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Week 12

We looked at the Winter 2021 paper for revision. It is in the back of the manual.

We will finish Q. 4 (b) early on Friday, and will have some tutorial time then for the final exam.

We had a tutorial on Tuesday… some students focused on Chapter 3, others did some Chapter 1 revision.

Final Exam Preparation

Your preparation for the test is doing exercises. There is an awful lot of exercises in Chapter 1 to 4. I recommend in particular:

  • Curve Fitting: p. 33, 48
  • Probability and Statistics: p. 160, Q. 5-7; p. 179, Q (d); p.171, Q. 1-2; p.178, Q. 1-2
  • Taylor Series, p. 134, Q. 1-4; p. 191, Q. 1-4; p. 207, Q. 2-3, 5-6

After Assignment 2, students are probably as prepared as they can be for Static Beam Differential Equations… but possibly no harm to do some refresher questions. They do require practise.

If you want feedback on study, please check your work against answers in the the manual, and/or email me your work with any questions.

Mathematics Exam Advice

  • You don’t have to answer questions in order Q. 1, Q. 2, etc. If you know in advance the structure of the exam, you can decide in advance what questions you are doing first, second, etc. This is related 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.

If you do have time at the end of the exam, go through each of your answers and ask yourself:

  1. have I answered the question that was asked?
  2. does my answer make sense? If no, write that on your script, and then try and fix your solution.
  3. check your answer (e.g. if you are looking at something general, look at a special case; 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, write that on your script, and then try and fix your solution.
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