Thursday, May 7, 2009

Final exam scores

Your final exam scores are on moodle ...

The final course grade posted is basically correct, but subject to an audit of my master spreadsheet. Very few were on a grade boundary (either +/- or a full grade) as it turns out, so probably nothing will change, but I want to be on the safe side and check everything a few more times.

Now is a good time to check that your HW, lab, and quiz grades seem correct. If you are curious about what grades you are missing (e.g., HW not turned in), send me an email.

Final exam breakdown

Individual final exam scores will be on Moodle imminently. Must make one more check of grading ...

Final course grades will be posted sometime tomorrow afternoon. I need to do a thorough review of everything before I'm willing to posit final final grades, and carefully audit everything. You can calculate from Moodle what you should receive, and there is a 99% chance you will be correct. Keep in mind Moodle does not include random bonus points I have given over the semester, for instance, and for this and other reasons the Moodle grades are not 'official.'

Incidentally, the overall course grade is a very complicated case. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. Mostly when you are on the narrow borderline between grades ... there are often some very tough calls to make.

Let it suffice to say that I usually err on your side if there is a chance for ambiguity, but it is rarely (rarely) necessary. Strictly by the numbers in the end.

e-homework chaos

A nice post about how having emailed homework can suck.

Pretty much everything she mentions has happened this semester, and then some ... but it all worked out in the end.

Also, she missed a lot of other chaos-inducing problems, like email addresses that give no hint as to the sender's address coupled with no discernable name within the attachment. Thanks to what I think is better-than-average handwriting recognition on my part and good email search capabilities, this was not much of an issue this semester.

In other news, the finals are graded. I have not tabulated the results yet ... probably in another couple of hours, I will post here when I have results for you to see.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Final Exam

Your final exam is here, if you want to look back at it ...

Also, moodle is now up to date with everything except the final exam. Labs 9, 10, and 11 were from the rocket competition:

L9 = competition performance
L10 = quality / correctness / cleverness of code
L11 = quality / cleverness of the physical setup and measurement system

FYI, the grading breakdown (weighting, number dropped, etc.) can be found here.

Moodle

HW 12 grades are now up on Moodle. The only grades missing are from the rocket launcher project, which counts as 3 lab grades.

Excepting the 3 rocket grades, you have 8 lab grades in so far. I will add in the 3 rocket grades (performance, code, and hardware) and drop the lowest 2 grades overall (for a total of 11 lab grades). I should have this done late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

After you finish the final exam tomorrow, you can check with me to see that your grade distribution is accurate - e.g., missing homeworks and labs. If you don't see this in time, send me a short email and I'll let you know what grades I'm missing from you to make sure everything seems to be correct.

I will probably have final grades done by Friday; I'll post here when I have everything finished.

Formula sheet

Here it is.

Draft anyway; some proofreading remains.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Review Session TONIGHT

Room 203 Gallalee, the usual classrom, 6-7pm.

Come bearing questions ...

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Final Exam

One of you asked about the final exam details. Below is what I said.

The review session will be Monday evening, I'll post here when it is finalized. I'll also provide the formula sheets, probably on Sunday, along with more detail. It will be easier than any of the other three exams I gave ...
It is going to be a larger number of much easier problems, much like the example problems in the chapters. Only chapters we covered in class are on the exam, and nothing we covered after exam III is on the exam.

It is going to be something like 8-10 fairly easy problems that you need to solve in about 15 minutes each, rather than the 4-6 hard problems that take 30 minutes you had on the previous exams. You will have a choice of problems, so it is reasonable to skip over a couple of chapters and just not choose problems related to them.

My suggestion would be to try to solve the sample problems without looking at the solutions at first. Basically, the exam will reward knowing the basics really well. I will try to make the problems very similar to the level of practice problems. After that, I would try the problems on the sample tests I posted - mostly easier problems than we have been doing.

You'll get a formula sheet which is fairly comprehensive. I'll try to post it as soon as I can, but it might be Sunday before I get it done. It will be a combination of the formula sheets from the first three exams. You can bring in two sheets of paper with your own notes.

We made the news ...

Video of the contest on the Tuscaloosa News site.

UA News
writeup.

And, Mr. Cecil is on the front page of the "B" section of Friday's Tuscaloosa News. Very cool. Try to save him a copy of the paper if you can :-)

Friday, May 1, 2009

Reminder: no recitation today

Also, I will hold a review session Monday evening some time. Still working out the details, I'll post here when everything is settled.

Reminder: code submission

Each team owes me code ... soon.

Don't worry about dependencies, libraries, etc. I'll figure it out.

Rocket Contest

Well, I was pleased, and had a good time :-) I thought it went well, and you all did a great job. The visitors were pretty impressed with what you were able to come up with, and in particular the variety of solutions presented.

By the way: no one will come out of this with a bad lab grade, I was impressed all around. Even if you didn't get as many 'hits' as you would have liked, it was clear you all had solid approaches and took the task seriously, and that's worth a lot.

Currently, I'm uploading many photos and some video from today, but I'm not quite finished yet ... I'll post some links here when it is finished. Keep your eyes on the Tuscaloosa news, they may run a story based on the video and pics they took today.

Also: I've decided you can keep the launchers, sensors, and laser pointers - your lab fees more than paid for them, and at this point you put a lot of work into the customizations. I do need the voltmeters back if you still have them though ...

In the mean time: here is (1) a UA news bit, (2) a short video of a successful shot, thanks to Marcy Huey's fine camera work, and (3) a listing of several other videos, including team Red Scare's propaganda.

(All videos are AVI straight from my camera; editing and conversion to mpeg should happen this weekend I hope.)