of that midterm trying to figure out where to put the answers. I really hope the final has more space. (Backs of pages, and extra blank pages at the end don't count, because you have to keep flipping between where you're anwering the question and where the question is written, which I find really akward) February 17th, 2004 15:24:03 I agree, it's a trivial thing to flip the page to answer a question UNTIL you are forced to do so in a time constrained, stressful environment. It would be nice to have a final exam with plenty of space below each question, please! February 17th, 2004 15:59:12 I really feel better when I see that I am not the only one who had problem with finishing the exam.
I also had the problem of flipping the pages. And I completely lost my confident when George began counting down! February 17th, 2004 16:10:31 all I wish right now is closed book for the final!! February 17th, 2004 16:12:33 all I wish right now is closed book for the final!! February 17th, 2004 16:12:46 all I wish right now is closed book for the final!! February 17th, 2004 16:16:25 I found the most frustrating aspect of them mid-term lies deep within the caverns of the layout. if you follow the questions like a person, isntead of a trail, you'll soon find that you are in a different place all together, and COMPLETELY incapable of answering questions, especial when your mortal body lies in a desk in a class room back on earth. So had this mid term not been a portal to some sort of afterlife, i would have been able to atleast answer one question. Just be careful what you create. And to quote a beautiful mind of our life time: "Make what you take, then bake what you make, and take what you bake." February 17th, 2004 16:20:39 February 17th, 2004 17:03:05 I totally agree with you guys. Although the difficulty of the questions was fair, they did however require some thought and time was not our friend! The layout of the test required us to keep flipping back and forth which led to a lack of time. February 17th, 2004 19:14:59 From George: The traffic here is much more reasonable than I expected.
I completely sympathize with the time problem and I have never been
a fast exam writer myself although with a lot of practice I became better. On the other hand I hate exam where one small detail makes
a huge difference on your grade so I would rather scale up than down.


Anyway, I apologise about the layout. My naive thinking (in case you don't
know it already) this is my first time being on the other side of the fence) was that you would work your answers on your own scratch paper and
then just write the answer on the exam provided. I just finished grading but I need to enter the grades electronically so it will be probably tomorrow when you will get them. Two students got full score and a couple more got pretty close so it was not totally unreasonable. As a rough guide if you were able to answer more than half the questions you are doing ok.

Enjoy your reading break. February 17th, 2004 21:10:17 George, wont scaling this end up heavily biasing the marks towards people who finished half the questions thoroughly and against the people who were frantically rushing to answer everything? February 17th, 2004 21:36:19 More than half of the sutdents failed and the mean grade is less than 6 or 7. I have never seen so hard midterm before.

February 17th, 2004 21:58:20 Why nobody got midterm mark with half point? February 17th, 2004 22:21:20 Thanks for marking the midterms so quickly!!! February 17th, 2004 22:49:20 Thanks for marking the midterms so quickly!!! February 18th, 2004 12:31:08 George, you mention you expected people to work on their own scratch paper...
I'm guessing most of us would have been happy to do so, if only you had mentioned in classes before the midterm that this was what you were expecting.
I'm sure most of us are used to writing midterms and exams only on the exam paper given, and classes where you are expected to show your work or you don't get the marks... February 18th, 2004 13:00:54 George, I noticed that you mentioned something about scaling! Does this mean that the marks we recieved were scaled, or were you just considering scaling our current marks??? February 18th, 2004 13:02:18 " More than half of the sutdents failed and the mean grade is less than 6 or 7. I have never seen so hard midterm before. "

Try taking csc360 where te AVERAGE of a midterm is 45% February 18th, 2004 14:06:52 From George: I apologize for not being more clear about the use of scratch paper. It seemed obvious and the questions were designed to have short
answers that possibly require some thinking. A single side of letter paper is more than enough for all the answers + justification and all the students that did well didn't seem to have any paper problems. I will make sure that's not a problem with the final. Regarding scaling, the grades I posted were not scaled. In certain questions I did grade upwards (i.e if your answer was wrong but close enough you got the point). Scaling will be done if necessary only at the end when all your grades are accumulated. Don't look at your absolute grades just look at where you are in the histogram. Glad that this was not the hardest midterm :-). February 18th, 2004 15:58:48 Really I can only blame myself for such a pitiful result on my midterm. We were advised to do a couple hours of study per lecture. Guess what? Bedsides spending about 8 hours on the assignment (I got a decent mark) , I crammed a pathetic 10 hours of study into the midterm ,2 nights before we wrote.

Writing exams is like pattern matching. If you can drill solution methods into your head through daily application then writing a midterm should be as easy as recognizing the design pattern of a question and writing out a template solution.

I will not make this mistake again, gone are the lazy days that characterized year one and two of this challenging science program

- just writing my thoughts, therapy for an ego wounded by this midterm.

February 18th, 2004 17:23:24 "Try taking csc360 where te AVERAGE of a midterm is 45% ."

I took it last term. And the midterm was ignored and not counted into the final grade. February 18th, 2004 18:28:21 I took it last term. And the midterm was ignored and not counted into the final grade.

I suggest that we do the same thing for this midterm. If ppl do better in the final, their final will gonna worth 55%. February 19th, 2004 10:10:48 From George: For the "ego wounded by the midterm" thanks for your posting.
For the curious I wasn't the author (I preface everything I post with From George) :-). February 19th, 2004 23:23:01 "Try taking csc360 where te AVERAGE of a midterm is 45%"
if you had figured out the class average, you would see that the average for this midterm was 42.91%... or George did say some people with 0's didn't show up, so lets say 5 people with 0's actually took the midterm, that makes the class average 44.15%... heck lets say no one who took the exam got a 0(which isn't the case), that makes the class average 47.6%...