Some Meta-Skills: --- How to Tackle Written Exams
READ THE INSTRUCTION PAGE TWICE;
-- and make sure you understand what it says !
READ EVERY QUESTION THREE TIMES:
- Find out what the question is all about.
- Ask yourself why the Prof. is asking this question -- what concept s/he is probably wanting to test.
- Read the fine details and specifications -- and follow them !
Also, in my exams, where you cannot ask any questions. (-- as on SAT's, GRE's etc.)
State your assumptions, but don't make assumptions purely for your convenience ...
e.g., in Problem #2, if I wanted to make things easy for you by having a+b+c=1, I would have said so;
thus you must assume that these parameters are NOT normalized, and take care of it yourself.
On the other hand, in Problem #14, if there is no obvious indication that any scale changes are involved,
and no numbers indicate how much such a scale change might be,
then it
is safe to assume that everything stays at the same scale.
Make sure that I know what your answer is, don't burry it in a lot of random text!
Check your signs and your arithmetic.
Page Editor: Carlo H. Séquin