Friday, January 31, 2014

Question on homework grading policy

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Good afternoon Professor Taylor, 
I hate to bug you before the weekend however I wanted to get some feedback from you regarding the homework assignment. From my what I could gather there were over 40 problems for the first homework assignment and I received **/10 even after completing all the problems with over 2 hours invested as well. If the graders are only selecting a few problems from the assignment how does this reflect on my grade and the overall assignment? I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and I look forward to class on Monday

Thanks again!
Sincerely, 
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OK,  some comments on how the homework is graded and why.  

The reason homework is assigned is because people learn the material they get from the lectures and textbook much better if they actually have experience using it. We encourage that by assigning homework and making the homework scores a small part of the course grade, but the real payoff comes from the improvement of your exam scores.

Providing corrected homework is useful for those students who study the corrections.  However, grading homework requires investment of human effort, which requires investment of money.  The grader is hired to spend 3 hrs per week on grading your homework.  While I would prefer all the homework problems be graded, that would require a good deal more money than we have.  Given these constraints, the homework problems to be graded are chosen randomly within each homework assignment, but spread between all the sections in a given homework assignment.  Since they are random, over the semester they will evenly sample the spectrum of difficulty, usually of intermediate difficulty, but occasionally being the more difficult or easy.  The same selection of problems is graded for everyone's homework--everyone gets the same treatment.  Everyone also has a number of other resources for getting feedback on the homework, including in-class questions, my office hours and the various engineering and mathematics tutoring opportunities.

Now as far as the effort that you should spend on homework and study for this course, by googling around you can find various answers. One common rule (e.g. here) is that for every hour in class, outside of class you should spend two hours if the class is easy, three hours for an average class and four hours for a difficult class.  Since MAT 243 is three hours per week and most students seem agree that it's not an easy class, that would mean your should be spending nine to twelve hours weekly outside of class.  If you spent just two hours doing your homework, it sounds like you've seriously underestimate the level of effort required for this course.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Office Hours are posted on the syllabus...

...and here: M 3:30-4:30pm, TuTh Noon-1:00pm and by appointment.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Homework Due January 31

Book homework Sections 1.4 and 1.5 from the course syllabus.
Webwork section 1.4 and section 1.5.

Friday, January 17, 2014

question


hey I have a question 
11000(0101111011)
how do I evaluate something like that???

This refers to a mapping of propositional logic to binary 
operations in whichF->0, T->1.  
In this set up p∧q=1 iff p=q=1,  p∨q=0 iff p=q=0 and
 -p=0 iff p=1.  These operations extend to binary strings
 pointwise, so that e.g. pqr∧stu=(p∧s)(q∧t)(r∧u), and
101∨011=(1∨0)(0∨1)(11)=111.

Your grades so far...

From this page:
Posting ID:
Your Posting ID is a seven-digit number composed of the last four digits of your ASU ID number plus the last three digits of your Campus ID number, separated by a hyphen. Your Posting ID is printed on the class rosters and grade rosters your professors work with. You can also view your Posting ID on the My Profile  tab in My ASU.
Many faculty use Posting IDs to post incremental grades like mid-term exam scores, lab results, etc., in public places such as the departmental bulletin board, or the wall in the classroom. The Posting ID is used to permit your professors to get your incremental grades out to you quickly and efficiently while at the same time protecting your privacy."



Thursday, January 16, 2014

Course Fee?

 I was wondering what exactly is the $30 class fee for this class is for?

Ehrrr.....I don't know--I just teach what they tell me.   I can tell you for sure that I'm not getting any of it though.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Welcome & First Homework Assignment

Welcome!

The written homework assignment for next week are the section 1.1 and 1.3 problems from the textbook listed on the syllabus.

Webwork Sections 1.1 and 1.3 will open on Friday 1/17/2014 after class and will close on Friday 1/24/2014 at 8:00AM.