March 13, 2017
Final exam stats: min=2; 1st quartile=31; median=42; 3rd quartile=52.5; max=70 (one student)
Histogram of final exam scores:
March 6, 2017
The final exam is Saturday, March 11, from 5 to 7:50 PM.
There are two locations. Your location depends on your quiz section:
Sections AA and AB are in Kane 210.
Sections AC and AD are in Kane 220.
March 6, 2017
Here are some animations that show what we might call "sinusoidal" motion versus "linear" motion.
March 3, 2017
When studying for the final exam using the exam archive, please not that we did not cover linear-to-linear rational functions (aka rational functions, linear-to-linear functions) or belt-and-pulley (aka bicycle chain problems). So please do not concern yourself with such problems that you may encounter in the archive.
Here are specific problems that you can ignore. All other problems on the listed finals are fair game.
- Winter 2016 - Problem 7
- Autumn 2015 - Problem 8
- Spring 2015 - Problem 4
- Winter 2015 - Problems 4 and 8
- Autumn 2014 - Problem 4
- Spring 2014 - Problem 5
- Winter 2014 - Problem 4
- Autumn 2013 - Problem 3
- Winter 2013 - All problems okay!
- Autumn 2012 - 1c
If you go farther back in the archive, please keep in mind the comment above.
February 27, 2017
Midterm Two stats: min=5; 1st quartile=17.25; median=23; 3rd quartile=29; max=40 (3 students).
Here is a histogram of scores.
Answers are available on at the 120 Materials Website.
Instead of a translation table, I will be calculating current course grade estimates for everyone; these will appear on Catalyst in the next day or two.
February 15, 2017
Midterm Two will cover chapters 7,8,9,10,11,12, and 13.
Here are some recommendations on which problems on old exams to study.
- MT2, Autumn 2014: 1, 2, 4
- MT2, Autumn 2013: 1, 3
- MT2, Spring 2013: 3, 4
- MT2, Winter 2013: 1, 2, 4
- MT2, Autumn 2012: 1, 3, 4
- MT2, Winter 2012: 1, 2, 3
- MT2, Autumn 2011: 1, 3, 4
- MT2, Spring 2011: 2b, 3
- MT2, Winter 2011: 1, 3b, 4
- MT2, Autumn 2010 B: 1, 3
- MT2, Autumn 2010 C: 1, 2, 4
- MT2, Winter 2010: 1, 3
February 9, 2017
The Pipeline Project asked me to share this information from them with my classes:
The Pipeline Project is a department on campus which connects UW undergraduates with opportunities to provide K-12 students with tutoring, mentorship, and support as a means of transforming the learning and inspiring the growth of both groups of students while addressing inequities in public education. We work with over 50 Seattle Public Schools all looking for wonderful UW students to assist their kids. Tutoring with Pipeline is a great opportunity as we provides community service opportunities by volunteering, gaining up to 5 UW credits, as well as an alternative Spring Break domestic study abroad in rural and tribal parts of Washington State. Pipeline will be holding informational sessions about our program within the next few weeks:
- Friday February 10th // 1:30-2:30pm // MGH 171E
- Friday February 17th // 1:30-2:30pm // MGH 258
- Wednesday February 22nd // 2:00-3:00pm // MGH 258
January 30, 2017
Statistics on the first midterm: n=149; min=1; 1st quartile=17; median =24; 3rd quartile=31; max=40 (2 students)
Here is a histogram of scores.
Answers to the first midterm exam are available on the exam archive at the 120 Materials Website.
Here is a table of APPROXIMATE grade translation. This is only to five you an idea of how you did, gradewise. I DO NOT USE THESE ESTIMATES FOR ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER. For example, if your score was, say, 31, it remains 31 for all future grade calculations: I do not use the 3.3 given in the table below for any purpose.
| ≤13 | 0 |
| 13 | 0.7 |
| 14 | 0.9 |
| 15 | 1.1 |
| 16 | 1.3 |
| 17 | 1.5 |
| 18 | 1.7 |
| 19 | 1.8 |
| 20 | 2.0 |
| 21 | 2.2 |
| 22 | 2.4 |
| 23 | 2.6 |
| 24 | 2.7 |
| 25 | 2.8 |
| 26 | 2.9 |
| 27 | 3.0 |
| 28 | 3.1 |
| 29 | 3.1 |
| 30 | 3.2 |
| 31 | 3.3 |
| 32 | 3.4 |
| 33 | 3.4 |
| 34 | 3.5 |
| 35 | 3.6 |
| 36 | 3.7 |
| 37 | 3.8 |
| 38 | 3.9 |
| 39 | 4.0 |
| 40 | 4.0 |
January 20, 2017
The first midterm exam on Thursday will cover chapters 1 through 6.
