PH253: Exam 2 results

First: the grades for exam 2, and your updated overall average, are on moodle now. You'll get the exams back in lecture ... about 8.5 hours from now.

Second: it was not as bad as you had feared, but as a whole you did fall for the straightforward-but-mathematically-tedious traps (problems 2 & 6, mostly). The alternative was problems 4 & 5, which were very simple with little calculation if you remembered what to do.

Third: here are some interesting plots.

The distribution was far less weird this time -- about an equal number of A, B, and C grades, which is not bad at all. The average was 81.3%, with a standard deviation of 12.6% (N=46).

A few little things I found interesting:

• You did very well on #1, which means you really looked at the practice problems (it was the same).
• Only #2 was strangely low; it was hard, but it was also a homework problem (HW5).
• A surprising number of people chose number 6, despite it being the obvious trap on this exam. It was straightforward, but a serious time sink. Myself, I would have skipped it. I graded fairly generously on that one if you had algebraic issues but the method was basically ok.

More details and solutions tomorrow ...