10-1100/Term Test

DBN: Classes: 2010-11: 10-1100/Navigation Additions to the MAT 1100 web site no longer count towards good deed points # Week of... Notes and Links 1 Sep 13 About This Class, Tuesday - Non Commutative Gaussian Elimination, Thursday 2 Sep 20 Tuesday - Homomorphisms and Normal Groups, Thursday - Isomorphism Theorems 3 Sep 27 Class Photo, HW1, HW1 solution 4 Oct 4 5 Oct 11 HW2, HW2 solution 6 Oct 18 7 Oct 25 Term Test 8 Nov 1 HW3, HW3 solution 9 Nov 8 Monday-Tuesday is Fall Break, One Theorem, Two Corollaries, Four Weeks 10 Nov 15 HW4, HW4 solution 11 Nov 22 12 Nov 29 HW5, HW5 solution 13 Dec 6 Boxing Day Handout, see also December 2010 Schedule. Some Class Notes F Dec 13 Final exam, Tuesday December 14 10-1, Bahen 6183 Register of Good Deeds Add your name / see who's in! See Non Commutative Gaussian Elimination

In Preparation

The information below is preliminary and cannot be trusted! (v)

Results

The term test was held on Tuesday October 26, 2010. The average grade was about 66/100, the standard deviation about 22, and the exam itself is at TT.pdf. All marks are available on the annoying UofT Portal.

The complete list of grades is as follows:

100 96 95 91 90 85 84 77 70 69 69 65 64 63 60 49 48 47 47 46 40 39 25

In as much as information theory is concerned, this is the ideal list of grades. It gives me (and you) much more information than a list clustered around 95. Yet I was hoping for a list clustered around 95, and I'm sure that so did you.

So what went wrong? Did I teach badly? Did you study badly? Was the exam inappropriate? Did I fail to communicate what would be expected on the exam? What do we do so that the results of the final cluster around 95 (or at least, 90) without voiding this class of any content? I'll appreciate your opinions, either verbally or in writing, either publicly or in private.

My current best guess is that while a certain minority of the students are under-prepared and while certain topics were not covered optimally, the teaching was overall reasonable and the majority of the students are excellent and well prepared. Yet I failed to communicate to you what is expected in such an exam (a complete mastery of everything covered in class or in HW) and some of you were a bit over-confident and did not study as well as you should have.

The last date to drop this class without it appearing on your transcript is Wednesday November 3rd. If you are sure that for whatever reason taking this class was a mistake for you, drop it before it is too late. Yet my feeling is that most if not all of you are in the right place, and that once we understand what went wrong with this exam, better results will follow.

Appeals

Remember! Grading is a difficult process and mistakes always happen - solutions get misread, parts are forgotten, grades are not added up correctly. You must read your exam and make sure that you understand how it was graded. If you disagree with anything, don't hesitate to complain! Your first stop should be the person who graded the problem in question, and only if you can't agree with him you should appeal to Dror.

Problem 1 was graded by Dror. All other problems were graded by Nevena Francetic.

The deadline to start the appeal process is Thursday November 11 at noon.

Dror's notes above / Student's notes below