Tuesday Dec. 8, 2015
I was happy on this last day of class to be able to
present a new discovery: Lissie. In the 8 am
class I had time to play "Worried
About" (4:22), "The Habit"
Live at Hotel San Jose, SXSW 2013 (4:26), "Record
Collector" (4:14), "In
Sleep" (4:11), and "Love
in the City" (3:46). I also played (mostly to myself)
"They
All Want You" (4:14), "Further
Away" (4:14), and "Stairway
to Heaven" (8:02) while waiting for the 9:30 people to
arrive.
Quiz #4 has been graded and grade summaries were handed out in
class. Be sure to check your grade summary for accuracy.
Today was the last day of class.
In-class written teacher/course evaluation
I am hoping that you will give me written comments about the
class. They're more interesting than the numbers I get back
from the online version. Here are some questions
to think about, but you can comment on any- and everything.
Comments were collected in a sealed box that will only be opened
after final grades from both sections of the class have been
submitted. I'll bring the box to the Final Exam so that you
can add comments then if you wish and weren't able to today.
Exam and review schedule
There are two exams next week for my two
sections of this class:
The first exam, for the Section 3 (9:30 am class) is
Tuesday Dec. 15 from 8 - 10 am in ILC 130.
The exam for Section 2
(8 am class) is Thursday Dec. 17 also from 8 - 10 am in ILC
130.
You can take the exam with students from the other section if
you want. Something I forgot
to mention in class: please let me know ahead
of time if you plan to do this so that I can be sure to have
enough exams.
I am also planning to hold 2 hour long "marathon" reviews the
day before each exam. Here are the dates and times:
Mon., Dec. 14, 1 - 3 pm, Haury 216
Wed., Dec. 16, 1 - 3 pm, Saguaro 101
Final Exam Study Outline
The Final Exam covers the whole semester. That's a
lot of material so I've put together an outline that lists everything
in pretty much the same order we covered it in class.
Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the Study
Outline. There you will find mention that some of the
questions on the exam will come from each of this semester's
quizzes. There will also be at least 10 questions from an old Final Exam
(that comes with answers).
Office hours
I'll be available between
now and the exams during the late morning (10:30-11:30 am)
and in the afternoons between 1 and 4 pm. If you
plan to stop by in the afternoon please let me know ahead
of time so that I can be sure to be in my office (PAS 588)
Late
work
I
probably shouldn't but I am still accepting some kinds of
late work.
You can still turn in late 1S1P reports on topics you haven't
already done. If they contain a reasonably amount of
information and are written in your own words, you'll receive
half credit for each report.
If you never revised your experiment (or book or scientific
paper) report you can still do so. Please return the
original with your revised report. Often this late work
won't be graded unless it looks like it could have an effect
on your overall grade (and I won't know that until after the
Final Exams are graded).
You can wait until the day of the Final Exam to turn in your
late work but turning it in before then would help me to get a
head start on the grading.
What do you need on the Final Exam?
Your
overall grade in the class will depend on your
current average grade (the one on the grade summary
with the lowest quiz score dropped) and your score
on the Final Exam.
Here are a couple of examples showing you how to
determine what you need on the Final Exam to raise
your overall grade and to preserve the grade you
have at present. These use different numbers
from what I did in class today. I'm using
figures from a previous class to save time.
Let's look at the first situation.
In this case I try to maximize the benefit that the Final
Exam can have on your overall grade. 40% of your overall
grade is determined by the Final Exam score.
In this example we assume your current grade is 77.5%, a
C+. You want to raise your overall grade to a B
(80%). The calculation shows that you would need to score
83.8% on the exam to end up with a B. That's very doable.
The other option is that you're happy with your current
grade. What do you need on the exam to keep that grade?
In this case the exam score is only 20% of your overall
grade. This is to minimize the damage it can do.
We'll use the same 77.5% for the current grade and figure out
how badly you can do on the exam and still end up with a C.
The calculation shows you only need to earn 40% to keep the C.