The test archive at the Math 120 Materials Website
is the place to get old exams for practice. Each quarter there are two midterms: you are
concerned with the first midterm only. Some quarters we get to more material before
the first midterm than we have this quarter, so I suggest considering the following
parts of the following exams in the archive:
aut 2014 all problems
aut 2013 all problems
spr 2013 all problems UPDATE: skip part (c) of problem 4
win 2013 all problems UPDATE: skip part (b) of problem 4
aut 2012 UPDATE: problems 2,3
win 2012 all problems
aut 2011 UPDATE: problems 1,2
spr 2011 UPDATE: problems 1,3
win 2011 all problems UPDATE: skip 4 (b)
aut 2010 B: problems 1,2,3; C: all problems
win 2010 UPDATE: problems 1,2
aut 2009 all problems
spr 2009 UPDATE: problems 1,2br>
Many of the exams have problems related to chapter 6 material,
which we will talk about on Monday.
There are more exams in the archive, but that ought to be plenty
for you to practice on.
January 17, 2017
CLUE (in Mary Gates Hall) is having Math 120 priority drop-in sessions:- Midterm 1 Priority Drop-in: Tuesday, January 24, 7-10 PM
- Midterm 2 Priority Drop-in: Wednesday, February 22, 7-10 PM
- Final Priority Drop-in: Thursday, March 9, 7-10 PM
January 15, 2017
Chapter 4, problem 7 This problem is a little involved, so I wrote an example problem just like it (the example is actually a little more complicated). The example is in the sidebar under Handouts and Supplements, but here is a direct link.
When you solve this problem, what you will find are the y-intercepts of the two lines. One will be the negative of the other. Let's say one is 7.654 and the other is -7.654. Then you should enter your answer as (-7.654,7.654), to indicate the interval of points on the y-axis between y=-7.654 and y=7.654.
January 10, 2017
I will periodically be expounding here on aspects of the course, particularly study methods and problem-solving tools.
Reading the problem This is an often overlooked key step in problem-solving. Be sure to always read the problem carefully, at least twice through before you begin solving the problem. A great way to fail to solve a problem is to attempt to solve a problem that wasn't asked, so make sure you are solving the problem you are given.
I think this is especially true during exams, where you cannot ask for help, or go away and come back to it the next day. So dedicate the first minute or two of work on each exam problem to reading slowly and carefully to be sure you are solving the right problem.
Introducing time variables We've seen in lecture that if an object it moving horizontally at a constant speed in the plane, then its location can be expressed by (A±vt,B), where (A,B) is the "starting location", v is the speed of the object, and t is the time since the object was at the starting location. That is, we are using t=0 to represent that starting time. The plus-or-minus depends on whether or not the object is moving to the right (minus) or left (plus).
A virtually identical method applies to objects moving vertically.
A common issue when using this method occurs when you have more than one object that don't all start moving at the same time. In such a case, you will need to adjust the expression above, keeping in mind that you want to multiply the speed v by the amount of time that the object has been moving since it was at its starting location. In general, this requires replacing t by t+a or t-a for some value of a depending on the start times of your objects.
Rounding and WebAssign In many problems in WebAssign, there is an instruction to round to a certain number of digits. PLEASE IGNORE THIS INSTRUCTION. Instead, keep all digits given by your calculator and enter all of them into WebAssign. I so often see students enter values like 46.5, get a red X, then enter 46.6, thinking that they have rounded wrong, and getting another red X, because their calculation was not correct. A better approach is to enter the full value you get from your calculator (46.51023923, say). In this example, this would still be marked wrong, but you wouldn't waste a second try messing with rounding. I promise that you will never be marked wrong for putting in "too many" digits.
WebAssign attempts For most problems, you have 5 attempts to enter the correct answer (the exceptions are mutliple choice and true-false questions). You should be very stingy about using these attempts. Do everything you can to check your work and your answer before using even the first attempt! Keep in mind that during exams you only get one attempt, so you want to be in the habit of checking your work yourself, and not just relying on WebAssign to tell you whether you have done things correctly.
December 28, 2017
Welcome to Math 120 A Winter quarter 2017.
Announcements and other useful things will be posted here during the quarter.
Textbook: The textbook for this course is Precalculus, by Collingwood, Prince and Conroy. The book can be purchased at the UW Bookstore.
You do not have to purchase the textbook. It is available electronically: here is a direct link to the pdf.
Discussion Board: The course has a discussion board (link at right). This is a great way to ask questions of me in a way that will benefit all students in the course. You can ask about homework questions, studying methods, etc. You can also use it to coordinate study sessions with other students.
Homework: We will be using WebAssign for homework.
WebAssign: You can log in to WebAssign here. This will require your UW Net ID. Your UW Net ID is the part of your university email address before the @ symbol. The password to log in is your UW Net ID password.
You must be enrolled in the course in order to get access to the homework on WebAssign.
You will need to purchase an access code before the grace period ends. You can purchase an access code on the WebAssign website after logging in.
The first homework assignment will be due on the night of Thursday, January 12.
If you are not enrolled in the course, but are trying to add, you can get started on the homework without WebAssign by working the following problems in the textbook (which is freely available here).
Chapter 1: problems 1-10, 14,15
Chapter 2: 2-7, 10, 12, 13
These problems will have different numbers than the ones you will have on WebAssign, but if you write out solutions for these, it won't be too much trouble to rework them with the WebAssign values.
These problems will cover you through the first homework assignment.