Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Returning to my discussion yesterday, there was also one mistake in the Mathematical Methods 1 quiz that David and I gave yesterday.

I forgot to write down the instructions that the complex numbers (three items scattered throughout the listing should be converted to standard form.

I had to step out of my classroom to tell David that. Fortunately he was just in the next room.

There were twenty items total in the MM1 quiz, mostly at 5 points each. There were four questions at three points each, and eight at seven points each. So that’s a possible hundred four points over a hundred.

I was relived when David agreed to that excess instead of having exactly a hundred points, which makes it very difficult to allot appropriate points to problems.

He also agreed to the bonus I’m giving to those who passed their test booklets early, so that they will all pass early next time. Of course, by then it would have served its purpose and a bonus would not be given anymore for early submission.

I have a good feeling about the quiz since (a) a lot of students finished before the time, and (b) Archie, a student in the same subject that I failed this time last year, said that he found the questions easy. Not that he admitted to being able to answer them.

I also have neglected to mention that I told the students in my class that David and I would be contributing half of the questions each to the test. This is so that they would stop begging me to make all the problems easy.

In the meantime he told his students that I would be making all the questions. One of them, in fact, (who was also my student last term in Trig App) approached me with the dreaded request to make the quiz easy.

Personally I think it’s not too easy, but mostly just because of the extensive coverage. In all they only have two items each to show proficiency in a given method of computation. But I did avoid expressions with five or more terms and several variables and different degrees that I just knew the students would feel intimidated by. After all, why assume they can handle those until we find out if they can answer simpler polynomials?

In the Trigonometric Applications quiz I gave the other day, there were only eighteen items ranging from two to five points each.

There were two people, in fact, who got the highest possible fifty-four points out of fifty. I know they’re friends because they sit next to each other. It’s now just a question of finding out if this is consistent to their grades in MM1 last term. But since they were Maila’s students, I will have to ask the registrar’s office if they would let me peek at their grades last term.

In the mechanics quiz I gave on Thursday afternoon, there were only six problems: two at five points and four at ten points each. In this one the students also passed their papers before the time, including David’s brother.

And there’s the bell. Don’t forget to watch “Contact” on TV tonight, and we’ll discuss it next meeting. Class dismissed.