Mathematics Exam Advice
- The first piece of advice is to read questions carefully. Don’t glance at a question and go off writing: take a moment to understand what you have been asked to do.
- Don’t use tippex; instead draw a simple line(s) through work that you think is incorrect.
- For equations, check your solution by substituting your solution into the original equation. If your answer is wrong and you know it is wrong: write that on your script.
If you do have time at the end of the exam, go through each of your answers and ask yourself:
- have I answered the question that was asked?
- does my answer make sense? If no, say so, and then try and fix your solution.
- check your answer (e.g. for a fitted curve or beam function, input values and see do they make sense; substitute your solution into equations; check your answer against a rough estimate; or what a picture is telling you; etc). If your answer is wrong, say so, and then try and fix your solution.
Student Feedback
You are invited to give your feedback on my teaching and this module here.
Tutorial Split
I am not sure what is going on with Leonard’s classes but I will be present this Friday, tomorrow 6 December for tutorials in A243L (11:00) and A213B (12:00).
Week 12
On Monday we finished off Chapter 4 by looking at Error Analysis. Better exercises than the book here (including corrections to the sheet handed out in class). We then had over two and a half hours of tutorial time for lectures, and another tutorial on Friday.
Week 13
The exam is on the morning of Friday Week 13 which means that I cannot give ye (Friday) tutorials in Week 13.
In the lecture slots (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday), I will go through Q. 1-2, 4 of Sample Paper I. Then I will answer any questions. If there are none I will help one-to-one. Usual class times and locations.
Any remaining time can be given over to tutorials, including questions about Q. 3 of Sample Papers I and II.
Academic Learning Centre
If you are a little worried about your maths this semester, perhaps after the Quick Test or in general, I would just like to remind you about the Academic Learning Centre. Most students received slips detailing areas of maths that they should brush up on. The timetable is here.
CIT Mathematics Exam Papers
These are not always found in your programme selection — most of the time you will have to look here.
Study
Please feel free to ask me questions about the exercises via email or even better on this webpage — especially those of us who struggled in the test.
Student Resources
Please see the Student Resources tab on the top of this page for information on the Academic Learning Centre, etc.
J.P. McCarthy: Math Page 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 12, 2019 at 8:29 am
Student
Are these answers OK for full marks?
Thanks
December 12, 2019 at 8:47 am
J.P. McCarthy
Most of these would get full marks but should be improved.
Sample I
(a)
i. Full marks. Perhaps delete “a lot” and just keep “higher.”
ii. Full marks. Replace “are from different companies” and replace it with “have nothing in common”. The rods being produced by different companies is not enough. Perhaps they are using the same raw materials for example? Perhaps delete “they’re in different factories, you’ve said that already.
(b)
value is 
. This is a 
value so it does not make sense to say the 
value for (the 
value) 
is 0.5319. I think you could say that the long left tail of 
is 0.5319, and that is the long left tail of 
so your answer, the short left tail (which I would draw), is equal to 0.4681.
i. Full marks. Perhaps round to four significant figures and use square brackets to have an answer of [20.29,22.51].
ii. Full marks.
iii. Full marks. The
iv. Full marks.
(c)![[a,b]](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ba%2Cb%5D&bg=ffffff&fg=545454&s=0&c=20201002)
.![[7.985,8.015]](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5B7.985%2C8.015%5D&bg=ffffff&fg=545454&s=0&c=20201002)
.
i. Full marks. Explanation not required.
ii.
A. Full marks.
B. Full marks.
C. Not finished. Not full marks. Give me the acceptance region you calculate. Put it in the form
D. Not full marks. Correct to reject the null hypothesis, but reason is not clear. What is not in the acceptance region
Sample II
(a)
i. Full marks. The first sentence will do.
ii. Full marks.
(b)
is too harsh. Round to four or at least three significant figures. Two is not enough. Otherwise use the ![[a,b]](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%5Ba%2Cb%5D&bg=ffffff&fg=545454&s=0&c=20201002)
notation for the confidence interval.
value is 
. Again don’t say “
-value = 0.5753. The 
value you are looking at is 
. Consider, similar to above, that the long left tail of 
is 0.5753, and that is the long left tail of 
so your answer, the short left tail (which I would draw), is equal to 0.4257.
i. Perhaps lose a mark for overly harsh rounding.
ii. Full marks. The rounding in the previous part will affect this but you won’t always lose marks for errors in previous questions. The
iii. Full marks.
(c)
i. Full marks. Leave out the reason (the reason it is sampling is because they want to find out/estimate the population mean).
ii.
A. No marks. This does not answer the question that was asked. Please see P. 162.
B. Full marks.
C. Full marks.
D. No marks. Please see, e.g. p.165.
Regards,
J.P.