Review for Final Exam, Continued (Days 80-83)

It's finals week, which means that there are several changes this week to both the class schedule and my blogging schedule. Let's start with the school schedule. As you might expect, finals are Wednesday through Friday, the traditional three minimum days with a pair of two-hour blocks. The periods go in simple order, so it's Periods 1-2 on Wednesday, Periods 3-4 on Thursday, and Periods 5-6 on Friday. This means that today and tomorrow are regular block days -- and you know the drill by now. Today is odd periods, tomorrow is even periods, and there is no all-classes day this week.

As for the blogging schedule, the rule of thumb is that I post whenever fifth period meets. This means that I post today (for the regular block day), and then not again until Friday (for the final). This explains why today's post is labeled as Days 80-83 -- my next post is four days away.

And so yes, I reviewed for finals in both of the classes that meet today. In Stats class, I proceed with Assignment #42, the last assignment of the semester. It covers mostly Chapter 7 and 10. Notice that I don't copy a worksheet for Chapter 8 -- there won't be any separate Chapter 8 questions on the final (as this chapter, on linear models, is mostly already covered by Chapter 7). Perhaps there ought to be more Chapter 9 questions on nonlinear models, but I don't think it's fair to place these on the final when we only briefly covered the chapter just before Thanksgiving. (The last assignment doesn't have much Chapter 10 either, that being adequately covered in Assignment #40 last week.)

In both Stats and Calculus, I'm working my way into the habit of having the students choose questions for me to answer. While this more or less works well in Stats, in Calculus there's a problem. Before passing out Assignments #66-67, I want to go over Assignments #64-65. Recall that these two assignments are on the first two chapters of the text -- in particular, Assignment #64 corresponds to Chapter 1. And remember that this chapter is really just a review of Precalculus.

So here's what happens -- I ask students for questions they wish me to answer on Assignment #64. Two of the questions they select are from the calculator page -- for both questions, the students are directed to find the zeros of a function. This entails entering the function in the calculator properly, selecting the Calculate Zeros option, choosing the left and right bounds for each zero (and one function has seven zeros). Many of the students still struggle to use calculators properly. And what's bad about all of this is that I've already selected problems for the final -- and, as it turns out, none with finding zeros was even chosen! Thus I end up spending a good half hour on problems that won't appear on the final -- nor on the AP, as these are Chapter 1 Precalculus problems! Of course, it forces me to rush the rest of the review.

Having the students choose questions is still a great idea. It just would have been better if I'd waited until getting out of Chapter 1 before letting them choose. Then if they pick questions that won't appear on the final, at least they have a chance of appearing on the AP Exam.

My next blogpost won't be until Friday. But of course, you can expect several tweets to appear on my Twitter account between then and now.